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