ABSTRACT
The people did not regard their city god as just a celestial bureaucrat, or as the symbol of loyalty and justice or some other abstraction. They had established a personal relationship with him. They knew his name, and what he looked like. They could visit his temple when anxious or perplexed, communicate directly with him through prayers both spoken and written, and receive his responses as they cast divining blocks. The people knew both from the murals in the temple and from stories that were familiar to everyone the feats performed by the god when he was still a man, and the miracles he had wrought after he became a god. Just as their city was unique, so their city god was (in most cases) unique, theirs alone. He was not just a stern judge, the scourge of evil-doers: he was also (they never ceased to hope) a savior, who could rescue them from famine, epidemic, warfare, and demons of all kinds. He would help them in their distress because it was his nature to do so, not because they had paid their taxes and rents promptly, and “understood the proper behavior of subject to sovereign.”
