The gods honored in the hymns treated in the following Thesis are Bel, Sin (Nannar), Adad (Ramman) and Tammuz, all deities of the old Babylonian pantheon, representing different phases of personality and force, conceived of as incorporated in nature and as affecting the destinies of men. These gods are severally designated in the hymns as follows:
in Tablet 13963, Rev. 1, "O Bel of the mountains;"in Tablet 13930, Obv. 2, "O father Nannar;"in Tablet 29631, Obv. 10, "O Ramman, king of heaven"; andin Tablet 29628, Obv. 3, "The lord Tammuz" (CT. XV, 10, 15, 16, 17 and 19).
The attributes and deeds belonging to these divinities are adduced from a wide range of literature, beginning with the royal inscriptions of the pre-dynastic periods and ending with the inscriptions of the monarchs of the later Babylonian empire. In fact, the building inscriptions of the Babylonians, the war inscriptions of the Assyrians, the legendary literature, the incantations, as well as the religious collections, particularly the hymns, afford us many descriptions, of greater or less length, of all the Babylonian gods.
