THE RELIGION OF THE PEOPLE
The religion of Assyria and Babylonia was substantially the same. In
both countries it was derived in the first instance from the beliefs of
the early Accadian or Sumerian population. Every object and force of
Nature was supposed to possess a ‘spirit’ or ‘life,’ corresponding to the
‘spirit’ or ‘life’ of man. It was because they were thus endowed with a
spirit of their own that the stars journeyed through the sky, that the
arrow sped through the air, or that the fire consumed the victim. Even
the earth and the heaven were possessed of ‘spirits’ of their own through
which they were able to act. All Nature, in fact, was alive, but the
life was like that of the individual man, and manifested itself in the
same way. To the primitive inhabitant of Chaldea, life and motion were
synonymous terms.
Gradually the spirits became separated in thought from the objects or
forces to which they belonged. The whole world became filled with
demons, supernatural agencies whose power and scope of action were as
limited as that of the objects of Nature out of which they had been
formed. Like the objects of Nature too, they were in no sense moral
agents. The same spirit or demon could be at once harmful and beneficent.
The fire that slays also warms and supports mankind. At the same time the
demons were more usually harmful than beneficent, because in an early
condition of society man has not yet learned to subdue Nature to his own
use and benefit. Evil rather than good seems to him to predominate in the
world.
The aid of the sorcerer was invoked to ward off the attacks of hostile
demons or to compel them to become the friends of man. It was only the
sorcerer, the medicine-man as he would be called in America, who was
imagined to know the magic spells and incantations by means of which the
multitudinous spirits that surrounded the Accadian could be driven away.
Disease was believed to be due to possession by an ‘evil spirit,’ and its
cure was sought in various magical ceremonies and words.
In course of time, however, certain of the spirits, whose action
was regarded as more uniformly beneficent than the reverse, and who
represented the larger units of Nature, came to assume a sort of
supremacy over the rest. The spirit of the earth or under-world, the
spirit of the water, the spirit of the sky, began to rank above the
spirits of the individual objects that are to be found in the earth, or
water, or sky. Certain of the spirits of the old Accadian creed thus
began to pass into gods.
The change was assisted by the existence of totemism in ancient
Babylonia. Certain animals—or rather the ‘spirits’ of these animals—were
regarded as peculiarly sacred; their flesh was forbidden to be eaten, and
tribes and individuals called themselves after their names. There were
tribes and individuals, for instance, of the name of ‘dog,’ to whom the
dog was specially an object of veneration. These sacred animals came to
be associated with the higher spirits who were tending to become gods.
With the transformation of some of the spirits or demons into gods went
the transformation of the sorcerer into a priest. He did not, indeed,
cease to be a sorcerer; his chief duty was still to attract or repel
the spirits by charms and incantations, which he and other members of
his class alone knew; but he now added to this duty the further duty of
performing a fixed ritual and of offering prayer and praise to the new
gods.
In this early epoch of history Babylonia contained two centres of
religion and culture. One of these was Nipur, now Niffer, in the interior
of the country, the other was Eridu, now Abu-Shahrein, on the shores of
the Persian Gulf. Nipur was the seat of the worship of Mul-lil, ‘the lord
of the ghost-world,’ who had originally been the spirit of the earth,
and it continued to be the chief home of Babylonian sorcery. Eridu, on
the contrary, was influenced by a foreign culture which had probably
come from Egypt. It was from Eridu that a purer and more exalted form of
faith emanated than that which was practised at Nipur; its god, who had
primarily been the spirit of the water, gathered about him attributes
more worthy to be called divine; and his son Merodach became the ‘culture
hero’ of Chaldea, the god who had introduced, as it was believed, the
elements of civilization among his people, and was continually occupied
in looking after their good. Babylon, it would appear, was a colony of
Eridu; at all events Merodach of Eridu became the patron-deity of Babylon.
By conquest or peaceful colonization, or a mixture of both, the
Semitic tribes of Northern Arabia entered Babylonia, and established
their dominion there. They adopted the civilization of their Accadian
predecessors, at the same time modifying and improving it. But their
conception of religion was totally different from that of the older
inhabitants of the land. To the Semite the primary object of worship was
the supreme Baal or ‘Lord,’ who manifested himself in the sun. By the
side of Baal stood his wife and son, since the divine family was likened
to the human family. In the Semitic household the wife was but the shadow
and slave of the husband, in contrast to the Accadian household, where
the woman was almost on a footing of equality with the man, and the wife
of Baal accordingly assumed the same subordinate position in the divine
family that was occupied by the wife of his worshipper. The Semitic
goddess was thus essentially different from the Accadian goddess, where
she had developed out of an earlier ‘spirit,’ as the Accadian goddess was
in all respects the equal of the god.
The meeting of two systems of religious belief, so unlike one another,
one of which was closely bound up with the older culture and literature
of the country, could not have been other than a shock. But in course
of time a union took place between them. A compromise was effected, and
that official system of religion arose which lasted through the whole
remaining history of Babylonia. It was carried to Assyria by the Semitic
colonists, who founded there the Assyrian kingdom, though in Assyria its
character was more genuinely Semitic than in Babylonia, in consequence
of the purer Semitic blood of the Assyrian people.
In official Babylonian religion the older Accadian gods had been
recognized, and placed at the head of the hierarchy of heaven, the
multitudinous spirits of the ancient cult becoming the three hundred
spirits of heaven, and the six hundred spirits of earth, who formed the
‘hosts’ of the supreme deities and acted as their ministers. Wherever it
was possible the older gods assumed a solar character; not only Merodach
of Babylon, but even Mul-lil of Nipur, became a Baal. The worship of the
‘older Bel,’ however, Mul-lil of Nipur, faded more and more out of sight,
and after Babylon had become the capital of the country (about B.C. 2280)
it was practically superseded by that of the younger Bel, Merodach of
Babylon. The Bel or Baal addressed in the later inscriptions always means
Merodach.
Under Semitic influence the Accadian goddesses either became the
colourless companions of the gods, or else were changed into male
divinities. One goddess only resisted the general tendency; this was
Istar, or Ashtoreth, originally the spirit of the evening star. Her
worship at Erech was too firmly fixed to be uprooted, and she remained
to the last an independent goddess who took equal rank with a god. Her
cult was even carried by the Semites to foreign lands along with the
Babylonian civilization with which she was associated. But in Arabia and
Moab she was transformed into a god; in Canaan she was assimilated to
the other goddesses in the Semitic pantheon; she lost her independent
position, and added to her name the final _th_, which denotes the
feminine gender. It was only in Babylonia and Assyria, in the country of
her origin, that her primitive character remained unchanged.
Another result of the Semitic occupation of Chaldea was the compilation
of sacred books. The ancient Accadian magical charms and hymns to the
gods were translated into Semitic Babylonian, and published in two great
works. The hymns became a sacred book, and the Accadian, in which they
were written, a sacred language. Any mistake in the recitation of them
came to be considered an impiety, which might bring down upon it the
anger of the gods. New hymns were composed, chiefly in honour of the
Sun-god, but though they were written by Semitic priests, the language of
them was Accadian. Accadian, in fact, now assumed the same place in the
religious services of the temples that Latin has in the Roman Catholic
Church, or Coptic in the Coptic Church. It was only the rubric of the
Liturgy which was permitted to be in Semitic Babylonian; the hymns and
most of the prayers were in the extinct language of Sumer and Accad.
But the mass of the people, at all events in the country, could not have
been much affected by the official system of religion. They brought their
sacrifices to the temples, they attended the services that were held in
them, they paid their tithes to the priests, but they also retained a
large part of their old beliefs and superstitions. The sorcerer still
practised his arts among them, like the wise woman in the remote parts
of our own island. The countless spirits of the old Accadian creed still
existed in the popular belief, though they had become demons, mostly of a
malevolent character. In fact, a large part of the life of the Babylonian
was occupied in devising charms and amulets, or uttering spells which
should keep at a distance from him the evil spirits. They might enter
into him through the water he drank, or the food he ate, if due
precautions were not taken that the water was pure, and the food clean.
It was at night, and during the hours of darkness, that the evil spirits
were specially dangerous; nightmare was a demon that sought to strangle
its victim, and vampires were ever on the watch to suck his blood. Among
the means employed for warding off these dreaded visitants were magical
threads twisted seven times round the limbs, to which phylacteries were
bound, consisting of ‘sentences from a holy book.’
At the head of the evil spirits of the night was Lilat, the wife of Lilu,
a name which the Semites had borrowed from the old Accadian _lil_, ‘a
ghost.’ In Hebrew, Lilat became Lilith, who occupies a prominent place
in Talmudic legend, and is once mentioned in the Old Testament[30] among
the creatures of popular Babylonian mythology whom the prophet cites in
illustration of the approaching desolation of Chaldea.
But, besides the malevolent spirits which peopled the air and the
under-world, there were also good spirits, who acted as the ministers of
the gods, who ‘bowed themselves’ in the courts of heaven, and formed the
‘hosts’ of which Bel, the supreme god of Babylon, and Assur, the supreme
god of Assyria, were entitled the ‘Lords.’ Among them were the _sedi_,
or guardian spirits, who were symbolized by the huge winged bulls at the
entrance to an Assyrian palace. Here they were supposed to protect the
house from the assaults of evil. We learn from Deuteronomy[31] that the
Israelites also fell away to the worship of these _sedi_ or _shedim_
(translated ‘devils’ in the Authorized Version) and offered sacrifices to
them. Along with the _sedi_ were associated the _kirubi_, or ‘cherubs,’
who are sometimes depicted in the Assyrian sculptures as standing or
kneeling on either side of the tree of life. They are winged, with the
heads of eagles, or more rarely of men.
The heaven of popular Babylonian belief was not ‘the land of the silver
sky,’ to which Assyrian poets declared that the souls of the great and
good would ascend, nor even that highest of the heavens, far above the
firmament, which is referred to in the Chaldean account of the Deluge.
It was, like the Greek Olympos, the summit of a mountain, hidden in
perpetual cloud, called sometimes ‘the mountain of the East,’ sometimes
‘the mountain of the world,’ and often identified with Mount Rowandiz,
east of Assyria. This was the mountain to which the Babylonian king is
described in Isaiah[32] as saying in his heart that he would ascend and
exalt his ‘throne above the stars of God.’ It was imagined that the apex
of the firmament rested, like that of an extinguisher, upon the peak of
the mountain, the stars which hung as lamps from the firmament being
below it.
The world of the dead, it was believed, lay under the ground. Here
the spirits of the dead flitted in gloom and darkness, like bats, with
dust alone for their food. Here, too, the shades of the ancient heroes
sat on their thrones, rising only to welcome the spirit of a Babylonian
king who should come to join them. In the midst of this dark land of
forgetfulness, which was barred in by seven gates, sat the rulers of
Hades, on a golden throne, beneath which bubbled up the waters of life.
It was only through the aid of Merodach, ‘the pitiful god who raises the
dead to life,’ that any could drink of the waters and rise once more to
the world of light.
It is difficult to say how far these popular beliefs were shared in by
the educated. In later times, at all events, purer and more spiritual
ideas prevailed among the upper classes, and found their expression in
literature. A school even arose at Erech which endeavoured to resolve the
manifold deities of the pantheon into one supreme God, and in Assyria,
Asshur tended more and more to become ‘God of gods’ and ‘Lord of lords.’
How nearly, for instance, do the words of Nebuchadnezzar approach the
language of monotheism in two of the prayers which he has bequeathed to
us. Here is one:—
‘To Merodach, my lord, I prayed: I began to him my petition: the word of
my heart sought him, and I said: “O prince, thou art from everlasting,
lord of all that exists, for the king whom thou lovest, whom thou callest
by name, as it seems good unto thee, thou guidest his name aright, thou
watchest over him in the path of righteousness! I, the prince who obeys
thee, am the work of thy hands; thou hast created me and hast entrusted
to me the sovereignty over multitudes of men, according to thy goodness,
O lord, which thou hast made to pass over them all. Let me love thy
supreme lordship, let the fear of thy divinity exist in my heart, and
give what seemest good unto thee, since thou maintainest my life.”’
Centuries before Nebuchadnezzar, however, language almost equally lofty
had been used of the Moon-god in a hymn which had been composed before
the age of Abraham in the city of his birth, Ur of the Chaldees. Here are
some of the lines of the hymn:—
Father, long-suffering and full of forgiveness, whose hand upholds
the life of all mankind!...
First-born, omnipotent, whose heart is immensity, and there is none
who may fathom it!...
In heaven, who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme!
On earth, who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme!
As for thee, thy will is made known in heaven, and the angels bow
their faces.
As for thee, thy will is made known upon earth, and the spirits
below kiss the ground.
The temples of Assyria and Babylonia resembled that of Jerusalem in
general appearance, excepting only that a tower was attached to them,
from the top of which astronomical observations could be made. The temple
itself stood within a large court, and the public library was established
in one of its chambers. The court was surrounded with the rooms in which
the priests lived, and in it was a ‘sea’ or large basin of water for
purificatory purposes, supported, like that of Solomon, on the heads of
bronze bulls. At the extreme end of the temple was the ‘holy of holies,’
which took its name from the curtain that concealed it from the eyes of
the profane. Here, according to Nebuchadnezzar, was ‘the holy seat, the
place of the gods who determine destiny, the spot where they assemble
together, the shrine of fate, wherein on the festival of first-fruits
at the beginning of the year, on the eighth and the eleventh days, the
divine king of heaven and earth, the lord of the heavens (Bel Merodach)
seats himself, while the gods of heaven and earth listen to him in fear
and stand bowing down before him.’ Here, too, was the image of the god,
and the golden table of offerings in front of it.
The shrine further contained a coffer in which two written tables of
stone were placed. Those found by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, in a chapel
near Nineveh, record the victories of the king and the account of
the erection of the building. In front of the coffer, or ark, was an
altar approached by steps. At times, instead of a temple or chapel, a
‘beth-el,’ or ‘house of god,’ was built, which originally consisted of a
stone consecrated by a libation of oil, and supposed to have thus been
turned into a habitation of the deity.
The temples were served by a large body of priests. At the head of them
was the high priest, whose office could be held by the king, and in
Assyria was usually held by him. Besides the supreme high priest, or
pontiff, as we might term him, there were also subordinate high priests,
reminding us of the ‘high priests’ of the Jewish Sanhedrim. The lower
ranks of the hierarchy consisted of ‘the anointers,’ whose duty it was to
cleanse the vessels of the temple, the priests of the goddess Istar, and
the ‘elders.’ Connected with the temple, but separate from the regular
priesthood, were the ‘prophets’ and their servants, at the head of whom
was ‘the chief of the prophets.’ The prophet predicted the future, and
was consulted on most matters of state. He accompanied an army on the
march, and as, like the Roman augur, he claimed to know the will of
heaven, its action depended upon his decision. The general ventured to
engage in battle only when the prophet promised him victory. When the
Assyrian king had suppressed a revolt in the Babylonian cities, he tells
us that ‘by the command of the prophets,’ he ‘purified their shrines and
cleansed their chief places of prayer. Their angry gods and wrathful
goddesses he soothed with supplications and penitential psalms. He
restored and established in peace their daily sacrifices, which they had
discontinued, as they had been in former days.’
The offerings to the gods were divided into sacrifices of animals, such
as oxen, sheep, goats, and doves, and offerings of meal, dates, oil, and
wine. The animals were slaughtered by a servant who does not seem to
have belonged to the priestly caste, and certain portions of them only,
such as the caul of the heart, the chine, and the legs, were offered to
the gods. One of the Babylonian temples received as a yearly gift from
Nabonidos about six bushels of dates.
In addition to the ‘daily sacrifice’ there were constant services in the
temples both by day and at night. On the great festivals of the year
there were, moreover, services of a special character. Each temple,
furthermore, had its commemoration festival, and from time to time
extraordinary days of thanksgiving or humiliation were ordained. Thus
when the Assyrian Empire was in danger from an invasion of Scythians
from the north, Esar-haddon prescribed a fast with particular prayers and
ceremonies that should last for ‘a hundred days and a hundred nights.’
The ‘new moons’ also were observed with special solemnity, and, like the
Israelites, the Babylonians and Assyrians kept a _sabattu_ or ‘sabbath,’
which a Babylonian writer describes as ‘a day of rest for the heart.’
It was observed on the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first,
and twenty-eighth day of each month, and on it all kinds of work were
disallowed. No food was to be cooked, no new garments put on, no medicine
taken. The king was forbidden to ride in his chariot, and even the
prophet was forbidden to prophesy. In the night a ‘free-will offering’
was made to the gods.
The temple and priests were supported by the contributions of the people,
which were partly obligatory and partly voluntary. The most important
among them were the ‘tithes’ paid upon all produce. The tithes were
contributed by all classes of the population, from the king to the
peasant, and lists exist which record the amounts severally due from
the tenants of an estate. The tithes were paid for the most part in
corn; thus we find a Babylonian paying about eleven bushels of corn to
the temple of the Sun-god as the ‘tithes’ required from him for the
year. The ‘tithes’ paid to the same temple by Nabonidos just after his
accession amounted to as much as six manehs of gold, or £840. Nabonidos,
however, had just usurped the throne, and he may therefore have wished to
gain the favour of the priests by an unusually large gift.
Voluntary gifts were common, and were often made in pursuance of a vow
or in gratitude for recovery from sickness. Among such gifts various
articles of dress were included, with which the images of the gods were
adorned. Both the gods and their ministers were distinguished by their
vestments, and special vestments were required to be worn on the various
festivals of the year.
It might indeed have been said of the Babylonians that in all things
they were ‘too superstitious.’ Their lives were passed in perpetual fear
of the multitudinous demons by which they believed themselves to be
surrounded, or in a constant round of religious services. The priest was
supreme in the State. The king received his power from Bel, who was in
theory the true ruler of the community, and his highest title was that of
‘pontiff.’
It was different in Assyria. Here the military element was dominant, and
the king, as general of the army, exercised his tyranny over priests and
laity alike. Not but that the Assyrians also were deeply imbued with
the religious spirit. Asshur, their chief deity, was, like the Assyrian
monarch, ‘king of kings’ and ‘lord of lords.’ It was he who gave victory
to his worshippers, and took vengeance on their foes; in his name
they subdued ‘the unbelieving,’ and compelled them to acknowledge the
supremacy of Asshur. Asshur, in fact, was a national god, who brooked no
rivalry or companionship, not even that of a wife. But he was stern and
unforgiving, unlike Bel Merodach of Babylon, ‘the merciful one who sends
help to those that trust in him.’
Both deities reflected the character of the populations who adored them.
Their attributes were human, untouched by the light that cometh from
above. When we compare the noblest gods of Assyria and Babylonia with
the God revealed to a kindred people, inferior in numbers and political
power, in wealth and culture, we may see as in a glass the unfathomable
gulf which divides them. There was much in Babylonian religion that
commands our respect, there was much that shows how there were men on the
banks of the Euphrates who were seeking ‘the Lord, if haply they might
feel after Him and find Him,’ but it lacked the one thing needful, the
revelation of Himself that was made alone to the chosen people of Israel.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Ezek. xxiii. 14, 15.
[2] Gen. ii. 14.
[3] Gen. x. 12.
[4] Jer. l. 21.
[5] Gen. x. 11.
[6] Isa. xliii. 14.
[7] Amos iii. 15; comp. Ps. xlv. 8.
[8] Joshua vii. 21.
[9] Merodach-nadin-akhi, B.C. 1106. He has on his head a tall square
cap, ornamented in front with a band of rosettes immediately above the
forehead, while a row of feathers in an upright position runs round the
top. It is curious that a similar head-dress was worn by the Zakkur, who
are usually identified with the Teukrians, and are among the foreign
enemies depicted upon the Egyptian monuments.
[10] Judges i. 12, 13.
[11] Isa. xxxviii. 8.
[12] Prov. xxv. 1.
[13] Jer. xxxii. 10, 14.
[14] 2 Kings xviii. 26.
[15] 1 Kings iv. 33.
[16] As the copyist was the son of ‘an irrigator,’ one of the poorest of
the free labourers of Babylonia, the fact is a striking illustration of
the extent to which education was spread in the country.
[17] Compare Job xiii. 27: ‘Thou settest a print upon the soles of my
feet.’
[18] Dan. i. 3-5, 11.
[19] Gen. x. 11.
[20] A feminine form of a masculine name corresponding to the Hebrew Ahab.
[21] Ezek. xxvii. 18.
[22] Jer. xxxii.
[23] Jer. xxxii. 14.
[24] See Dr. Oppert’s translation and remarks upon the case in the new
series of _Records of the Past_, i. pp. 154-162.
[25] The fragments have been translated by Mr. Bertin for the new series
of _Records of the Past_, iii. pp. 91-101.
[26] Jer. xxxix. 3.
[27] 2 Chron. xvi. 12.
[28] 2 Kings xx. 7.
[29] Ps. cxxxvii. 3.
[30] Isa. xxxiv. 14.
[31] Deut. xxxii. 17.
[32] Isa. xiv. 13.
INDEX
Accadian language, the, 35.
Adoption, 52.
Agents, House, 72.
Anointers, 120.
Aristocracy, the, 90.
Army, the, 91.
Ashtoreth, the goddess, 111.
Asshur, the god, 124.
Assyria, description of, 10;
stone in, 20;
slavery in, 82;
religion in, 123.
Assyrians, the, clothing of, 9;
history of, 13;
character of, 14;
religion of, 16, 123;
decay of, 17;
writing of, 31.
Babylonia, description of, 10;
use of bricks in, 18;
religion in, 106;
Semites in, 109.
Babylonians, the, clothing of, 9;
history of, 12;
character of, 14;
religion of, 16, 106;
condition of, 17;
houses of, 21;
education of, 30;
writing of, 30;
learning of, 36, 41;
their system of farming, 85;
trades and professions of, 89;
their industry, 104.
Barachiel, a slave, case of, 78.
Barge, State, 96.
Bel-katsir, story of, 53.
Belshazzar, contract of, 65.
Blacksmiths, 97.
Books, sacred, 30, 112.
Boots, 27.
Borsippa, the library of, 40.
Bowmen, 93.
Bricks, the use of, in Babylonia, 18.
Building, cost of, 97.
Bulls, winged, 114.
Bunanit, the case of, 101.
Burial, mode of, 54.
Cavalry, 91.
Chaldeans, the, 11.
Chariots, 91.
Charms, belief in, 113.
Cherubs, 115.
Civil Service, the, 90.
Clay tablets, 30.
Clothes, 9, 61.
Commissariat, the army, 94.
Coppersmiths, 97.
Costume, 24.
Cotton, use of, 24.
Credit, the system of, 68.
Demons, belief in, 107.
Devils, belief in, 114.
Divorces, 46.
Doctors, 98.
Dowry, 46.
Dragoman, the, 38.
Dress, 24.
Elders, 120.
Eridu, a centre of religion, 109.
Etymology, 38.
Evil spirits, belief in, 113.
Farming, the system of, 85.
Festivals, 121.
Fish, 63.
Foundling, story of a, 42.
Furniture, 22.
Gardens, 14, 23.
Grain, 62.
Hair, mode of wearing the, 28.
Head-dress, 27.
Heaven, belief in, 116.
High priests, the, 120.
House of the males, the, 51.
Houses, description of, 21;
deeds relating to, 69.
Hymn to the Moon-god, 118.
Infantry, 92.
Interest, rate of, 67.
Irrigation, use of, 23.
Israelites, the, learning of, 44.
Istar, the goddess, 111.
Jewels, use of, 26.
Judges, 100.
Kassi, the, 12.
King, the, position of, 90.
Lawyers, 100.
Learning, state of, 36.
Lens, discovery of a, 33.
Libraries, 40.
Lilat, a demon, 114.
Lords, 114.
Maneh of Carchemish, the, 82.
Market-places, 58.
Marratu, 11.
Marriage customs, 45.
Medicine, the practice of, 98.
Merodach, the god, 109.
Merodach-baladan, 11.
Money-lending, 66.
Moon-god, a hymn to the, 118.
Mul-lil, the god, 109.
Musicians, 103.
Muslin, use of, 24.
Nabonidos, 39.
Nail-marks, 41.
Naming of a child, the, 52.
Nebuchadnezzar, a prayer of, 117.
Nergal-ritsua, the case of, 75.
New Moons, observance of, 122.
Nipur, a centre of religion, 109.
Partnerships, 63.
Physicians, 98.
Poets, 103.
Polygamy, 45.
Prayer of Nebuchadnezzar, 117.
Prices of various articles, 59.
Priests, 108, 120.
Princes, 90.
Prophets, 120.
Proverbs, use of, 88.
Rab-shakeh, the, 36.
Rafts, 95.
Religion, description of, 106.
Resen, 10.
Rowandiz, Mount, 116.
Sabbaths, observance of, 122.
Sacrifices, 121.
Sargon I, origin of, 85.
Semites, the, in Babylonia, 109.
Ships, 95.
Shoes, 26.
Slaves, position of, 74;
sale of, 79;
classes of, 84.
Slingers, 93.
Songs, 87.
Sorcerers, 107.
Stone, free use of, in Assyria, 20.
Streets, 63.
Syllabary, the, 33.
Tammuz, the god, 85.
Taxes, 68.
Temples, description of, 119.
Tithes, 122.
Totemism, 108.
Trumpets, 104.
Vegetables, 24.
Vestments, 123.
Wines, 61.
Women, position of, 42.
Year, the, 86.
LIST OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
_GENESIS._
ii. 14 10
x. 11 13, 58
x. 12 10
_DEUTERONOMY._
xxxii. 17 114
_JOSHUA._
vii. 21 24
_JUDGES._
i. 12, 13 31
_1 KINGS._
iv. 33 40
_2 KINGS._
xviii. 26 36
xx. 7 100
_2 CHRONICLES._
xvi. 12 99
_JOB._
xiii. 27 43
_PSALMS._
xlv. 8 21
cxxxvii. 3 104
_PROVERBS._
xxv. 1 32
_ISAIAH._
xiv. 13 116
xxxiv. 14 114
xxxviii. 8 32
xliii. 14 15
_JEREMIAH._
xxxii. 73
xxxii. 10, 14 32
xxxii. 14 73
xxxix. 3 90
l. 21 11
_EZEKIEL._
xxiii. 14, 15 9
xxvii. 18 61
_DANIEL._
i. 3-5, 11 52
_AMOS._
iii. 15 21