In giving to these personified powers the determinative indicative of deity, the Babylonian schoolmen were not conscious of expressing anything more than their belief in the divine origin of the power and skill exercised by man.

To represent such power as a god was the only way in which the personification could at all be effected under the conditions presented by Babylonian beliefs.

When, therefore, we meet with such gods as Nin-zadim, 'lord of sculpture,' it is much the same as when in the Old Testament we are told that Tubal-cain was the 'father' of those that work in metals, and where similarly other arts are traced back to a single source.

'Father' in Oriental hyperbole signifies 'source, originator, possessor, or patron,' and, indeed, includes all these ideas.

The Hebrew writer, rising to a higher level of belief, conceives the arts to have originated through some single personage endowed with divine powers;[212] the Babylonian, incapable as yet of making this distinction, ascribes both the origin and execution of the art directly to a god.