Assyria, Its Princes, Priests and People

The Country and People

Assyria was the name given to the district which had been called 'the land of Assur' by its own inhabitants. Assur, however, had originally been the name, not of a country, but of a city founded in remote times on the western bank of the Tigris, midway between the Greater and the Lesser Zab. It was the primitive capital of the district in which it stood, and to which, accordingly, it lent its name. It seems to have been built by a people who spoke an agglutinative language, like the languages of the modern Fins and Turks, and who were afterwards supplanted by the Semitic Assyrians. The name in their language probably signified 'water-boundary.' When the country was occupied by the Semitic Assyrians the name was slightly changed, so as to assume the form of a word which in Assyrian meant 'gracious.'

It so happened that Assyrian mythology knew of a deity who represented the firmament, and was addressed as Sar. The name of Sar came in time to be confused with that of Assur, the divine patron of the Assyrian capital, the result being that Assur signified not only a city and country, but also the supreme deity worshipped by their inhabitants. Assur, in fact, became the divine impersonation of the power and constitution of Assyria; at the same time he was also 'the gracious' god and the prim?val firmament of heaven.

Assur, whose ruins are now called Kalah Sherghat, did not always remain the capital of Assyria. Its place was taken by a group of cities some 60 miles to the north, above the Greater Zab, and on the eastern side of the Tigris, namely, Nineveh, Calah, and Dur-Sargon. The foundation of Nineveh, the modern Kouyunjik, probably goes back to as early an age as that of Assur, but it was not until a much later period that it became an important city, and supplanted the older capital of the kingdom. Calah, now called Nimr?d, though built some four centuries before, was not made the seat of royalty until the reigns of Assur-natsir-pal and Shalmaneser II, in the 9th century b.c., and Dur-Sargon (the modern Khorsabad), as its name implies, was the creation of Sargon. Instead of Dur-Sargon the Book of Genesis (x. 11) mentions Resen 'between Nineveh and Calah.' The site of Resen has not been identified, though its name has been met with in the Assyrian inscriptions under the form of Res-eni, 'the head of the spring.'

The passage of Genesis in which Resen is referred to unfortunately admits of a double translation. If we adopt the rendering of the margin, and translate 'out of that land he went forth into Assyria and builded Nineveh,' we might infer that Nineveh and its neighbouring towns had no existence before the days when Babylonian emigrants settled in the territory of the city of Assur, and superseded its older inhabitants. However this may be, we know from the cuneiform monuments that the rise of Assyria did not take place until the Babylonian monarchy was already growing old. The country afterwards known as Assyria had been comprised in Gutium or Kurdistan, a name which has been identified, with great probability, by Sir H. Rawlinson, with the Goyyim or 'nations' of Genesis xiv. over which Tidal was king. There seems to have been a time when the rulers of Assur were mere governors appointed by the Babylonian monarchs; at all events, the earliest of whom we know do not give themselves the title of king, but use a word which signifies 'viceroy' in the Chaldean inscriptions.

These viceroys, however, managed eventually to shake off the yoke of their Babylonian masters, and one of them, Bel-kapkapi by name, established an independent kingdom at Assur in the 17th or 16th century before our era. His kingdom extended on both sides of the Tigris, and doubtless included the country north of the Greater Zab, where Nineveh was situated. The exact frontiers of Assyria, however, were never accurately fixed. They varied with the military power and conquests of its monarchs. Sometimes portions of the plateau of Mesopotamia on the west were comprehended within it, as well as the country through which the Tigris flowed, as far south as the borders of Babylonia, and as far north as the Kurdish mountains. At other times Assyria was confined to the narrow space within which its great cities stood.

The inhabitants of Assyria belonged to the Semitic stock, that is to say, they were allied in blood and language to the Hebrews, the Aram?ans, and the Arabs. The older population had been either expelled or destroyed. The Assyrians thus differed from the Babylonians, who were a mixed race, partly Semitic and partly non-Semitic. The non-Semitic element is generally termed Accadian; it spoke agglutinative dialects, and was the original possessor of the plain of Chald?a. The Accadians invented the cuneiform system of writing, founded the chief cities and civilisation of Babylonia, and erected the earliest Babylonian monuments with which we are acquainted. It was only gradually that they yielded to the advance of the Semites; in fact, the final triumph of the Semites in Babylonia was only effected by their amalgamation with the old population of the country, and their complete acceptance of Accadian culture. The Accadian language lingered long, and when it died out was preserved as a learned language, like Latin in our own day, which every educated Babylonian was expected to know.

It was natural, therefore, that the pure-blooded Semites of Assyria and the mixed population of Babylonia should differ from one another in many respects. The Babylonians were agriculturists, fond of literature and peaceful pursuits. The Assyrians, on the contrary, have been appropriately termed the Romans of the East: they were a military people, caring for little else save war and trade. Their literature, like their culture and art, was borrowed from Babylonia, and they never took kindly to it. Even under the magnificent patronage of Assur-bani-pal, Assyrian literature was an exotic. It was cultivated only by the few; whereas in Babylonia the greater part of the population seems to have been able to read and write. If the Assyrian was less luxurious than his Babylonian neighbour, he was also less humane. Indeed, the Assyrian annals glory in the record of a ferocity at which we stand aghast. On the other hand, the Assyrian was not so superstitious as the Babylonian, though he ascribed his successes to the favour of Assur, and impaled the inhabitants of conquered towns or burnt them alive because they did not believe in his national deity. He was, as Nahum declared, the lion which 'did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin.'

Assyria was so wholly a military power, that the destruction of Nineveh not only destroyed the Assyrian Empire but blotted out the Assyrian nation itself. When 'the gates of the rivers' of Nineveh-the Tigris and Khusur-were opened, and 'the palace dissolved,' Assyria ceased to exist. In the Sassanian period the mounds which covered the ruins of the old city were for a short time occupied by the houses of a village, but these, too, disappeared after a while, and the very site of Nineveh remained for centuries unknown. Rich, in 1818, conjectured that the mounds of Kouyunjik, opposite the modern town of Mosul, concealed its ruins beneath them, but it was not until the excavations of the Frenchman Botta, in 1842, and the Englishman Layard, in 1845, that the remains first of Dur-Sargon, and then of Nineveh itself, were revealed to the eyes of a wondering world. The capital of the Assyrian Empire was recovered, and with it the sculptured monuments of its kings, and the relics of its clay-inscribed library. The discovery came at an opportune moment. The cuneiform inscriptions of Persia had at last yielded up their secrets to the patient sagacity of European scholars, and had furnished the key to other inscriptions,-also in cuneiform characters, but of a wholly different kind, and expressing a wholly different language-which now proved to be the long-lost records of the Assyrian people. Little by little the records were deciphered; fresh expeditions to the buried cities of Assyria and Babylonia returned to Europe with fresh spoils, and it is now possible to describe the history and even the daily life and thoughts of a people who but half a century ago were but a mere name. The following pages are intended to give a picture of that history and life.

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Assyrian History

Assyrian history, as we have seen, begins with the patesis or viceroys of the city of Assur. We know little about them except their names; contemporaneous annals do not commence until Assyria has ceased to be the dependency of a foreign power, and has become an independent kingdom. It was in the 17th or 16th century before the Christian era that Bel-kapkapi first gave himself the title of king. For two or three centuries afterwards our chief information about the monarchy he founded is derived from the relations, sometimes hostile and sometimes peaceable, which his successors had with Babylonia. One of them, however, Rimmon-nirari I by name (about b.c. 1320), has left us an inscription in which he recounts the wars he waged against the Babylonians, the Kurds, the Aram?ans, and the Shuites, nomad tribes who extended along the western bank of the Euphrates. It was his son, Shalmaneser I, to whom the foundation of Calah is ascribed. For six generations his descendants followed one another on the throne; then came Tiglath-Pileser I, who may be regarded as the founder of the first Assyrian Empire. He carried his arms as far as Cilicia and Malatiyeh on the west, and the wild tribes of Kurdistan on the east; he overthrew the Moschi or Meshech, defeated the Hittites and their Colchian allies, and erected a memorial of his conquests at the sources of the Tigris. The Hittite city of Pethor, at the junction of the Euphrates and Sajur, was garrisoned with Assyrian soldiers, and at Arvad the Assyrian monarch symbolised his subjection of the Mediterranean by embarking in a ship and killing a dolphin in the sea. In Nineveh he established a botanical garden, which he filled with the strange trees he had brought back with him from his campaigns. In b.c. 1130 he marched into Babylonia, and, after a momentary repulse at the hands of the Babylonian king, defeated his antagonists on the banks of the Lower Zab. Babylonia was ravaged, and Babylon itself was captured.

With the death of Tiglath-Pileser I, Assyrian history becomes for awhile obscure. The sceptre fell into feeble hands, and the distant conquests of the empire were lost. It was during this period of abeyance that the kingdom of David and Solomon arose in the west. The Assyrian power did not revive until the reign of Assur-dan II, whose son, Rimmon-nirari II (b.c. 911-889), and great-grandson, Assur-natsir-pal ( b.c. 883-858), led their desolating armies through Western Asia, and made the name of Assyria once more terrible to the nations around them. Assur-natsir-pal was at once one of the most ferocious and most energetic of the Assyrian kings. His track was marked by impalements, by pyramids of human heads, and by other barbarities too horrible to be described. But his campaigns reached further than those of Tiglath-Pileser had done. Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Kurdistan, were overrun again and again; the Babylonians were forced to sue for peace; Sangara, the Hittite king of Carchemish, paid tribute, and the rich cities of Ph?nicia poured their offerings into the treasury of Nineveh. The armies of Assyria penetrated even to Nizir, where the ark of the Chald?an Noah was believed to have rested on the peak of Rowandiz. In Assyria itself the cities were embellished with the spoils of foreign conquest; splendid palaces were erected, and Calah, which had fallen into decay, was restored. A library was erected there, and it became the favourite residence of Assur-natsir-pal.

He was succeeded by his son Shalmaneser II, so named, perhaps, after the original founder of Calah. Shalmaneser's military successes exceeded even those of his father, and his long reign of thirty-five years marks the climax of the first Assyrian Empire. His annals are chiefly to be found engraved on three monuments now in the British Museum. One of these is a monolith from Kurkh, a place about twenty miles from Diarbekr. The full-length figure of Shalmaneser is sculptured upon it, and the surface of the stone is covered with the inscription. Another monument is a small 'obelisk' of polished black stone, the upper part of which is shaped like three ascending steps. Inscriptions run round its four sides, as well as small bas-reliefs representing the tribute offered to 'the great king' by foreign states. Among the tribute-bearers are the Israelitish subjects of 'Jehu, son of Omri.' The third monument is one which was discovered in 1878 at Balawat, about nine miles from Nimr?d or Calah. It consists of the bronze framework of two colossal doors, of rectangular shape, twenty-two feet high and twenty-six feet broad. The doors opened into a temple, and were made of wood, to which the bronze was fastened by means of nails. The bronze was cut into bands, which ran in a horizontal direction across the doors, and were each divided into two lines of embossed reliefs. These reliefs were hammered out, and not cast, and the rudeness of their execution proves that they were the work of native artists, and not of the Ph?nician settlers in Nineveh, of whose skill in such work we have several specimens. Short texts are added to explain the reliefs, so that the various campaigns and cities represented in them can all be identified. Among the cities is the Hittite capital Carchemish, and the warriors of Armenia are depicted in a costume strikingly similar to that of the ancient Greeks.

Shalmaneser's first campaign was against the restless tribes of Kurdistan. He then turned northward, and fell upon the Armenian king of Van and the Manna or Minni (see Jer. li. 27), who inhabited the country between the mountains of Kot?r and Lake Urumiyeh. The Hittites of Carchemish, with their allies from Cilicia and other neighbouring districts, were next compelled to sue for peace, and the acquisition of Pethor, which had been lost after Tiglath-Pileser's death, again gave the Assyrians the command of the ford over the Euphrates. The result of this was, that in b.c. 854 Shalmaneser came into conflict with the kingdom of Hamath. The common danger had roused Hadadezer of Damascus, called Benhaded II in the Bible, to make common cause with Hamath, and a confederacy was formed to resist the Assyrian advance. Among the confederates 'Ahab of Israel' is mentioned as furnishing the allies with 2,000 chariots and 10,000 infantry. But the confederacy was shattered at Karkar or Aroer, although Shalmaneser had himself suffered too severely to be able to follow up his victory. For a time, therefore, Syria remained unmolested, and the Assyrian king turned his attention to Babylonia, which he reduced to a state of vassalage, under the pretext of assisting the Babylonian sovereign against his rebel brother.

Twelve years, however, after the battle of Karkar, Shalmaneser was once more in the west. Hadadezer had been succeeded by Hazael on the throne of Damascus, and it was against him that the full flood of Assyrian power was turned. For some time he managed to stem it, but in b.c. 841 he suffered a crushing defeat on the heights of Shenir (see Deut. iii. 9), and his camp, along with 1,121 chariots and 470 carriages, fell into the hands of the Assyrians, who proceeded to besiege him in his capital, Damascus. The siege, however, was soon raised, and Shalmaneser contented himself with ravaging the Hauran and marching to Beyrout, where his image was carved on the rocky promontory of Baal-rosh, at the mouth of the Nahr el-Kelb. It was while he was in this neighbourhood that the ambassadors of Jehu arrived with offers of tribute and submission. The tribute, we are told, consisted of 'silver, gold, a golden bowl, vessels of gold, goblets of gold, pitchers of gold, a sceptre for the king's hand and spear-handles,' and Jehu is erroneously entitled 'the son of Omri.'

After the defeat of Hazael Shalmaneser's expeditions were only to distant regions like Ph?nicia, Kappadokia, and Armenia, for the sake of exacting tribute. No further attempt was made at permanent conquest, and after b.c. 834 the old king ceased to lead his armies in person, the tartan or commander-in-chief taking his place. Not long afterwards a revolt broke out headed by his eldest son, who seems to have thought that he would have little difficulty in wresting the sceptre from the hands of the enfeebled king. Twenty-seven cities, including Nineveh and Assur, joined the revolt, which was, however, finally put down by the energy and military capacity of Shalmaneser's second son Samas-Rimmon, who succeeded him soon afterwards (b.c. 823-810). On his death he was followed by his son Rimmon-nirari III (810-781), who compelled Mariha of Damascus to pay him tribute, as well as the Ph?nicians, Israelites, Edomites, and Philistines. But the vigour of the dynasty was beginning to fail. A few short reigns followed that of Rimmon-nirari, during which the first Assyrian Empire melted away. A formidable power arose in Armenia, the Assyrian armies were driven to the frontiers of their own country, and disaffection began to prevail in Assyria itself. At length, on the 15th of June, b.c. 763, an eclipse of the sun took place, and the city of Assur rose in revolt. The revolt lasted three years, and before it could be crushed the outlying provinces were lost. When Assur-nirari, the last of his line, ascended the throne in b.c. 753, the empire was already gone, and the Assyrian cities themselves were surging with discontent. Ten years later the final blow was struck; the army declared itself against their monarch, and he and his dynasty fell together. On the 30th of Iyyar of the year b.c. 745, a military adventurer, Pul, seized the vacant crown, and assumed the venerable name of Tiglath-Pileser.

If we may believe Greek tradition, Tiglath-Pileser II began life as a gardener. Whatever might have been his origin, however, he proved to be a capable ruler, a good general, and a far-sighted administrator. He was the founder of the second Assyrian Empire, which differed essentially from the first. The first empire was at best a loosely-connected military organization; campaigns were made into distant countries for the sake of plunder and tribute, but little effort was made to retain the districts that had been conquered. Almost as soon as the Assyrian armies were out of sight, the conquered nations shook off the Assyrian yoke, and it was only in regions bordering on Assyria that garrisons were left by the Assyrian king. And whenever the Assyrian throne was occupied by a weak or unwarlike prince, even these were soon destroyed or forced to retreat homewards. Tiglath-Pileser II, however, consolidated and organised the conquests he made; turbulent populations were deported from their old homes, and the empire was divided into satrapies or provinces, each of which paid a fixed annual tribute to the imperial exchequer. For the first time in history the principle of centralisation was carried out on a large scale, and a bureaucracy began to take the place of the old feudal nobility of Assyria. But the second Assyrian Empire was not only an organised and bureaucratic one, it was also commercial. In carrying out his schemes of conquest Tiglath-Pileser II was influenced by considerations of trade. His chief object was to divert the commerce of Western Asia into Assyrian hands. For this purpose every effort was made to unite Babylonia with Assyria, to overthrow the Hittites of Carchemish, who held the trade of Asia Minor, as well as the high road to the west, and to render Syria and the Ph?nician cities tributary. The policy inaugurated by Tiglath-Pileser was successfully followed up by his successors.

Babylonia was the first to feel the results of the change of dynasty at Nineveh. The northern part of it was annexed to Assyria, and secured by a chain of fortresses. Tiglath-Pileser now attacked the Kurdish tribes, who were constantly harassing the eastern frontier of the kingdom, and chastised them severely, the Assyrian army forcing its way through the fastnesses of the Kurdish mountains into the very heart of Media. But Ararat, or Armenia, was still a dangerous neighbour, and accordingly Tiglath-Pileser's next campaign was against a confederacy of the nations of the north headed by Sarduris of Van. The confederacy was utterly defeated in Kommagênê, 72,950 prisoners falling into the hands of the Assyrians, and the way was opened into Syria. In b.c. 742 the siege of Arpad (now Tel Erfad) began, and lasted two years. Its fall brought with it the submission of Northern Syria, and it was next the turn of Hamath to be attacked. Hamath was in alliance with Uzziah of Judah, and its king Eniel may have been of Jewish extraction. But the alliance availed nothing. Hamath was taken by storm, part of its population transported to Armenia, and their places taken by colonists from distant provinces of the empire, while nineteen of the districts belonging to it were annexed to Assyria. The kings of Syria now flocked to render homage and offer tribute to the Assyrian conqueror. Among them we read the names of Menahem of Samaria, Rezon of Syria, Hiram of Tyre, and Pisiris of Carchemish. This was the occasion when, as we learn from 2 Kings xv. 19, Menahem gave a thousand talents of silver to the Assyrian king Pul, the name under which Tiglath-Pileser continued to be known in Babylonia, and, as the Old Testament informs us, in Palestine also.

Three years later Ararat was again invaded. Van, the capital, was blockaded, and though it successfully resisted the Assyrians, the country was devastated far and near for a space of 450 miles. It was long before the Armenians recovered from the blow, and for the next century they ceased to be formidable to Assyria. Tiglath-Pileser's northern frontier was now secure, and he therefore gladly seized the opportunity of interfering in the affairs of the west which was offered him by Ahaz, the Jewish king. Ahaz, whom the Assyrian inscriptions call Jehoahaz, had been hard pressed by Rezon of Damascus and Pekah of Israel, who had combined to overthrow the Davidic dynasty and place a vassal prince, 'the son of Tabeal,' on the throne of Jerusalem. Ahaz in his extremity called in the aid of Tiglath-Pileser, offering him a heavy bribe and acknowledging his supremacy. Tiglath-Pileser accordingly marched into Syria; Rezon was utterly defeated in battle and then besieged in Damascus, to which he had escaped. Damascus was closely invested; the trees in its neighbourhood were cut down; the districts dependent on it were ravaged, and forces were despatched to punish the Israelites, Ammonites, Moabites, and Philistines, who had been the allies of Rezon, Gilead and Abel-beth-maachah being burnt, and the tribes beyond the Jordan carried into captivity. The Philistine cities were compelled to open their gates; the king of Ashkelon committed suicide in order not to fall into the hands of the enemy, and Khanun of Gaza fled to Egypt. At last in b.c. 732, after a siege of two years, Damascus was forced by famine to surrender. Rezon was slain, Damascus given over to plunder and ruin, and its inhabitants transported to Kir. Syria became an Assyrian province, and all its princes were summoned to do homage to the conqueror, while Tyre was fined 150 talents of gold, or about ￡400,000. Among the princes who attended the levée or 'durbar' was Ahaz, and it was while he was attending it that he saw the altar of which he sent a pattern to Urijah the priest (2 Kings xvi. 10).

All that now remained for Tiglath-Pileser to do was to reduce Babylonia as he had reduced Syria. In b.c. 731, accordingly, he marched again into Chald?a. Ukin-ziru, the Babylonian king, was slain, Babylon and other great cities were taken, and in b.c. 729, under his original name of Pul, Tiglath-Pileser assumed the title of 'king of Sumer (Shinar) and Accad.'

He lived only two years after this, and died in b.c. 727, when the crown was seized by Elul?os of Tinu, who took the name of Shalmaneser IV. Shalmaneser's short reign was signalised by an unsuccessful attempt to capture Tyre, and by the beginning of a war against the kingdom of Israel. But the siege of Samaria was hardly commenced when Shalmaneser died, or was murdered, in b.c. 722, and was succeeded by another usurper who assumed the name of Sargon, one of the most famous of the early Babylonian kings. Sargon in his inscriptions claims royal descent, but the claim was probably without foundation. He proved to be an able general, though his inscriptions show that he continued to the last to be a rough but energetic soldier who had perhaps risen from the ranks.

Two years after his accession (b.c. 720) Samaria was taken and placed under an Assyrian governor, 27,280 of its leading inhabitants being carried captive to Gozan and Media. But Sargon soon found that the task of cementing and completing the empire founded by Tiglath-Pileser was by no means an easy one. Babylonia had broken away from Assyria on the news of Shalmaneser's death, and had submitted itself to Merodach-Baladan the hereditary chieftain of Beth-Yagina in the marshes on the coast of the Persian Gulf. The southern portion of Sargon's dominions was threatened by the ancient and powerful kingdom of Elam; the Kurdish tribes on the east renewed their depredations; while the Hittite kingdom of Carchemish still remained unsubdued, and the Syrian conquests could with difficulty be retained. In fact, a new enemy appeared in this part of the empire in the shape of Egypt.

Sargon's first act, therefore, was to drive the Elamites back to their own country with considerable loss. He was then recalled to the west by the revolt of Hamath, where Yahu-bihdi, or Ilu-bihdi, whose name perhaps indicates his Jewish parentage, had proclaimed himself king, and persuaded Arpad, Damascus, Samaria, and other cities to follow his standard. But the revolt was of short duration. Hamath was burnt, 4,300 Assyrians being sent to occupy its ruins, and Yahu-bihdi was flayed alive. Sargon next marched along the sea-coast to the cities of the Philistines. There the Egyptian army was routed at Raphia, and its ally, Khanun of Gaza, taken captive.

In b.c. 717 all was ready for dealing the final blow at the Hittite power in Northern Syria. The rich trading city of Carchemish was stormed, its last king, Pisiris, fell into the hands of the Assyrians, and his Moschian allies were forced to retreat to the north. The plunder of Carchemish brought eleven talents and thirty manehs of gold and 2,100 talents of silver into the treasury of Calah. It was henceforth placed under an Assyrian satrap, who thus held in his hands the key of the high road and the caravan trade between Eastern and Western Asia.

But Sargon was not allowed to retain possession of Carchemish without a struggle. Its Hittite inhabitants found avengers in the allied populations of the north, in Meshech and Tubal, in Ararat and Minni. The struggle lasted for six years, but in the end Sargon prevailed. Van submitted, its king Ursa, the leader of the coalition against Assyria, committed suicide, Cilicia and the Tibareni or Tubal were placed under an Assyrian governor, and the city of Malatiyeh was razed to the ground. In b.c. 711, Sargon was at length free to turn his attention to the west. Here affairs wore a threatening aspect. Merodach-Baladan, foreseeing that his own turn would come as soon as Sargon had firmly established his power in Northern Syria, had despatched ambassadors to the Mediterranean states, urging them to combine with him against the common foe. We read in the Bible of the arrival of the Babylonian embassy in Jerusalem, and of the rebuke received by Hezekiah for his vainglory in displaying to the strangers the resources of his kingdom. In spite of Isaiah's warning, Hezekiah listened to the persuasions of the Babylonian envoys, and encouraged by the promise of Egyptian support along with Ph?nicia, Moab, Edom, and the Philistines, determined to defy the Assyrian king.

But before the confederates were ready to act in concert Sargon descended upon Palestine. Ph?nicia and Judah were overrun, Jerusalem was captured, and Ashdod burnt, while the Egyptians made no attempt to help their friends. This siege of Ashdod is the only occasion on which the name of Sargon occurs in the Bible (Isaiah xx. 1). As soon as all source of danger was removed in the west Sargon hurled his forces against Babylonia. Merodach-Baladan had made every preparation to meet the coming attack, and the Elamite king had engaged to help him. But the Elamites were again compelled to fly before the warriors of Assyria, and Sargon entered Babylon in triumph (b.c. 710). The following year he pursued Merodach-Baladan to his ancestral stronghold in the marshes; Beth-Yagina was taken by storm, and its unfortunate defenders were sent in chains to Nineveh. Sargon was now at the height of his power. His empire was a compact and consolidated whole, reaching from the Mediterranean on the west to the mountains of Elam on the east, and his solemn coronation at Babylon gave a title to his claim to be the legitimate successor of the ancient Sargon of Accad. The old kingdoms of Elam and Egypt alone remained to threaten the newly-founded empire, which received the voluntary homage of the smaller states that lay immediately beyond it. Thus the sacred island of Dilvun in the Persian Gulf submitted itself to the terrible conqueror, and the Ph?nicians of Kition or Chittim in Cyprus erected a monumental record of his supremacy.

Sargon's end was consonant with his whole career. He was murdered by his soldiers in his new city of Dur-Sargon or Khorsabad, on the 12th of Ab or July, b.c. 705, and was succeeded by his son Sennacherib. If we may judge from Sennacherib's name, which means 'the Moon-god has increased the brothers,' he would not have been Sargon's eldest son. In any case he had been brought up in the purple, and displayed none of the rugged virtues of his father. He was weak, boastful, and cruel, and preserved his empire only by the help of the veterans and generals whom Sargon had trained.

Merodach-Baladan had escaped from captivity, and two years after the death of Sargon had once more possessed himself of Babylon. But a battle at Kis drove him from the country nine months subsequently, and Sennacherib was able to turn his attention to affairs in the west. In b.c. 701, he marched into Ph?nicia and Palestine, where Hezekiah of Judah and some of the neighbouring kings had refused their tribute. Tirhakah, the Ethiopian king of Egypt, had promised support to the rebellious states, and Padi, the king of Ekron, who remained faithful to the Assyrians, was carried in chains to Jerusalem. The Assyrian army fell first upon Ph?nicia. Great and Little Sidon, Sarepta, Acre, and other towns, surrendered, Elul?os, the Sidonian monarch, fled to Cyprus, and the kings of Arvad and Gebal offered homage. Metinti of Ashdod, Pedael of Ammon, Chemosh-nadab of Moab, and Melech-ram of Edom, also submitted. Then, says Sennacherib: 'Zedekiah, king of Ashkelon, who had not submitted to my yoke, himself, the gods of the house of his fathers, his wife, his sons, his daughters, and his brothers, the seed of the house of his fathers, I removed, and I sent him to Syria. I set over the men of Ashkelon Sarludari, the son of Rukipti, their former king, and I imposed upon him the payment of tribute, and the homage due to my majesty, and he became a vassal. In the course of my campaign I approached and captured Beth-Dagon, Joppa, Bene-berak, and Azur, the cities of Zedekiah, which did not submit at once to my yoke, and I carried away their spoil. The priests, the chief men, and the common people of Ekron who had thrown into chains their king Padi because he was faithful to his oaths to Assyria, and had given him up to Hezekiah, the Jew, who imprisoned him like an enemy in a dark dungeon, feared in their hearts. The king of Egypt, the bowmen, the chariots, and the horses of the king of Ethiopia, had gathered together innumerable forces, and gone to their assistance. In sight of the town of Eltekeh was their order of battle drawn up; they called their troops (to the battle). Trusting in Assur, my lord, I fought with them and overthrew them. My hands took the captains of the chariots, and the sons of the king of Egypt, as well as the captains of the chariots of the king of Ethiopia, alive in the midst of the battle. I approached and captured the towns of Eltekeh and Timnath, and I carried away their spoil. I marched against the city of Ekron, and put to death the priests and the chief men who had committed the sin (of rebellion), and I hung up their bodies on stakes all round the city. The citizens who had done wrong and wickedness I counted as a spoil; as for the rest of them who had done no sin or crime, in whom no fault was found, I proclaimed a free pardon. I had Padi, their king, brought out from the midst of Jerusalem, and I seated him on the throne of royalty over them, and I laid upon him the tribute due to my majesty. But as for Hezekiah of Judah, who had not submitted to my yoke, forty-six of his strong cities, together with innumerable fortresses and small towns which depended on them, by overthrowing the walls and open attack, by battle engines and battering-rams, I besieged, I captured, I brought out from the midst of them and counted as a spoil 200,150 persons, great and small, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, oxen and sheep without number. Hezekiah himself I shut up like a bird in a cage in Jerusalem, his royal city. I built a line of forts against him, and I kept back his heel from going forth out of the great gate of his city. I cut off his cities that I had spoiled from the midst of his land, and gave them to Metinti, king of Ashdod, Padi, king of Ekron, and Zil-baal, king of Gaza, and I made his country small. In addition to their former tribute and yearly gifts, I added other tribute, and the homage due to my majesty, and I laid it upon them. The fear of the greatness of my majesty overwhelmed him, even Hezekiah, and he sent after me to Nineveh, my royal city, by way of gift and tribute, the Arabs and his body-guard whom he had brought for the defence of Jerusalem, his royal city, and had furnished with pay, along with thirty talents of gold, 800 talents of pure silver, carbuncles and other precious stones, a couch of ivory, thrones of ivory, an elephant's hide, an elephant's tusk, rare woods of various names, a vast treasure, as well as the eunuchs of his palace, dancing-men and dancing-women; and he sent his ambassador to offer homage.'

In this account of his campaign Sennacherib discreetly says nothing about the disaster which befell his army in front of Jerusalem, and which obliged him to return ignominiously to Assyria without attempting to capture Jerusalem, and to deal with Hezekiah as it was his custom to deal with other rebellious kings. The tribute offered by Hezekiah at Lachish, when he vainly tried to buy off the threatened Assyrian attack, is represented as having been the final result of a successful campaign. There is, however, no exaggeration in the amount of silver Sennacherib claims to have received, since 800 talents of silver are equivalent to the 500 talents stated by the Bible to have been given, when reckoned according to the standard of value in use at the time in Nineveh.

Sennacherib never recovered from the blow he had suffered in Judah. He made no more expeditions against Palestine, and during the rest of his reign Judah remained unmolested. Babylonia, moreover, gave him constant trouble. In the year after his campaign in the west (b.c. 700) a Chaldean, named Nergal-yusezib, stirred up a revolt which Sennacherib had some difficulty in suppressing. Two years later he appointed his eldest son, Assur-nadin-sumi, viceroy of Babylon. In b.c. 694, he determined to attack the followers of Merodach-Baladan in their last retreat at the mouth of the Eul?us, where land had been given to them by the Elamite king after their expulsion from Babylonia. Ships were built and manned by Ph?nicians in the Persian Gulf, by means of which the settlements of the Chaldean refugees were burnt and destroyed. Meanwhile, however, Babylonia itself was invaded by the Elamites; the Assyrian viceroy was carried into captivity, and Nergal-yusezib placed on the throne of the country. He defeated the Assyrian forces in a battle near Nipur, but died soon afterwards, and was followed by Musezib-Merodach, who like his predecessor is called Suzub in Sennacherib's inscriptions. He defied the Assyrian power for nearly four years. But in b.c. 690 the combined Babylonian and Elamite army was overthrown in the decisive battle of Khalule, and before another year was past Sennacherib had captured Babylon, and given it up to fire and sword. Its inhabitants were sold into slavery, and the waters of the Araxes canal allowed to flow over its ruins. Sennacherib now assumed the title of king of Babylonia, but with the exception of a campaign into the Cilician mountains he seems to have undertaken no more military expeditions. The latter years of his life were passed in constructing canals and aqueducts, in embanking the Tigris, and in rebuilding the palace of Nineveh on a new and sumptuous scale. On the 20th of Tebet, or December, b.c. 681, he was murdered by his two elder sons, Adrammelech and Nergal-sharezer, who were jealous of the favour shown to their younger brother, Esar-haddon.

Esar-haddon was at the time conducting a campaign against Erimenas, king of Armenia, to whom his insurgent brothers naturally fled. Between seven and eight weeks after the murder of the old king, a battle was fought near Malatiyeh, in Kappadokia, between the veterans of Esar-haddon and the forces under his brothers and Erimenas, which ended in the complete defeat of the latter. Esar-haddon was proclaimed king, and the event proved that a wiser choice could not have been made.

His military genius was of the first order, but it was equalled by his political tact. He was the only king of Assyria who endeavoured to conciliate the nations he had conquered. Under him the fabric of the Second Empire was completed by the conquest of Egypt. In the first year of his reign he rebuilt Babylon, giving it back its captured deities, its plunder, and its people. Henceforth Babylon became the second capital of the empire, the court residing alternately there and at Nineveh. It was while Esar-haddon was holding his winter court at Babylon that Manasseh, of Judah, was brought to him as prisoner. [1]

The trade of Ph?nicia was diverted into Assyrian hands by the destruction of Sidon. The caravan-road from east to west was at the same time rendered secure by an expedition into the heart of Northern Arabia. Here Esar-haddon penetrated as far as the lands of Huz and Buz, 280 miles of the march being through a waterless desert. The feat has never been excelled, and the terror it inspired among the Bedouin tribes was not forgotten for many years. The northern frontiers of the kingdom were also made safe by the defeat of Teispes, the Kimmerian, who was driven westward with his hordes into Asia Minor. In the east the Assyrian monarch was bold enough to occupy and work the copper-mines on the distant borders of Media, the very name of which had scarcely been heard of before. Westward, the kings of Cyprus paid homage to the great conqueror, and among the princes who sent materials for his palace at Nineveh were Cyprian rulers with Greek names.

But the principal achievement of Esar-haddon's reign was his conquest of the ancient monarchy of Egypt. In b.c. 675 the Assyrian army started for the banks of the Nile. Four years later Memphis was taken on the 22nd of Tammuz, or June, and Tirhakah, the Egyptian king, compelled to fly first to Thebes, and then into Ethiopia. Egypt was divided into twenty satrapies, governed partly by Assyrians, partly by native princes, whose conduct was watched by Assyrian garrisons. On his return to Assyria Esar-haddon associated Assur-bani-pal, the eldest of his four sons, in the government on the 12th of Iyyar, or April, b.c. 669, and died two years afterwards (on the 12th of Marchesvan, or October), when again on his way to Egypt. Assur-bani-pal, the Sardanapalos of the Greeks, succeeded to the empire, his brother, Samas-sum-yukin, being entrusted with the government of Babylonia.

Assur-bani-pal is probably the 'great and noble' Asnapper of Ezra iv. 10. He was luxurious, ambitious, and cruel, but a munificent patron of literature. The libraries of Babylonia were ransacked for ancient texts, and scribes were kept busily employed at Nineveh in inscribing new editions of older works. But unlike his fathers, Assur-bani-pal refused to face the hardships of [Pg 49] [Pg 50] [Pg 51] a campaign. His armies were led by generals, who were required to send despatches from time to time to the king. It was evident that a purely military empire, like that of Assyria, could not last long, when its ruler had himself ceased to take an active part in military affairs. At first the veterans of his father preserved and even extended the empire of Assur-bani-pal; but before his death it was shattered irretrievably. It is characteristic of Assur-bani-pal that his lion-hunts were mere battues, in which tame animals were released from cages and lashed to make them run; in curious contrast to the lion-hunts in the open field in which his warlike predecessors had delighted.

Assur-bani-pal and his Queen

(From the original in the British Museum.)

His first occupation was to crush a revolt in Egypt. Tirhakah was once more driven out of the country, and Thebes, called Ni in the Assyrian texts, and No-Amon, or 'No of the god Amun' in Scripture, was plundered and destroyed. Its temples were hewed in pieces, and two of its obelisks, weighing 70 tons in all, were carried as trophies to Nineveh. It is to this destruction of the old capital of the Pharaohs that Nahum refers in his prophecy (iii. 8).

Meanwhile Tyre had been besieged and forced to surrender, and Cilicia had paid homage to the Assyrian king. Gog, or Gyges, of Lydia, too, voluntarily sent him tribute, including two Kimmerian chieftains whom the Lydian sovereign had captured in battle. When the Lydian ambassadors arrived in Nineveh they found no one who could understand their language; in fact, the very name of Lydia had been unknown to the Assyrians before.

The Assyrian Empire had now reached its widest limits. Elam had fallen after a long and arduous struggle. Shushan, its capital, was razed to the ground, and the three last Elamite kings were bound to the yoke of Assur-bani-pal's chariot, and made to drag their conqueror through the streets of Nineveh. The Kedarites and other nomad tribes of Northern Arabia were also chastised, the land of the Minni was overrun, and the Armenians of Van begged for an alliance with the Assyrian king.

But while at the very height of his prosperity, the empire was fast slipping away from under Assur-bani-pal's feet. In b.c. 652 a rebellion broke out headed by his brother, the Babylonian viceroy, which shook it to the foundations. Babylonia, Egypt, Palestine, and Arabia made common cause against the oppressor. Lydia sent Karian and Ionic mercenaries to Psammetikhos of Sais, with whose help he succeeded in overthrowing his brother satraps, and in delivering Egypt from the Assyrian yoke. The revolt in Babylonia took long to quell, and for a time the safety of Assur-bani-pal himself was imperilled. At last in 647 Babylon and Cuthah were reduced by famine, and Samas-sum-yukin burnt himself to death in his palace. Fire and sword were carried through Elam, and the last of its monarchs became an outlawed fugitive.

When Assyria finally emerged from the deadly struggle, Egypt was lost to it for ever, and Babylonia was but half subdued. The latter province was placed under the government of Kandalanu, who ruled over it for twenty-two years, more like an independent sovereign than a viceroy. His successor, Nabopolassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar, threw off all semblance of submission to Nineveh, and prepared the way for the empire of his son. But meanwhile the once proud kingdom of Assyria had been contending for bare existence. Assur-bani-pal's son, Assur-etil-ilani, rebuilt with diminished splendour the palace of Calah, which seems to have been burnt by some victorious enemy; and when the last Assyrian king, Esar-haddon II, called Sarakos by the Greeks, mounted the throne, he found himself surrounded on all sides by threatening foes. Kaztarit or Kyaxares, Mamitarsu the Median, the Kimmerians, the Minni, and the people of Sepharad leagued themselves together against the devoted city of Nineveh. The frontier towns fell first, and though Esar-haddon in his despair proclaimed public fasts and prayers to the gods, nothing could ward off the doom pronounced by God's prophets against Nineveh so long before. Nineveh was besieged, captured, and utterly destroyed; and the second Assyrian Empire perished more hopelessly and completely than the first. All that survived was the old capital of the country, Assur, whose former inhabitants were allowed to return to it by Cyrus at the time when the Jewish exiles also were released from their captivity in Babylon. [2]

* * *

Assyrian Religion

The Assyrians derived the greater part of their deities and religious beliefs, like their literature and culture generally, from Babylonia. The Babylonian gods were the gods of Assyria also. Most of them were of Accadian or pr?-Semitic origin, but the Semitic Babylonians, when they appropriated the civilisation of the Accadians, modified them in accordance with their own conceptions. The Accadians believed that every object and phenomenon of nature had its Zi or 'spirit,' some of them beneficent, others hostile to man, like the objects and phenomena they represented. Naturally, however, there were more malevolent than beneficent spirits in the universe, and there was scarcely an action which did not risk demoniac possession. Diseases were due to the malevolence of these spirits, and could be cured only by the use of certain charms and exorcisms. Exorcisms, in fact, gave those who employed them power over the spirits; they could by means of them compel the evil spirit to retire, and the beneficent spirit to approach. The knowledge of such exorcisms was in the hands of the priests, so that priest and magician were almost synonymous terms.

Among the multitude of spirits feared by the Accadians, there were some which had been raised above the rest into the position of gods. Of these, Anu, 'the sky;' Mul-ge, 'the earth;' and Ea, 'the deep,' were the most conspicuous. At their side stood the 'spirits' of the heavenly bodies-the Moon-god, the Sun-god, the evening star, and the other planets. The Moon-god ranked before the Sun-god, as might indeed have been expected to be the case among a nation of astronomers like the Chaldeans.

When the Semitic Babylonians adopted the deities of their predecessors and teachers, Anu and his compeers lost much of their elemental nature, while the Sun-god Samas came to assume an important place. The religion of the Babylonian Semites, in fact, was essentially solar; the Sun-god was addressed as Bel or Baal, the supreme 'lord,' and adored under various forms. He appeared to them, moreover, under two aspects, sometimes as the kindly deity who gives life and light to all things, sometimes as the scorching sun of summer who demanded the sacrifice of the first-born to appease his wrath. Sometimes, again, he was worshipped as the young and beautiful Tammuz, slain by the boar's tusk of winter; whose death was lamented at the autumnal equinox, and who was invoked as adoni (Adonis) or 'master.'

Unlike the Accadians, who did not distinguish gender, the Semites divided all nouns into masculines and feminines. By the side of the god, consequently, stood the goddess. She was, however, but a pale reflection of her male consort, created, so to speak, by the necessities of grammar. She had no independent attributes of her own; Beltis, or Bilat, the wife of Bel, was nothing more than the feminine complement of the god. The Accadians had known of one great goddess, Istar, the evening star; but Istar was an independent deity, with attributes as strongly and individually marked as those of the gods. Among the Semites, Istar became Ashtoreth, with the feminine suffix th, and though in Babylonia the old legends and traditions prevented her from losing altogether her primitive character, she tended more and more to pass into the mere reflection of some male deity. Just as the gods could be collectively spoken of as Baalim or 'lords,' all being regarded as so many different forms of the Sun-god, the goddesses also were termed Ashtaroth or 'Ashtoreths.'

We see, therefore, that in adopting the pantheon of Accad, the Semites made three important changes. The Sun-god was assigned a leading place in worship and belief; female deities were introduced, who were, however, mere reflections of the gods; while the inferior deities of the Accadians were classed among 'the 300 spirits of heaven' and 'the 600 spirits of earth,' only a few of the more prominent ones retaining their old position. These latter may be grouped as follows:-

At the head of the divine hierarchy still stood the old triad of Anu, Mul-ge, and Ea. Mul-ge's name, however, was changed to Bel, but since Merodach was also known as Bel, he fell more and more into the background, especially after the rise of Babylon, of which city Merodach was the patron deity. At Nipur, now Niffer, alone, he continued to be worshipped down into late times. His consort was Bilat, or Beltis, 'the great lady,' who eventually came to be regarded as the wife of Merodach rather than of 'the other Bel.' Like Anu and Ea, Bel was the offspring of Sar and Kisar, the upper and lower firmaments.

Anu was the visible sky, but he also represented the invisible heaven, which was supposed to extend above the visible one, and to be the abode of the gods. The chief seat of his worship was Erech, where he was regarded as the oldest of the gods, and the original creator of the universe. But elsewhere, also, he was looked upon as the creator of the visible world, and the father of the gods. By his side, in the Semitic period, stood the goddess Anat, whose attributes were derived from his. The worship of Anat spread from Babylonia to the Canaanites, as is shown by the geographical names Beth Anath, 'the temple of Anat' (Josh. xix. 38; xv. 59), and Anathoth, the city of 'the goddesses Anat.' It was even introduced into Egypt after the Asiatic wars of the eighteenth dynasty. In the pr?-Semitic days of Chaldea, a monotheistic school had flourished, which resolved the various deities of the Accadian belief into manifestations of the one supreme god, Anu; and old hymns exist in which reference is made to 'the one god.' But this school never seems to have numbered many adherents, and it eventually died out. Its existence, however, reminds us of the fact that Abraham was born in 'Ur of the Chaldees.'

Ea originally represented the ocean-stream or 'great deep,' which was supposed to surround the earth like a serpent, and by which all rivers and springs were fed. He was symbolised by the snake, and was held to be the creator and benefactor of mankind. One of his most frequent titles is 'lord of wisdom,' and the chief seat of his worship was at Eridu, 'the holy city,' near which was the sacred grove or 'garden,' the centre of the world, where the tree of life and knowledge had its roots. It was Ea who had given to mankind not only life, but all the arts and appliances of culture also, and it was his help that the Babylonian invoked when in trouble. He was emphatically the god of healing, who had revealed medicines to mankind. As god of the great deep, he was often figured as a man with the tail of a fish, and in this form was known to the Greeks under the name of Oannes or 'Ea the fish.' Sometimes the skin of a fish was suspended behind his back. Oannes, it was said, had in early days ascended out of the Persian Gulf, and taught the first inhabitants of Babylonia letters, science, and art, besides writing a history of the origin of mankind and their different ways of life. His wife was Dav-kina, 'the lady of the earth,' who presided over the lower world.

Among the numerous offspring of Ea and Dav-kina, Merodach held the foremost place. He was originally a form of the Sun-god, regarded under his beneficent aspect, and was believed to be ever engaged in combating the powers of evil, and in performing services for mankind. Hence he is addressed as 'the redeemer of mankind,' 'the restorer to life,' and the 'raiser from the dead,' and a considerable number of the religious hymns are dedicated to him. He was believed to be continually passing backwards and forwards between the earth and the heaven where Ea dwelt, informing Ea of the sufferings of men, and returning with Ea's directions how to relieve them. One of the bas-reliefs from Nineveh, now in the British Museum, represents him as pursuing with his curved sword or thunderbolt the demon Tiamat, the personification of chaos and anarchy, who is depicted with claws, tail, and horns. As we have already seen, he was commonly addressed as Bel or 'lord,' and so came gradually to supplant the older Bel or Mul-ge. Among the planets his star was Jupiter. His wife was Zarpanit or Zirat-panitu, in whom some scholars have seen the Succoth-benoth of 2 Kings xvii. 30.

The children of Merodach and Zarpanit were Nebo, 'the prophet,' and his wife Tasmit, 'the hearer.' Nebo was the god of oratory and literature; it was he who 'enlightened the eyes' to understand written characters, while his wife 'enlarged the ears,' so that they could comprehend what was read. The origin of the cuneiform system of writing was ascribed to Nebo. To him was dedicated 'the temple of the Seven Lights of Heaven and Earth,' at Borsippa, the suburb of Babylon, which is now known to the Arabs as the Birs-i-Nimr?d, and his worship was carried as far as Canaan, as we may gather from such names as the city of Nebo, in Jud?a (Ezra ii. 29), and Mount Nebo, in Moab (Deut. xxxii. 49). In Accadian he had been called Dimsar, 'the tablet-writer,' and a temple was erected to him in the island of Bahrein, in the Persian Gulf, where he was worshipped under the name of Enzak. As a planetary deity, he was identified with Mercury. He was often adored under the name of Nusku, although Nusku had originally been a separate divinity, and the same, perhaps, as the Nisroch of the Bible (2 Kings xix. 37).

The companion of Merodach was Rimmon, or rather Ramman, 'the thunderer.' He represented the atmosphere, and was accordingly the god of rain and storm, who was armed with the lightning and the thunderbolt. Sometimes he was dreaded as 'the destroyer of crops,' 'the scatterer of the harvest;' at other times prayers were made to him as 'the lord of fecundity.' His worship extended into Syria, where Rimmon appears to have been the supreme deity of Damascus, and where he was also known under the name of Hadad or Dadda.

Two other elemental gods were Samas, the Sun-god, and Sin, the Moon-god. Samas was the son of Sin, in accordance with the astronomical view of the old Babylonians, which made the moon the measurer of time, and regarded the day as the offspring of night. Samas, however, like Saul or Savul, another deity of whom mention is made in the inscriptions, was really but a form of Merodach, though in historical times the two divinities were separated from one another, and received different cults. Samas, again, was originally identical with Tammuz; but when Tammuz came to denote only the sun of spring and summer, while the myth that associated him with Istar laid firm hold of men's minds, Tammuz assumed separate attributes, and an individual existence apart from Samas.

Sin, the Moon-god, was termed Agu or Acu by the Accadians, and if the name of Mount Sinai was derived from him, as is sometimes supposed, we should have evidence that he was known and worshipped in Northern Arabia. At all events he was one of the deities of Southern Arabia. Sin was the patron-god of the city of Ur, and it was to him that the Assyrian kings traced the formation of their kingdom. One of the most famous of his temples was in the ancient city of Harran, where he was symbolised by an upright cone of stone. As the emblem of the Sun-god was the solar orb, the emblem of Sin was the crescent moon.

According to some of the legends of Babylonia, the daughter of the Moon-god was the goddess Istar. Other legends, however, placed Istar among the older gods, and made her the daughter of Anu, the sky. In either case she was at the outset the goddess of the evening star, and when it was discovered that the evening and morning stars were the same, of the morning star also. As the evening star, she was known as Istar of Erech, as the morning star, she was identified with Anunit or Anat, the goddess of Accad. At times she was also regarded as androgynous, both male and female.

Istar was the chief of the Accadian goddesses, and she retained her rank even among the Semites, who, as we have seen, looked upon the goddess as the mere consort and shadow of the god. But Istar continued to the last a separate and independent divinity. She presided over love and war, as well as over the chase. She was invoked as 'the queen of heaven,' 'the queen of all the gods,' and there was often a tendency to merge in her the other goddesses of the pantheon. Her principal temples were at Erech, Nineveh, and Arbela, but altars were erected to her in almost every place, and she was adored under as many forms and titles as she possessed shrines. Her name and worship spread through the Semitic world, in Southern Arabia, in Syria, in Moab, where she was identified with the Sun-god, Chemosh, and in Canaan, where she was called Ashtoreth, the Astartê of the Greeks. But the Greeks also knew her as Aphroditê, the goddess whom they had borrowed from the Ph?nicians of Canaan, and we may discover her again in the Ephesian Artemis. The rites performed in her temples made Istar or Ashtoreth the darkest blot in Assyrian and Canaanitish religion, and excited the utmost horror and indignation of the prophets of God. When the moon came to be conceived as a female divinity, the pale reflection, as it were, of the sun, Istar, the evening star, became also the goddess of the moon. Hence it is that 'the queen of heaven' (Jer. xliv. 17) passed into Astartê 'with crescent horns.'

One of the most popular of old Babylonian myths told how Istar had wedded the young and beautiful Sun-god, Tammuz, 'the only-begotten,' and had descended into Hades in search of him when he had been slain by the boar's tusk of winter. A portion of a Babylonian poem has been preserved to us, which describes her passage through the seven gates of the underworld, where she left with the warden of each some one of her adornments, until at last she reached the seat of the infernal goddess Allat, stripped and bare. There she remained imprisoned until the gods, wearied of the long absence of the goddess of love, created a hound called 'the renewal of light,' who restored her to the upper world. The myth clearly refers to the waning and waxing of the monthly moon, and must therefore have originated when Istar had already become the goddess of the moon. The myth entered deeply into the religious belief of the worshippers of Istar. The Accadians called the month of August 'the month of the errand of Istar,' while June was termed 'the month of Tammuz' by the Semites. It was then that, as Milton writes, his

'annual wound in Lebanon allured

The Syrian damsels to lament his fate

In amorous ditties all a summer's day;

While smooth Adonis from his native rock

Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood

Of Tammuz yearly wounded.'

But it was not only in Assyria and Ph?nicia that the death of Tammuz was lamented by the women year by year. The infection spread to Judah also, and even in Jerusalem, within the precincts of the temple itself, Ezekiel saw 'women weeping for Tammuz' (Ezek. viii. 14).

Nergal

(From the original in the British Museum.)

There are only two other Assyro-Babylonian deities who need be mentioned, Nergal and Adar. Nergal was the presiding deity of Cuthah and its vast necropolis. [3] He shared with Anu the privilege of superintending the regions of the dead, and he was also a god of hunting and war. His name, like those of Anu, Ea, and Istar, was of Accadian origin. Adar, the son of Beltis, was one of those solar deities who were formed by worshipping the Sun-god under some particular attribute. The reading of his name is, unfortunately, not certain, and Adar is only its most probable pronunciation. If it is correct, Adar will be the deity meant in 2 Kings xvii. 31, where it is stated that the people of Sepharvaim, or the two Sipparas, burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, that is to say, to 'King Adar' and 'King Anu.'

Such were the principal divinities of Babylonia and Assyria. But the Assyrians had another also, whom they exalted above all the rest. This was Assur, the divine impersonation of the state and empire. It was Assur who, according to the Assyrian kings, led them to victory, and the cruelties they practised on the conquered were, they held, judgments exercised against those who would not believe in him. Assur, in the form of an archer, is sometimes represented on the monuments in the midst of the winged solar disk, and above the head of the monarch, whom he protects from his enemies.

The Assyrian, however, was not so pious or superstitious as his Babylonian neighbour. The Babylonian lived in perpetual dread of the evil spirits which thronged about him; almost every moment had its religious ceremony, almost every action its religious complement. Not only had the State ritual to be attended to; the unceasing attacks of the demons could be warded off only by magical incantations and the intervention of the sorcerer-priest. But the Assyrians were too much occupied with wars and fighting to give all this heed to the requirements of religion. It is significant that, whereas in Babylonia we find the remains of scarcely any great buildings except temples, the great buildings of Assyria were the royal palaces. The libraries, which in Babylonia were stored in the temples, were deposited in Assyria in the palace of the king.

Nevertheless, the greater part of the religious system of Babylonia had been transported into Assyria. Along with the Babylonian deities had come the Babylonian scriptures. These were divided into two great collections or volumes. The first, and oldest, was a collection of exorcisms and magical texts, by the use of which, it was believed, the spirits of evil could be driven away, and the spirits of good induced to visit the reciter. When, however, certain independent deities began to emerge from among the multitudinous 'spirits' of the primitive Accadian creed, hymns were composed in their honour, and these hymns were eventually collected together, and, like the Rig-Veda of India, became a second sacred book. After the Accadians had been supplanted by the Semites, the Accadian language, in which the hymns were originally written, was provided with a Semitic translation; but it was still considered necessary to recite the exact words of the original, since the words themselves were sacred, and any mistake in their pronunciation would invalidate the religious service in which they were employed. Some of the incantations embodied in the collection of exorcisms must have been introduced into it subsequently to the compilation of the sacred hymns, since the latter are found inserted in them. From this it would appear that the older collection continued to receive additions for a long while after the younger collection-that of the sacred hymns-had been put together and invested with a sacred character. This could not have been till after the beginning of the Semitic period, since there are a few hymns which do not seem to have had any Accadian originals. If we may compare the two collections with our own religious literature, we may say that the collection of hymns corresponded more to our Bible, that of exorcisms to our Prayer Book.

The Babylonians and Assyrians, however, possessed a liturgy which answered far better to our conception of what a Prayer Book should be. This contained services for particular days and hours, together with rubrics for the direction of the priest. Thus we are told that 'in the month Nisan, on the second day, two hours after nightfall, the priest [of Bel at Babylon] must come and take of the waters of the river, must enter into the presence of Bel, and change his dress; must put on a robe in the presence of Bel, and say this prayer: "O my lord who in his strength has no equal, O my lord, blessed sovereign, lord of the world, speeding the peace of the great gods, the lord who in his might destroys the strong, lord of kings, light of mankind, establisher of trust, O Bel, thy sceptre is Babylon, thy crown is Borsippa, the wide heaven is the dwelling-place of thy liver.... O lord of the world, light of the spirits of heaven, utterer of blessings, who is there whose mouth murmurs not of thy righteousness, or speaks not of thy glory, and celebrates not thy dominion? O lord of the world, who dwellest in the temple of the sun, reject not the hands that are raised to thee; be merciful to thy city Babylon, to Beth-Saggil thy temple incline thy face, grant the prayers of thy people the sons of Babylon."'

Part of the liturgy consisted of prayers addressed to the various deities, and suited to various occasions. Here are examples of them: 'At dawn and in the night prayer should be made to the throne-bearer, and thus should it be said: "O throne-bearer, giver of prosperity, a prayer!" After that, let prayer be made to Nusku, and thus let it be said: "O Nusku, prince and king of the secrets of the great gods, a prayer!" After that, let prayer be made to Adar, and thus let it be said: "O Adar, mighty lord of the deep places of the springs, a prayer!" After that let prayer be made to Gula (Beltis), and thus let it be said: "O Gula, mother, begetter of the black-headed race (of Accadians), a prayer!" After that, let prayer be made to Nin-lil, and thus let it be said: "O Nin-lil, great goddess, wife of the divine prince of sovereignty, a prayer!" After that, let prayer be made to Bel, and thus let it be said: "O lord supreme, establisher of law, a prayer!" The prayer (must be repeated) during the day at dawn, and in the night, with face and mouth uplifted, during the middle watch. Water must be poured out in libation day by day ... at dawn, on the beams of the palace.'

One of the most curious of these petitions is a prayer after a bad dream, of which a fragment only has been found. This reads as follows: 'May the lord set my prayer at rest, (may he remove) my heavy (sin). May the lord (grant) a return of favour. By day direct unto death all that disquiets me. O my goddess, be gracious unto me; when (wilt thou hear) my prayer? May they pardon my sin, my wickedness, (and) my transgression. May the exalted one deliver, may the holy one love. May the seven winds carry away my groaning. May the worm lay it low, may the bird bear it upwards to heaven. May a shoal of fish carry it away; may the river bear it along. May the creeping thing of the field come unto me; may the waters of the river as they flow cleanse me. Enlighten me like a mask of gold. Food and drink before thee perpetually may I get. Heap up the worm, take away his life. The steps of thy altar, thy many ones, may I ascend. With the worm make me pass, and may I be kept with thee. Make me to be fed, and may a favourable dream come. May the dream I dream be favourable; may the dream I dream be fulfilled. May the dream I dream turn to prosperity. May Makhir, the god of dreams, settle upon my head. Let me enter Beth-Saggil, the palace of the gods, the temple of the lord. Give me unto Merodach, the merciful, to prosperity, even unto prospering hands. May thy entering (O Merodach) be exalted, may thy divinity be glorious; may the men of thy city extol thy mighty deeds.'

Along with these prayers, the Assyrians possessed a collection of penitential psalms, which were composed at a very remote period in Southern Babylonia. The most perfect of those of which we have copies is the following:-

My Lord is wroth in his heart: may he be appeased again.

May God be appeased again, for I knew not that I sinned.

May Istar, my mother, be appeased again, for I knew not that I sinned,

God knoweth that I knew not: may he be appeased.

Istar, my mother, knoweth that I knew not: may she be appeased.

May the heart of my God be appeased.

May God and Istar, my mother, be appeased.

May God cease from his anger.

May Istar, my mother, cease from her anger.

The transgression (I committed my God) knew.

[The next few lines are obliterated.]

The transgression (I committed, Istar, my mother, knew)

(My tears) I drink like the waters of the sea.

That which was forbidden by my God I ate without knowing.

That which was forbidden by Istar, my mother, I trampled on without knowing.

O my Lord, my transgression is great, many are my sins.

O my God, my transgression is great, many are my sins.

O Istar, my mother, my transgression is great, many are my sins.

O my God, who knowest that I knew not, my transgression is great, many are my sins.

O Istar, my mother, who knowest that I knew not, my transgression is great, many are my sins.

The transgression that I committed I knew not.

The sin that I sinned I knew not.

The forbidden thing did I eat.

The forbidden thing did I trample on.

My Lord, in the anger of his heart, has punished me.

God, in the strength of his heart, has taken me.

Istar, my mother, has seized upon me, and put me to grief.

God, who knoweth that I knew not, has afflicted me.

Istar, my mother, who knoweth that I knew not, has caused darkness.

I prayed, and none takes my hand.

I wept, and none held my palm.

I cry aloud, but there is none that will hear me.

I am in darkness and hiding, I dare not look up.

To God I refer my distress, I utter my prayer.

The feet of Istar, my mother, I embrace.

To God, who knoweth that I knew not, my prayer I utter.

To Istar, my mother, who knoweth that I knew not, my prayer I address.

[The next four lines are destroyed.]

How long, O God (shall I suffer)?

How long, O Istar, my mother (shall I be afflicted)?

How long, O God, who knoweth that I knew not (shall I feel thy) strength?

How long, O Istar, my mother, who knoweth that I knew not, shall thy heart (be angry)?

Thou writest the number (?) of mankind, and none knoweth it.

Thou callest man by his name, and what does he know?

Whether he shall be afflicted, or whether he shall be prosperous, there is no man that knoweth.

O my God, thou givest not rest to thy servant.

In the waters of the raging flood take his hand.

The sin he has sinned turn into good.

Let the wind carry away the transgression I have committed.

Destroy my manifold wickednesses like a garment.

O my God, seven times seven are my transgressions, my transgressions are (ever) before me.

A rubric is attached to this verse, stating that it is to be repeated ten times, and at the end of the whole psalm is the further rubric: 'For the tearful supplication of the heart let the glorious name of every god be invoked sixty-five times, and then the heart shall have peace.'

Reference is made in the psalm to the eating of forbidden foods, and we have other indications that certain kinds of food, among which swine's flesh may be mentioned, were not allowed to be consumed. On particular days also fasts were observed, and special days of fasting and humiliation were prescribed in times of public calamity. In the calendar of the Egibi banking firm, the 2nd of Tammuz or June is entered as a day of 'weeping.' The institution of the Sabbath, moreover, was known to the Babylonians and Assyrians, though it was confounded with the feast of the new moon, since it was kept, not every seven days, but on the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of the lunar month. On these days, we read in a sort of Saints' calendar for the intercalary Elul: 'Flesh cooked on the fire may not be eaten, the clothing of the body may not be changed, white garments may not be put on, a sacrifice may not be offered, the king may not ride in his chariot, nor speak in public, the augur may not mutter in a secret place, medicine of the body may not be applied, nor may any curse be uttered.' The very name of Sabattu or Sabbath was employed by the Assyrians, and is defined as 'a day of rest for the heart,' while the Accadian equivalent is explained to mean 'a day of completion of labour.'

So far as we are at present acquainted with the peculiarities of the Assyro-Babylonian temple, it offers many points of similarity to the temple of Solomon at Jerusalem. Thus there were an outer and an inner court and a shrine, to which the priests alone had access. In this was an altar approached by steps, as well as an ark or coffer containing two inscribed tablets of stone, such as were discovered by Mr. Rassam in the temple of Balawat. In the outer court was a large basin, filled with water, and called 'a sea,' which was used for ablutions and religious ceremonies. At the entrance stood colossal figures of winged bulls, termed 'cherubs,' which were imagined to prevent the ingress of evil spirits. Similar figures guarded the approach to the royal palace, and possibly to other houses as well. Some of them may now be seen in the British Museum. Within, the temples were filled with images of gods, great and small, which not only represented the deities whose names they bore, but were believed to confer of themselves a special sanctity on the place wherein they were placed. As among the Israelites, offerings were of two kinds, sacrifices and meal offerings. The sacrifice consisted of an animal, more usually a bullock, part of whose flesh was burnt upon the altar, while the rest was handed over to the priests or retained by the offerer. There is no trace of human sacrifices among the Assyrians, which is the more singular, since we learn that human sacrifice had been an Accadian institution. A passage in an old astrological work indicates that the victims were burnt to death, like the victims of Moloch; and an early Accadian fragment expressly states that they were to be the children of those for whose sins they were offered to the gods. The fragment is as follows: 'The son who lifts his head among men, the son for his own life must (the father) give; the head of the child for the head of the man must he give; the neck of the child for the neck of the man must he give; the breast of the child for the breast of the man must he give.' The idea of vicarious punishment is here clearly indicated.

The future life to which the Babylonian had looked forward was dreary enough. Hades, the land of the dead, was beneath the earth, a place of darkness and gloom, from which 'none might return,' where the spirits of the dead flitted like bats, with dust alone for their food. Here the shadowy phantoms of the heroes of old time sat crowned, each upon his throne, a belief to which allusion is made by the Hebrew prophet in his prophecy of the coming overthrow of Babylon (Is. xiv. 9). In the midst stood the palace of Allat, the queen of the underworld, where the waters of life bubbled forth beside the golden throne of the spirits of earth, restoring those who might drink of them to life and the upper air. The entrance to this dreary abode of the departed lay beyond Datilla, the river of death, at the mouth of the Euphrates, and it was here that the hero Gisdhubar saw Xisuthros, the Chaldean Noah, after his translation to the fields of the blessed. In later times, when the horizon of geographical knowledge was widened, the entrance to the gloomy world of Hades, and the earthly paradise that was above it, were alike removed to other and more unknown regions. The conception of the after-life, moreover, was made brighter, at all events, for the favoured few. An Assyrian court-poet prays thus on behalf of his king: 'The land of the silver sky, oil unceasing, the benefits of blessedness may he obtain among the feasts of the gods, and a happy cycle among their light, even life everlasting, and bliss; such is my prayer to the gods who dwell in the land of Assur.' Even at a far earlier time we find the great Chaldean epic of Gisdhubar concluding with a description of the blissful lot of the spirit of Ea-bani: 'On a couch he reclines and pure water he drinks. Him who is slain in battle thou seest and I see. His father and his mother (support) his head, his wife addresses the corpse. His friends in the fields are standing; thou seest (them) and I see. His spoil on the ground is uncovered; of his spoil he hath no oversight, (as) thou seest and I see. His tender orphans beg for bread; the food that was stored in (his) tent is eaten.' Here the spirit of Ea-bani is supposed to behold from his couch in heaven the deeds that take place on the earth below.

Heaven itself had not always been 'the land of the silver sky' of later Assyrian belief. The Babylonians once believed that the gods inhabited the snow-clad peak of Rowandiz, 'the mountain of the world' and 'the mountain of the East,' as it was also termed, which supported the starry vault of heaven. It is to this old Babylonian belief that allusion is made in Isaiah xiv. 13, 14, where the Babylonian monarch is represented as saying in his heart: 'I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also on the mount of the assembly (of the gods) [4] in the extremities [5] of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.'

As in all old forms of heathen faith, religion and mythology were inextricably mixed together. Myths were told of most of the gods. Reference has already been made to the myth of Istar and Tammuz, the prototype of the Greek legend of Aphroditê and Adonis. So, too, the Greek story of the theft of fire by Prometheus has its parallel in the Babylonian story of the god Zu, 'the divine storm-bird,' who stole the lightning of Bel, the tablet whereon the knowledge of futurity is written, and who was punished for his crime by the father of the gods. In reading the legend of the plague-demon Lubara, whom Anu sends to smite the evildoers in Babylon, Erech, and other places, we are reminded of the avenging angel of God whom David saw standing with a drawn sword over Jerusalem.

One of the most curious of the Babylonian myths was that which told how the seven evil-spirits or storm-demons had once warred against the moon and threatened to devour it. Samas and Istar fled from the lower sky, and the Moon-god would have been blotted out from heaven had not Bel and Ea sent Merodach in his 'glistening armour' to rescue him. The myth is really a primitive attempt to explain a lunar eclipse, and finds its illustration in the dragon of the Chinese, who is still popularly believed by them to devour the sun or moon when an eclipse takes place.

The prim?val victory of light and order over darkness and chaos, which seems to be repeated whenever the sun bursts through a storm-cloud, was similarly expressed in a mythical form. It was the victory of Merodach over Tiamat,'the deep,' the personification of chaos and elemental anarchy. The myth was embodied in a poem, the greater part of which has been preserved to us. We are told how Merodach was armed by the gods with bow and scimetar, how alone he faced and fought the dragon Tiamat, driving the winds into her throat when she opened her mouth to swallow him, and how, finally, he cut open her body, scattering in flight 'the rebellious deities' who had stood at her side. Tiamat, or the watery chaos, is usually represented with wings, claws, tail, and horns, but she is also identified with 'the wicked serpent' of 'night and darkness,' 'the monstrous serpent of seven heads,' 'which beats the sea.'

The most interesting of the old myths and traditions of Babylonia are those in which we can trace, more or less clearly, the lineaments of the accounts of the creation of the world and the early history of man, given us in the early chapters of Genesis. There was more than one legend of the creation. In a text which came from the library of Cuthah, it was described as taking place on evolutionary principles, the first created beings being the brood of chaos, men with 'the bodies of birds' and 'the faces of ravens,' who were succeeded by the more perfect forms of the existing world. But the library of Assur-bani-pal also contained an account of the creation, which bears a remarkable resemblance to that in the first chapter of Genesis. Unfortunately, however, it seems to have been of Assyrian and not Babylonian origin, and, therefore, not to have been of early date. In this account the creation appears to be described as having been accomplished in six days. It begins in these words:

'At that time the heavens above named not a name, nor did the earth below record one; yea, the ocean was their first creator, the flood of the deep (Tiamat) was she who bore them all. Their waters were embosomed in one place, and the clouds (?) were not collected, the plant was still ungrown. At that time the gods had not issued forth, any one of them; by no name were they recorded, no destiny (had they fixed). Then the (great) gods were made; Lakhmu and Lakhamu issued forth the first. They grew up.... Next were made the host of heaven and earth. The time was long, (and then) the gods Anu, (Bel, and Ea were born of) the host of heaven and earth.' The rest of the account is lost, and it is not until we come to the fifth tablet of the series, which describes the appointment of the heavenly bodies, that the narrative is again preserved. Here we are told that the creator, who seems to have been Ea, 'made the stations of the great gods, even the stars, fixing the places of the principal stars like ... He ordered the year, setting over it the decans; yea, he established three stars for each of the twelve months.' It will be remembered that, according to Genesis, the appointment of the heavenly bodies to guide and govern the seasons was the work of the fourth day, and since the work is described in the fifth tablet or book of the Assyrian account, while the first tablet describes the condition of the universe before the creation was begun, it becomes probable that the Assyrians also knew that the work was performed on the fourth day. The next tablet states that 'at that time the gods in their assembly created (the living creatures). They made the mighty (animals). They caused the living beings to come forth, the cattle of the field, the beast of the field, and the creeping thing.' Unfortunately the rest of the narrative is in too mutilated a condition for a translation to be possible, and the part which describes the creation of man has not yet been recovered among the ruins of the library of Nineveh.

The Chaldean account of the Deluge was discovered by Mr. George Smith, and its close resemblance to the account in Genesis is well known. Those who wish to see a translation of it, according to the latest researches, will find one in the pages of 'Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments.' The account was introduced as an episode into the eleventh book of the great Babylonian epic of Gisdhubar, and appears to be the amalgamation of two older poems on the subject. The story of the Deluge, in fact, was a favourite theme among the Babylonians, and we have fragments of at least two other versions of it, neither of which, however, agree so remarkably with the Biblical narrative as does the version discovered by Mr. Smith. Apart from the profound difference caused by the polytheistic character of the Chaldean account, and the monotheism of the Scriptural narrative, it is only in details that the two accounts vary from one another. Thus, the vessel in which Xisuthros, the Chaldean Noah, sails, is a ship, guided by a steersman, and not an ark, and others besides his own family are described as being admitted into it. So, too, the period of time during which the flood was at its height is said to have been seven days only, while, beside the raven and the dove, Xisuthros is stated to have sent out a third bird, the swallow, in order to determine how far the waters had subsided. The Chaldean ark rested, moreover, on Rowandiz, the highest of the mountains of Eastern Kurdistan, and the peak whereon Accadian mythology imagined the heavens to be supported, and not on the northern or Armenian continuation of the range. Babylonian tradition, too, had fused into one Noah and Enoch, Xisuthros being represented as translated to the land of immortality immediately after his descent from the ark and his sacrifice to the gods. It is noticeable that the Chaldean account agrees with that of the Bible in one remarkable respect, in which it differs from almost all the other traditions of the Deluge found throughout the world. This is in its ascribing the cause of the Deluge to the wickedness of mankind. It was sent as a punishment for sin.

As might have been expected, the Babylonians and Assyrians knew of the building of the Tower of Babel, and the dispersion of mankind. Men had 'turned against the father of all the gods,' under a leader the thoughts of whose heart 'were evil.' At Babylon they began to erect 'a mound,' or hill-like tower, but the winds destroyed it in the night, and Anu 'confounded great and small on the mound,' as well as their 'speech,' and 'made strange their counsel.' All this was supposed to have taken place at the time of the autumnal equinox, and it is possible that the name of the rebel leader, which is lost, was Etána. At all events the demi-god Etána played a conspicuous part in the early historical mythology of Babylonia, like two other famous divine kings, Ner and Dun, and a fragment describes him as having built a city of brick. However this may be, Etána is the Babylonian Titan of Greek writers, who, with Promêtheus and Ogygos, made war against the gods.

If we sum up the character of Assyrian religion, we shall find it characterised by curious contrasts. On the one hand we shall find it grossly polytheistic, believing in 'lords many and gods many,' and admitting not only gods and demi-gods, and even deified men, but the multitudinous spirits, 'the host of heaven and earth,' who were classed together as the '300 spirits of heaven and the 600 spirits of earth.' Some of these were beneficent, others hostile, to man. In addition to this vast army of divine powers, the Assyrian offered worship also to the heavenly bodies, and to the spirits of rivers and mountains. He even set up stones or 'Beth-els,' so called because they were imagined to be veritable 'houses of god,' wherein the godhead dwelt, and over these he poured out libations of oil and wine. Yet, on the other hand, with all this gross polytheism, there was a strong tendency to monotheism. The supreme god, Assur, is often spoken of in language which at first sight seems monotheistic: to him the Assyrian monarchs ascribe their victories, and in his name they make war against the unbeliever. A similar inconsistency prevailed in the character of Assyrian worship itself. There was much in it which commands our admiration: the Assyrian confessed his sins to his gods, he begged for their pardon and help, he allowed nothing to interfere with what he conceived to be his religious duties. With all this, his worship of Istar was stained with the foulest excesses-excesses, too, indulged in, like those of the Ph?nicians, in the name and for the sake of religion.

Much of this inconsistency may be explained by the history of his religious ideas. As we have seen, a large part of them was derived from a non-Semitic population, the primitive inhabitants of Babylonia, under whose influence the Semitic Babylonians had come at a time when they still lacked nearly all the elements of culture. The result was a form of creed in which the old Accadian faith was bodily taken over by an alien race, but at the same time profoundly modified. It was Accadian religion interpreted by the Semitic mind and belief. Baal-worship, which saw the Sun-god everywhere under an infinite variety of manifestations, waged a constant struggle with the conceptions of the borrowed creed, but never overcame them altogether. The gods and spirits of the Accadians remained to the last, although permeated and overlaid with the worship of the Semitic Sun-god. As time went on, new religious elements were introduced, and Assyro-Babylonian religion underwent new phases, while in Assyria itself the deified state in the person of the god Assur tended to absorb the religious cult and aspirations of the people. The higher minds of the nation struggled now and again towards the conception of one supreme God and of a purer form of faith, but the dead weight of polytheistic beliefs and practices prevented them from ever really reaching it. In the best examples of their religious literature we constantly fall across expressions and ideas which show how wide was the gulf that separated them from that kindred people of Israel to whom the oracles of God were revealed.

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