These thinkers were trying to really understand how their world worked.

And I think that the idea of there possibly being a category of divine,

which is larger than each individual god, was quite exciting to them.

Hello, I'm Neil McGregor.

And in this series of podcasts, I'm looking at objects to see how shared beliefs have helped shape societies.

This is the BBC.

On a small clay tablet that sits comfortably in the palm of a hand, something quite remarkable is taking place.

Ninurta is Marduk of the plough.

Sin is Marjuk as illuminator of the night.

This little lump of earth,

baked dry in the Babylonian sun over 2,500 years ago,

is a kind of thought experiment,

and it has a terrific immediacy in tightly packed

lines of tiny script scratched with a reed pen into the wet clay you can watch a babylonian priest or

scholar of the time of nebuchadnezzar about 580 bcee jotting down an idea, as it were, on a post-it note.

And it's a big idea.

He's wondering whether the many and mighty gods of Mesopotamia,

whose names are written on the tablet,

and who each, like cabinet ministers, had their own portfolios,

agriculture, weather, war,

might in fact not be separate gods, but all merely aspects of one god,

Marduk, the patron deity of Babylon. Shammash is Marduk of justice. Adad is Marduk of rain.

...