The hymn may be older than Hammurabi, who, perhaps, is quoting or copying it, and since the Bel who is here at the head of the pantheon is the god of Nippur, the hymn may originally have belonged to the ritual of that place.

For Hammurabi the highest 'Bel,' or lord, is Marduk, and there is hardly room for doubt that in using this hymn as a means of passing on to singing his own praises, with which the inscription in question ends, Hammurabi has in mind the patron god of Babylon when speaking of Bel.[150] It is this amalgamation of the old Bel with Marduk that marks, as we have seen, the transition to the use of Bel's name as a mere title of Marduk.

Elsewhere, however, Hammurabi uses Bel to designate the old god.

So when he calls himself the proclaimer of Anu and Bel[151] the association with Anu makes it impossible that Marduk should be meant.

At times he appears to refer in the same inscription, now to the old Bel and again to Bel-Marduk, under the same designation.