+649+. A similar religious constitution obtained among the old Semitic peoples. This is obvious in the case of the Canaanites (including the Phoenicians), where every clan or community had its divine lord (the Baal), who was a universal deity sufficient for all the needs of the living, though particularly connected with the dominant interests of his people.[1090] Such, probably, was the original form of the Hebrew Yahweh (Jehovah); in his Sinaitic home he was naturally connected with the phenomena of desert and mountain, and in Canaan, whither the Israelites brought his cult, he was after a while recognized as the giver of crops also, and gradually became a universal god in the larger sense of the term.[1091] The Phoenician Baals--such as the Tyrian Melkart, 'the king of the city'--are obviously local deities.[1092] The same thing is true of the various gods that appear in pre-Mohammedan Arabia; the deity of any particular clan or tribe was known to the people as "the god" (Arabic _Allah_, that is, _al-Ilahu_), and the title "Allah," adopted by Mohammed as the name of the supreme and only god, thus in so far fitted in with the usage of the people.[1093]
+650+. In Babylonia also a very large part of the divine names found in the inscriptions must be understood to refer ultimately to local deities, each supreme in his own territory; the later theologians (probably priests) endeavored to organize these into a sort of pantheon, but never succeeded in differentiating the various deities distinctly. In general it may be said that all these old Semitic gods had one and the same character; each in his place was supreme, and it is difficult to find any difference in real character and function among the great gods, as Ea, Bel, Marduk, Sin, Shamash, Ishtar, Nabu, Ashur, Eshmun, and others.[1094]
+651+. The same remark will probably hold good of the popular worship of the old Greeks. When Pausanias traveled through Greece he found everywhere local cults which bore evidence of primitiveness, and obviously pertained to the clan gods of the various regions. In many cases these had been identified with old animal-gods or had been interwoven into the general later scheme and had been merged with the great gods of the developed pantheon.[1095] The functions ascribed to various deities in the Veda suggest a similar origin for them. When we find that many of them are credited with the same larger or smaller acts of creation, protection, or blessing, we may suspect that they were originally clan gods that have been incorporated in the great theologic system, and that "henotheism" is mainly a survival from this earlier scheme or an extension of it.[1096] Similar local gods appear in Peru[1097] and Mexico.[1098]