Scientists from the University of Wroclaw in Poland have announced that they have identified a mysterious god mentioned in inscriptions from the ancient city of Palmyra, located in what is now Syria.. This deity is mentioned in numerous Aramaic records as "

Palmyra has existed for thousands of years. Two thousand years ago, it played an important role as a trading city connecting the Roman Empire with Asian routes such as the Silk Road..

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In order to find out who this ancient deity was, the researchers compared the inscriptions from Palmyra with those that were found throughout Mesopotamia and date back to the first millennium BC.. It turned out that the gods worshiped in Mesopotamia were called the same names as an unknown deity from Palmyra.

For example, Bel-Marduk - the supreme god of Babylon - was also called " The phrase 'master of the world', a title similar to 'master of the universe', was sometimes used to refer to Baalshamin, god of the sky..

Also, when people wrote invocations for divine intervention, they were not always referring to a specific god, but rather to any deity who might listen to their prayers..

“There was not a single anonymous god, every god who listened to requests and showed favor to requests deserved eternal praise,” said study author Alexandra Kubiak-Schneider..

Scientists who did not take part in the study were wary of Kubiak-Schneider's findings.. They noted that the scientific community will consider the proposed hypothesis and each researcher will decide for himself whether to support it.. Other scholars have stated that the impersonal address can indeed be addressed to several deities.. At the same time, they drew attention to the fact that the texts from Mesopotamia, which Kubiak-Schneider studied, were written a thousand years before the texts from Palmyra..