In the inscriptions of the old Babylonian rulers, comparatively little of the influence of the Babylonian theologians is to be detected.

Even the description of the moon as the bull of heaven falls within the domain of popular fancy.

It is different in the days after Hammurabi, when political concentration leads to the focussing of intellectual life in the Euphrates Valley, with all the consequences that the establishment of a central priesthood, with growing powers over ever-increasing territory, involves.

It is to be noted, moreover, that the manner in which in the old Babylonian inscriptions _Anu_ is written,[75] indicates that the abstraction involved in the conception of a god of heaven had not yet been reached, though some measure of personification was of course inevitable at a time when animistic notions still held sway.

A direct indication of this personification of heaven without the deification appears in the epithet 'child of Anu,' bestowed upon the goddess Bau.
The reference to the heavens in this connection is an allusion to Bau's position as the patroness of that quarter of Lagash known as the 'brilliant town,'[76] and where Bau's temple stood.