that have their source in the
human intellect. In giving to these personified powers the determinative
indicative of deity, the Babylonian schoolmen were not conscious of
expressing anything more than their belief in the divine origin of the
power and skill exercised by man. To represent such power as a god was
the only way in which the personification could at all be effected under
the conditions presented by Babylonian beliefs. When, therefore, we meet
with such gods as Nin-zadim, 'lord of sculpture,' it is much the same as
when in the Old Testament we are told that Tubal-cain was the 'father'
of those that work in metals, and where similarly other arts are traced
back to a single source. 'Father' in Oriental hyperbole signifies
'source, originator, possessor, or patron,' and, indeed, includes all
these ideas. The Hebrew writer, rising to a higher level of belief,
conceives the arts to have originated through some single personage
endowed with divine powers;[212] the Babylonian, incapable as yet of
making this distinction, ascribes both the origin and execution of the
art directly to a god. In this way, new deities were apparently created
even at an advanced stage of the Babylonian religion, but deities that
differed totally from those that are characteristic of the earlier
periods. The differentiation of the arts, and the assignment of a patron
to each branch, reflect the thoughts and the aspirations of a later age.
These views must have arisen under an impulse to artistic creation that
was called forth by unusual circumstances, and I venture to think that
this impulse is to be traced to the influence of the Assyrian rulers,
whose greatest ambition, next to military glory, was to leave behind
them artistic monuments of themselves that might unfold to later ages a
tale of greatness and of power. Sculpture and works in metal were two
arts that flourished in a special degree in the days when Assyria was
approaching the zenith of her glory. Nabubaliddin's reign falls within
this period; and we must, therefore, look from this time on for traces
of Assyrian influence in the culture, the art, and also to some extent
in the religious beliefs of the southern district of Mesopotamia.

FOOTNOTES:

[196] The text is defective at the point where the god's name
is mentioned. See _Keils Bibl._ 3, 1, p. 133. King reads,
Lugal-diri-tu-gab.

[197] _Kosmologie_, pp. 481 _seq._

[198] Belser, _Beitraege zur Assyr._ ii. 203, col. vi.