bsolute centralization of temporal and spiritual
government and power. It is the opinion of leading Assyriologists that
Assyria was a colony founded by Semitic Babylonians and this conclusion is
corroborated by the view I have advanced, namely, that, as Babylonia
degenerated and abandoned the primeval ideas which nourished the germ of
monotheism, those who adhered to this ideal after prolonged struggles
separated themselves from their ancient mother, and founded new colonies,
the administration and religion of which they established according to
their wider experience and more advanced intellectual and moral
development. A characteristic of Assyria seems to have been the
institution of two male rulers, the high-priest and the king and the cult
of the diurnal and nocturnal heaven, of day and night. As these features
are in marked contrast to the Babylonian male and female rulers and the
cult of heaven and earth and the reproductive principles, it would seem as
though they had developed themselves from a prolonged cult of heaven alone
by the inhabitants of Northern Babylonia, or that they were the result of
a reform led about by the abuses to which the Babylonian cult had led. A
curious development worth mentioning, even out of its chronological order,
was when the Assyrian king Esarhaddon placed his two sons as single rulers
upon the thrones of Babylonia and Assyria. It is known that these two
brothers ruled in peace during twenty years and that then a great
rebellion against the Assyrian rule took place, which ended in the
conquest and destruction of Babylonia and the death of its king, whose
half-brother, the Assyrian ruler Asurbanipal, thus became the sole ruler
of Assyria and Babylonia.

Professor Jastrow tells us that, "as compared with Babylonia, Assyria was
poor in the number of her temples.... The Assyrian rulers were much more
concerned in rearing grand edifices for themselves. While the gods were
not neglected in Assyria, one hears much more of the magnificent palaces
erected by the kings than of temples and shrines."

The above data suffice to show that the tendency of the Assyrian monarchs
was to indulge in self-glorification and to forget what some of his
subjects never could: that his position had originally been that of an
earthly representative only of a higher central, celestial power. As among
some branches of the Semitic race, the conception of a divinity became
more and more elevated until it reached