The mythologies of the other uninspired Semitic nations resemble the Egyptian in the main element of being personifications of the powers of nature. The Chaldæans directed their worship chiefly towards the heavenly bodies as did the ancient Egyptians, but not exclusively. Their principal deities were arranged in triads of greater and less dignity; nearly all the members of these were personifications of the heavens or the heavenly bodies. The first triad comprised Ana, the heavens or the hidden sun, Father of the gods, Lord of Darkness, Ruler of a far-off city, Lord of Spirits. By these titles, suggestive of some of the attributes and offices towards the dead, attributed by the Egyptians to Atum and Osiris, was the first member of their first order of gods addressed by the Chaldæans. Next in order came Bil, also a sun-god: the Ruler, the Lord, the Source of kingly power, and the patron and image of the earthly king. His name has the same signification as Baal, and he personifies the same aspect of nature, the sun ruling in the heavens, whose worship was so widely diffused among all the people with whom the Israelites came in contact. The third member of the first triad was Hoa or Ea, who personified apparently the earth: Lord of the abyss, Lord of the great deep, the intelligent Guide, the intelligent Fish, the Lord of the Understanding, are some of his titles, and appear to reveal a conception somewhat answering to that of Thoth. His symbol was a serpent, and he was represented with a fish’s head, which connects him with the Philistine’s god Dagon. The second triad comprised Sin, or Urki, a moon-god, worshipped at Ur, Abraham’s city--his second name Urki, means ‘the watcher,’ and has the same root as the Hebrew name for ‘angel’--San, the disk of the sun; and Vul, the air. Beneath these deities in dignity, or rather perhaps in distance, came the five planets, each representing some attribute or aspect of the deity, or rather being itself a portion of deity endowed with a special characteristic, and regarded as likely to be propitious to men from being less perfect and less remote than the greater gods. These planetary gods were called--Nebo (Mercury), the lover of light; Ishtar (Venus), the mother of the gods; Nergal (Mars), the great hero; Bel Merodach (Jupiter), the ruler, the judge; Nin (Saturn), the god of strength. To these gods the chief worship of the Assyrians was paid, and it was their majesty and strength, typifying that of the earthly king, which Assyrian architects personified in the winged, man-headed bulls and lions with examples of which we are familiar. The gods of the Canaanite nations, Moloch, Baal, Chemosh, Baal-Zebub, and Thammuz, were all of them personifications of the sun or of the sun’s rays, considered under one aspect or another; the cruel gods, to whom human sacrifices were offered, representing the strong, fierce summer sun, and the gentle Thammuz being typical of the softer light of morning and of early spring, which is killed by the fierce heat of midday and midsummer, and mourned for by the earth till his return in the evening and in autumn. Ashtoreth, the horned queen, symbolized by trees and worshipped in groves, is the moon and also the evening star; but, like Isis, she seems to gather up in herself the worship of the feminine principle in nature. The Canaanites represented their gods in the temples by symbols instead of by sculptured figures. An upright stone, either an aerolite or a precious stone (as in the case of the great emerald kept in the shrine of the Temple of Baal-Melcarth at Tyre), symbolized the sun and the masculine element in nature; while the feminine element was figured under the semblance of a grove of trees, the Ashara, sometimes apparently a grove outside the temple, and sometimes a mimic grove kept within.