Note 680 — Chapter X · THE SWORD IN BABYLONIA, ASSYRIA AND PERSIA, AND ANCIENT INDIA.

Nebo, in the inscriptions, holds a golden reed or rod, as the Homeric Hermes is Χρυσόρραπις; he also leads the ghosts to Hades. The Chaldæan gods were, like the Egyptian, deceased ancestors, and they were followed by natural objects, Anu (sky), Bel (earth), Hea (sea), personified into a vast and various mythology. Sun, moon, and æther, were the first Triad of Babylon. Thus the Chthonic gods of Greece, Uranus (the Egyptian Urnas), Gaia and Thalassa (Assyrian), preceded the Olympic anthropomorphism. Of course they were represented with human shapes. Presently the priest introduced as godheads cosmo-poetic causes and effects, which presently peopled the Pantheon with glorified men. For, I repeat, man worships only one thing—himself.