one offers me a hand,--I weep, and no one comes to
me,--I cry aloud, and no one hears me:--I sink under affliction, I am
overwhelmed, I can no longer raise up my head,--I turn to my merciful
god to call upon him, and I groan!... Lord reject not thy servant,--and
if he is hurled into the roaring waters, stretch to him thy hand;--the
sins I have committed, have mercy upon them,--the misdeeds I have
committed, scatter them to the winds--and my numerous faults, tear them
to pieces like a garment." Sin in the eyes of the Chaldaean was not, as
with us, an infirmity of the soul; it assaulted the body like an actual
virus, and the fear of physical suffering or death engendered by it,
inspired these complaints with a note of sincerity which cannot be
mistaken.

Every individual is placed, from the moment of his birth, under the
protection of a god and goddess, of whom he is the servant, or rather
the son, and whom he never addresses otherwise than as his god and
his goddess. These deities accompany him night and day, not so much to
protect him from visible dangers, as to guard him from the invisible
beings which ceaselessly hover round him, and attack him on every side.
If he is devout, piously disposed towards his divine patrons and the
deities of his country, if he observes the prescribed rites, recites the
prayers, performs the sacrifices--in a word, if he acts rightly--their
aid is never lacking; they bestow upon him a numerous posterity, a
happy old age, prolonged to the term fixed by fate, when he must resign
himself to close his eyes for ever to the light of day. If, on the
contrary, he is wicked, violent, one whose word cannot be trusted, "his
god cuts him down like a reed," extirpates his race, shortens his days,
delivers him over to demons who possess themselves of his body and
afflict it with sicknesses before finally despatching him. Penitence
is of avail against the evil of sin, and serves to re-establish a right
course of life, but its efficacy is not permanent, and the moment at
last arrives in which death, getting the upper hand, carries its victim
away. The Chaldaeans had not such clear ideas as to what awaited them in
the other world as the Egyptians possessed: whilst the tomb, the mummy,
the perpetuity of the funeral revenues, and the safety of the double,
were the engrossing subjects in Egypt, the Chaldaean texts are almost
entirely silent as to the condition of the soul, and the living seem to
have had no f