n which is
surrounded by four large and four lesser conventionally drawn mountains.
The head-dress with lappets which encloses each face recalls the familiar
Egyptian form, and on two bowls images of scarabs are engraved. On one of
these the beetle is drawn in such a way that its four legs, two of which
turn upwards and two downwards, suggest the form of a swastika.

The peculiarities of these designs and the knowledge that star-worship
prevailed in Assyria and Phoenicia suggest the inference that the Nimroud
Palace bowls were employed for the observation of the positions of certain
stars which marked the seasons and regulated the calendar, by means of
which the priest-kings controlled the working of the system of state.
Doubtlessly the constellations originally and principally observed besides
Polaris were the three great "seven-fold ones," _i. e._ the Ursa Major
which marked the Four Quarters; the Pleiades which pertained to the Above
and Below and marked the division of the year into halves, and Orion which
also may well have appeared to be a composite image of the sacred, equal
Four, and the central triad composed of the Above, Middle and Below.

It is interesting to note that in the Euphratean and other myths the
antagonism between sun and moon, etc., coincides with traditions of actual
warfare between their earthly representatives and that it is the record of
a combat between the followers of light and of darkness that seems to have
been thus preserved. The Babylonian Creation epic teaches us that, in
remotest antiquity, the association of light and life with the male, and
darkness and death with the female principle had become current. A mighty
war takes place between the female serpent Tiamat, associated with evil,
and the male god Marduk, the champion of the gods of the upper realm,
which ends in her overthrow. It was then that Marduk "established the
districts or cities of Anu, Bel and Ea," identified with the North, Middle
and South. It is remarkable that this mythical establishment of three
cities exactly coincides with the conclusions reached by recent
investigators as to the existence during centuries, of three rival states,
_i. e._ Babylonia in the south and Assyria in the northeast, who, during
centuries, were in continual warfare with each other and with a third
disintegrated power inhabiting the northwest which was alternately rival
or vassal. This condition of affairs, and the facts enumerated in
Prof