"O Lady of Arbela! I am Sardanapalus, King of Assyria, the creation of thy hands. I have visited thy dwelling-place in

order to restore the temples of Assyria, and to complete the building of the cities of Accad. Te-umman, King of Elam has set his army in motion and makes himself ready for battle, that he may march against Assyria. O warlike one among the gods . . . scatter him in the midst of the battle; send against him a storm and an evil wind.”

In consequence of this prayer to Ishtar for her protection, the goddess appeared in a dream to a magician or interpreter of dreams, in the habit of a warrior armed with a bow and a sword, and promised to go before Sardanapalus during his campaign, and to ensure his victory. The announcement of this dream inspired Sardanapalus with the fullest confidence, and he marched against the Elamites with the firm expectation of a victory, which was not slow to follow.

Ishtar was one of the principal divinities of Assyria and Babylonia. She is mentioned on a par with Bel, Nebo, the Sun-god, the Moon-god, Rimmon, Nergal, Ninib, and, in Assyria, with the great national god of that country, Ashur.

The last-named deity was unknown in Babylonia, but in Assyria was the greatest of all the gods, so far as any one of them was greater than the others. He is generally mentioned first, and often spoken of as "lord of the gods "a title, however, which is not applied consistently to any one of the deities. The name Ashur is, of course, identical with the name of the country of Assyria and with that of its earliest capital, Ashur,* the * See page 142.

modern Kalat-Sherkat. In all the records of the Assyrian kings the latter attribute their exploits to the favour and assistance of Ashur and other gods. When foreign princes refused to pay tribute to the King of Assyria, this was looked upon as a sin against Ashur, the great god, and by his command the king undertook his expeditions into the country of the rebels, and chastised them for their disobedience to his national deity, who, in the bas-reliefs, appears as leading the Assyrian armies to victory, and hovering above them in the air.

Nothing is clearer from the Assyrian and Babylonian records than the identification of the gods with the countries or cities over which they presided. An offence against Assyria is an offence against the god Ashur, and an offence against Babylon is an offence against Bel-Merodach. When a city was captured it

was the custom to seize and carry away the images of the local gods, who were held to be vanquished when the place over which they presided was taken. This idea is very clearly expressed in the words of Sennacherib to Hezekiah, whom he reproaches for trusting in a God who would be overcome like the gods of the

nations :

"Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The Lord will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?

"Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim? and have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?

"Who are they among all the gods of these lands that have delivered their land out of my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?"

The

There are many instances in the records of the carrying of the gods of conquered nations into captivity, together with the people whom they had failed to protect. When Sardanapalus sacked Susa, he carried off the images of the native gods and goddesses; * and thus he took revenge upon the Elamites, who, sixteen hundred years before, had carried off the image of Nana from Babylonia. In the reign of Sennacherib the Assyrians captured and removed the gods of Erech. Esarhaddon carried off the gods of Khazu. Sometimes, instead of being removed, the gods were burnt. general purpose was, however, to transfer the rule of the country from the conquered to the conquerors by taking the gods to the capital city of the latter, where, it was thought, they became subject, together with their respective countries, to the gods of the ruling race. So the first thought, when a change of fortune was brought about, was to bring back the gods to their own cities, where they might again exercise an independent rule. It was in this way that, when Assyria ceased to maintain her supremacy over Babylonia, as, for instance, on the accession of Shamash-shum-ukin, the gods of Babylon were brought out of Assyria to their own place.

The names of several of the local gods of Assyria and Babylonia have already been mentioned. BelMerodach was the local god of Babylon; Nergal, of Cutha; Ishtar, of Nineveh, or of Erech, or of Arbela ; the Sun-god was the tutelary deity of Sippara, and the *See page 247.

Moon-god of Ur; and besides these, each city had, without doubt, its own local divinity.

Besides the principal gods whom we have mentioned, there was an innumerable host of spirits and divinities in the Babylonian pantheon. Many of them. may have been of local importance, but we know little or nothing of them. Ashur-nasir-pal, in an inscription, speaks of "65,000 gods of heaven and earth." The largest tablet in the British Museum is one covered with a long list of deities. According to a Semitic belief, each god had a corresponding goddess; so Bel had a wife, Biltu, or Beltis.

The idols of Babylonia are much spoken of by the Hebrew prophets, from whom we hear that they were often lavishly adorned or overlaid with gold or silver; that they were dressed in garments of bluish-purple or reddish-purple; * that they were carried in procession ; that their number was exceedingly great, and that the people were enthusiastic in their worship.

According to Jeremiah, Babylonia was—

"The land of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols."

Isaiah says:

"They lavish gold out of the bag, and weigh silver in the balance, and hire a goldsmith; and he maketh it a god: they fall down, yea, they worship.

They bear him upon the shoulder, they carry him, and set him in his place, and he standeth; from his place shall he not remove."

Habakkuk, speaking of the Babylonians, exclaims:

*See page 394 ff.

C C

"What profiteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and a teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols?

"Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach! Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it."

In the "epistle of Jeremiah" to the Jews about to be taken as captives to Babylonia, included in the Book of Baruch,* there is an account of the temples and idols of the Babylonians which quite corresponds to all that we know of them from native sources. The writer says that the Jews, when they reach Babylon, will see gods of gold and silver, and others simply of wood or stone, carried about on men's shoulders in procession, and striking awe into the hearts of their worshippers, who bow down before and behind them. The images are said to have gold crowns on their heads, to wear purple robes, and to hold sceptres or swords in their hands; their temples are hung with many lamps, the smoke of which made the faces of the idols black; many animals were offered to them in sacrifice. A large body of priests was devoted to their worship; and it is remarked that the priests had shaven heads: a custom which may have been borrowed, like so much of Babylonian religion, from the Accadians, whose priests, at least in the time of Gudea, as we know from his statues, had closely-shaven heads.

Few images of the gods have been found in the excavations made during this century in Mesopotamia.

* In the Vulgate. Separate in the LXX.