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nvoked Assur rather than the other gods. Assur was the personification of the old capital of the country and of the nation itself, and though the scribes found an etymology for the name in that of An-sar, the primaeval god of Sumerian cosmogony, the fact was always remembered. Assur was purely Semitic in his attributes, and, like Yahveh of Israel or Chemosh of Moab, was wifeless and childless. It is true that a learned scribe now and then found a wife for him among the numerous divinities of the Babylonian cult, but the discovery was never accepted, and Assur for the mass of his worshippers remained single and alone. It was through trust in him that the Assyrian kings believed their victories were gained, and it was to punish those who disbelieved in him that their campaigns were undertaken. In the worship of Assur, accordingly, a tendency to monotheism reveals itself. The tendency was even more pronounced in a certain literary school of thought in Babylonia. We have texts which resolve the deities of the popular faith into forms of one god; sometimes this is Anu of Erech, sometimes it is Merodach of Babylon. Babylonian worship necessitated a large hierarchy of priests. At the head was the high-priest, who in early times possessed temporal power and in many states was the predecessor of the king. The king, in fact, inherited his priesthood from him, and was consequently qualified to perform priestly functions. Under the high-priest there were numerous classes of ministers of the gods, such as the "anointers," whose duty it was to anoint the holy images with oil, the ordinary "priests," the "seers," and the "prophets." The prophets enjoyed high consideration; they even accompanied the army to the field, and decided whether the campaign would result in victory or defeat. Quite apart from all these were the astrologers, who did not belong to the priesthood at all. On the contrary, they professed to be men of science, and the predictions of the future which they read in the stars were founded on the records and observations of former generations. A chief part of the duty of the priests consisted in offering sacrifice and reciting the services. The sacrifices were of two kinds, as in the Jewish ritual. The same animals and the same fruits of the earth were offered by both Babylonians and Israelites, and in many cases the regulations relating to the sacrifices were similar. The services were elaborate, and the rubrics at
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