of the
sacrificial system may be noted. Libations were poured out before the
deities, consisting originally, probably, of pure water, to which was
subsequently added wine, made either from the palm or the vine. All
the first-fruits of the cultivated land were offered to the god; milk
and butter and oil, dates and vegetables were given in abundance. So
too were spices and incense, brought from the southern coast of Arabia,
the corn that was grown in the fields, garlic and other herbs from the
garden, and honey from the hive. Annual sacrifices were not forgotten.
Oxen and calves, sheep and lambs, goats and kids, fish and certain
kinds of birds, were slain upon the altar. There are traces of human
sacrifice, but, as among the Hebrews, the practice disappeared at an
early date. "Babylonia," says Sayce, "was the inventor of the
tithe,"[22] which was paid by all classes, even the king. One of the
last acts recorded of the crown prince, Belshazzar, is the payment of a
tithe, forty-seven shekels in amount, due from his sister to the temple
of the sun-god at Sippara. The daily sacrifice was a fixed custom.
Several of the technical terms of the Old Testament are {181} found
also in Assyrian. For example: _torah_, law, has its counterpart in
the Assyrian _tertu_; the biblical _kipper_, atonement, is the Assyrian
_kuppuru_; _korban_, gift or offering, is the Assyrian _kurbannu_. The
names for animal sacrifice, _zibu_, for meal offering, _manitu_, and
for freewill offering, _nidbu_, all are found in their Hebrew forms in
the Old Testament. As in the Hebrew legislation, a distinction is made
between the offerings of the rich and the poor, and the sacrificial
animal was to be without blemish. The Babylonian priest retained
certain parts for himself, which was also the custom among the Hebrews
(Deut. 18. 3), though the parts retained are not the same in the two
cases. A ritual tablet shows that Babylonians sprinkled the blood of
the lamb that was killed at the gate of the palace on the lintels, on
the figures flanking the entrances, and on the doorposts to the right
and the left, which has its parallel in the Hebrew passover ceremony.

These illustrations, which by no means exhaust the list, reveal close
similarities between the Hebrew ceremonial and that of the inhabitants
of the Euphrates-Tigris valley, and the more we know of the Babylonian
ritual, the more extensive and striking these resemblances become.
They both sta