NTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introduction 1
II. The Land and the People 26
III. General Traits of the Old Babylonian Pantheon 48
IV. Babylonian Gods Prior to the Days of Hammurabi 51
V. The Consorts of the Gods 104
VI. Gudea's Pantheon 106
VII. Summary 112
VIII. The Pantheon in the Days of Hammurabi 116
IX. The Gods in the Temple Lists and in the Legal and Commercial
Documents 165
X. The Minor Gods in the Period of Hammurabi 171
XI. Survivals of Animism in the Babylonian Religion 180
XII. The Assyrian Pantheon 188
XIII. The Triad and the Combined Invocation of Deities 235
XIV. The Neo-babylonian Period 239
XV. The Religious Literature of Babylonia 245
XVI. The Magical Texts 253
XVII. The Prayers and Hymns 294
XVIII. Penitential Psalms 312
XIX. Oracles and Omens 328
XX. Various Classes of Omens 352
XXI. The Cosmology of the Babylonians 407
XXII. The Zodiacal System of the Babylonians 454
XXIII. The Gilgamesh Epic 467
XXIV. Myths and Legends 518
XXV. The Views of Life After Death 556
XXVI. The Temples and the Cult 612
XXVII. Conclusion 690

[Illustration: MAP OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.

(From a drawing by Mr. J. HORACE FRANK.)]

THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.

CHAPTER I.--INTRODUCTION.

SOURCES AND METHODS OF STUDY.

I.

Until about the middle of the 19th century, our knowledge of the
religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians was exceedingly scant. No
records existed that were contemporaneous with the period covered by
Babylonian-Assyrian history; no monuments of the past were preserved
that might, in default of records, throw light upon the religious ideas
and customs that once prevailed in Mesopotamia. The only sources at
command were the incidental notices--insufficient and fragmentary in
character--that occurred in the Old Testament, in Herodotus, in
Eusebius, Syncellus, and Diodorus. Of these, again, only the two
first-named, the Old Testament and Herodotus, can be termed direct
sources; the rest simply reproduce extracts from other works, notably
from Ctesias, the contemporary of Xenophon, from Berosus, a priest of
the temple of Bel in Babylonia, who lived about the time of Alexander
the Great, or shortly after, and from Apollodorus, Abydenus, Alexander
Polyhistor, and Nicolas of Damascus, all of whom being subsequent to
Berosus, either