ion of Assyria,
as preserved there, we wait for the result of the excavations being
carried on by the Germans, should they be fortunate enough to obtain
texts belonging to the period following the fall of Nineveh.

In Babylonia.

Babylonia, on the other hand, continued the even tenor of her way.
More successful at the end of her independent political career than
her northern rival had been, she retained her faith, and remained the
unswerving worshipper of Merodach, the great god of Babylon, to whom
her priests attributed yet greater powers, and with whom all the other
gods were to all appearance identified. This tendency to monotheism,
however, never reached the culminating point--never became
absolute--except, naturally, in the minds of those who, dissociating
themselves, for philosophical reasons, from the superstitious teaching
of the priests of Babylonia, decided for themselves that there was but
one God, and worshipped Him. That orthodox Jews at that period may have
found, in consequence of this monotheistic tendency, converts, is not
by any means improbable--indeed, the names met with during the later
period imply that converts to Judaism were made.

The picture presented by the study.

Thus we see, from the various inscriptions, both Babylonian and
Assyrian--the former of an extremely early period--the growth and
development, with at least one branching off, of one of the most
important religious systems of the ancient world. It is not so
important for modern religion as the development of the beliefs of the
Hebrews, but as the creed of the people from which the Hebrew nation
sprang, and from which, therefore, it had its beginnings, both
corporeal and spiritual, it is such as no student of modern religious
systems can afford to neglect. Its legends, and therefore its
teachings, as will be seen in these pages, ultimately permeated the
Semitic West, and may in some cases even had penetrated Europe, not
only through heathen Greece, but also through the early Christians,
who, being so many centuries nearer the time of the
Assyro-Babylonians, and also nearer the territory which they anciently
occupied, than we are, were far better acquainted than the people of
the present day with the legends and ideas which they possessed.

CHAPTER II

THE RELIGION OF THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS

The Sumero-Akkad