CHAPTER VII.
SUMMARY.
We have thus passed in review the old Babylonian pantheon, so far as the discovered texts have revealed their names and epithets.

The list does not claim to be exhaustive.

That future texts will add to its length, by revealing the existence at this early period of many known to us at present only from later texts or from the religious literature,[115] is more than likely.

The nature of the old Babylonian religion entails, as a necessary consequence, an array of gods that might be termed endless.
Local cults would ever tend to increase with the rise of new towns, and while the deities thus worshipped would not rise to any or much importance, still their names would become known in larger circles, and a ruler might, for the sake of increasing his own lustre, make mention of one or more of them, honoring them at the same time by an epithet which might or might not accurately define their character.

As long as the various districts of Babylonia were not formally united under one head, various local cults might rise to equally large proportions, while the gods worshipped as the special patrons of the great centers, as Lagash, Ur, Uruk, Nippur, and the like, would retain their prominence, even though the political status of the cities sacred to them suffered a decline.