But we must notice that it was only at Ur and Harran that Sin or Nannar was thus elevated to the rank of a supreme Baal. The official theology refused to include him among the three chief gods of the land. He was, in fact, as Professor Hommel has shown, rather the Baal of the Semitics of Arabia and the West than of the Babylonians themselves, and the place occupied by his cult at Ur proves how completely this city lay outside the limits of the true Babylonia, and was peopled by an Arabian population.
The sun-god was born of the moon. The lunar year preceded the solar, and to the primitive Babylonian the moon was a more important agent of culture even than the sun. Moreover, the sun seemed to rise from that world of night over which the moon held sway; the day was begotten by the night, and was accordingly reckoned from evening to evening. It is not until we come to the later age of Babylonian history that we find the old system making way for a new one, in which the day begins at midnight; and the 1st chapter of Genesis, with its "evening and morning," perpetuates the ancient system of Babylonian astronomy.
The sun-god was known under many names, and, like the moon-god, was worshipped in many of the Babylonian cities. But just as in historical times there were two chief seats of the worship of the moon-god,--at Ur in the south, and at Harran in the north,--so too there were two chief seats of the worship of the sun-god, one in Southern and the other in Northern Babylonia. The southern seat was Larsa, the northern Zimbir or Sippara on the borders of Mesopotamia. And as the moon-god of Ur was older than the moon-god of Harran, so there are reasons for thinking that the sun-god of Larsa was older than his rival at Sippara. Babylonian culture moved from south to north.
Both at Larsa and at Sippara the temple of the sun-god was called Ê-Babbara,--Bit-Uri in Semitic,--"the house of light." At Sippara it had been founded or restored by Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon of Akkad, in the early days of Semitic supremacy. The Sumerian Utu had already become the Semitic Samas, and clothed himself in the attributes of a Semitic Bel. And therewith he had necessarily taken to himself a wife. This was Â, who, in becoming the consort of a Semitic Baal, was compelled to change her sex. For the Sumerian  was a male god, a local sun-god, in fact, whom Professor Jastrow suggests may originally have been the sun-god of one of the separate villages out of the amalgamation of which the city of Sippara arose.(247) Sumerian grammar, however, did not recognise gender; so far as outward form was concerned, the same word, as in English, might be indifferently masculine or feminine, and there was therefore nothing in the name of  itself which would forbid the foreigner from dealing with it as he would. Samas of Sippara needed a wife, and Â, despite her male origin, was accordingly given to him. But the gift was fatal to  herself. She lost her individuality, and became the mere double of her husband. Samas absorbed her attributes and worship, and gradually she sinks out of sight, or survives only in the works of theological antiquarians or in the literature of the past.(248)