>The betyl housed the deity, which is to say that the deity was present in that particular object in a way that the deity was not present in other objects nearby. Once we recall that the deity could be present in more than one object (or, as I phrase it, the deity could have more than one body), the distinction between the place of a deity’s presence and the deity itself disappears. To be sure, there were differences between the Mesopotamian *tsalmu* and the Northwest Semitic betyls and stelae: The former were given the features of a body (ears, mouth, eyes, nose), whereas the latter were usually abstract and aniconic. (On the tradition of aniconism among Northwest Semites, see Mettinger, No Graven, passim.) Mesopotamians induced divine presence into objects that were thought to resemble the heavenly body of the deity, whereas Northwest Semites often induced divine presence into objects that made no attempt to do so, a situation that may point to different understandings of the divine: Among Northwest Semites, the otherness of the divine may have discouraged attempts at rendering a god in a realistic fashion. In both cases, nevertheless, a relatively small object was believed to become animated by the living presence of a deity, and thus the use of the term “a god’s body” or at least “a discrete part of the god’s body” is justified. (Sommer, *Bodies*, pg. 192, note 126.)