Babylonian Sentence Examples

The material for the study of Babylonian law is singularly extensive without being exhaustive.

With this also compare the Babylonian Descent of Ishtar to Hades.

Hence the head of the Babylonian Jews was the exilarch (in Aramaic Resh Galutha) .

Hezekiah (c. 1040) was the last Babylonian exilarch, though the title left its traces in later ages.

Egyptian influence within the Aegean area seems certain, and the theory that Greek writing and systems for reckoning time are Babylonian in origin has not been disproved, though the history of the alphabet is more complex than was supposed.

His death occurred in 528 B.C., as we have a Babylonian tablet from the Adar of the tenth year of Cyrus, i.e.

At the second partition, at Triparadisus (321), Seleucus was given the government of the Babylonian satrapy.

In spite of many comparisons made with Egyptian, Babylonian and "Hittite" plans, both these arrangements remain incongruous with any remains of prior or contemporary structures elsewhere.

He belongs to the heathen Gnosis, and is in his essence the same as the Babylonian Marduk.

Of the names of the planets Estera (Ishtar Venus, also called Ruha d'Qudsha, "holy spirit"), Enba (Nebo, Mercury), Sin (moon), Kewan (Saturn), Bil (Jupiter), and Nirig (Nirgal, Mars) reveal their Babylonian origin; Il or Il Il, the sun, is also known as Kadush and Adunay (the Adonai of the Old Testament); as lord of the planetary spirits his place is in the midst of them; they are the source of all temptation and evil amongst men.

But it is equally plain that the Ophite nucleus has from time to time received very numerous and often curiously perverted accretions from Babylonian Judaism, Oriental Christianity and Parsism, exhibiting a striking example of religious syncretism.

Both alike are merely old Babylonian divinities in a new Biblical garb.

It seems clear that the trinity of Anu, Bel, and Ea in the old Babylonian religion has its counterpart in the Mandaean Pira, Ayar, and Mana rabba.

Manda d'hayye and his image Hibil Ziva with his incarnations clearly correspond to the old Babylonian Marduk, Merodach, the "first-born" son of Ea, with his incarnations, the chief divinity of the city of Babylon, the mediator and redeemer in the old religion.

Especially complicated was the ancient Babylonian demonology; all the petty annoyances of life - a sudden fall, a headache, a quarrel - were set down to the agency of fiends; all the stronger emotions - love, hate, jealousy and so on - were regarded as the work of demons; in fact so numerous were they, that there were special fiends for various parts of the human body - one for the head, another for the neck, and so on.

There is reason to believe that before the 6th century B.C. the caravans reached Damascus without coming near the oasis of Tadmor; probably, therefore, we may connect the origin of the city with the gradual forward movement of the nomad Arabs which followed on the overthrow of the ancient nationalities of Syria by the Babylonian Empire (6th century B.C.).

Both Bel and Malak-bel were of Babylonian origin.

Malak-bel has been explained as " messenger of Bel "; but more probably Malak is the common Babylonian epithet malik given to various gods, and means " counsellor "; Malak-bel will then be the sun as the visible representative of Bel.

These were hard-headed men of affairs - men who would not lightly embark on joyous ventures, or seek for an ideal San Grail; nor were the popes, doomed to the Babylonian captivity for seventy long years at Avignon, able to call down the spark from on high which should consume all earthly ambitions in one great act of sacrifice.

Syria, however, is probably the Babylonian Suri, used of a north Euphratean district, and a word distinct from Assyria.

At a very early period - as early probably as the 16th century B.C.- Syria became the meeting-place of Egyptian and Babylonian elements, resulting in a type of western Asiatic culture peculiar to itself, which through the commerce of the Phoenicians was carried to the western lands of the Mediterranean basin.

The philosopher's egg, as a symbol of creation, is both Egyptian and Babylonian.

The conception of man, the microcosm, containing in himself all the parts of the universe or macrocosm, is also Babylonian, as again probably is the famous identification of the metals with the planets.

This development is a mark of superior culture and may have been spread through Babylonian influence.

Both Baal and Astarte were venerated in Egypt at Thebes and Memphis in the XIXth Dynasty, and the former, through the influence of the Aramaeans who borrowed the Babylonian spelling Bel, ultimately became known as the Greek Belos who was identified with Zeus.

All these stones were of course imported, as the Babylonian had no stone (except a rough coral rag) at hand as the Egyptian had.

He is not identical with any known Babylonian deity, but he is the god of a people belonging to the Babylonian culture circle, probably of the inhabitants of the Red Sea littoral.

This, by the way, points to the conclusion that Babylonian (Sumerian) culture and art were considerably older than the Egyptian; but we have no definite evidence yet on this point.24 Later points of artistic connexion may be seen when we compare the well-known bronze statues of Pepi I.

It is not, however, proposed to give here a list of the newly discovered names 37 of the Babylonian kings on tablets from Nippur, published by Poebel 38 and others, as results of this kind belong to the realm of history rather than to that of archaeology.

Though the Gilgamesh Epic is known to us chiefly from the fragments found in the royal collection of tablets made by Assur-bani-pal, the king of Assyria (668-626 B.C.) 'for his palace at Nineveh, internal evidence points to the high antiquity of at least some portions of it, and the discovery of a fragment of the epic in the older form of the Babylonian script, which can be dated as 2000 B.C., confirms this view.

The name' is not Babylonian, and what evidence as to his origin there is points to his having come from Elam, to the east of Babylonia.

Nature myths have been entwined with other episodes in the epic and finally the theologians took up the combined stories and made them the medium for illustrating the truth and force of certain doctrines of the Babylonian religion.

In the r i th tablet, Ut-Napishtim tells the famous story of the Babylonian flood, which is so patently attached to Gilgamesh in a most artificial manner.

The improvement of waterways in the interior of the empire was not neglected, the Babylonian canal system was repaired, the obstructions in the Tigris removed.

Aratus carried out a recension of the Odyssey, and Berossus composed a Babylonian history in Greek; under Antiochus III.

At the moment when this doctrine had come to be generally accepted by the thinking part of the nation, the Jews found themselves dispersed among foreign communities, and from that time were a subject people environed by aliens, Babylonian, Persian and Greek.

Baghdadu was an ancient Babylonian city, dating back perhaps as far as 2000 B.C., the name occurring in lists in the library of Assur-bani-pal.

Situated in a region where there is no stone, and practically no timber, Bagdad was built, like all the cities of the Babylonian plain, of brick and tiles.

This Biblical city, Akkad, was most probably identical with the northern Babylonian city known to us as Agade (not Agane, as formerly read), which was the principal seat of the early Babylonian king Sargon I.

There are cogent reasons for placing Joel either earlier or later than the great series of prophets extending from the time when Amos first proclaimed the approach of the Assyrian down to the Babylonian exile.

He is frequently invoked in hymns and in votive and other inscriptions of Babylonian and Assyrian rulers, but we do not learn of many temples to him outside of Kutha.

But it is rather a revived than a new capital; Khalep was a very ancient Syrian and probably "Hittite" city of importance, known from Babylonian, Assyrian and Egyptian records.

In the prologue to the law-code of the great Babylonian monarch Khammurabi (c. 22 50 B.C.), the cities of Nineveh and Assur are both mentioned as coming under that king's beneficent influence.

There is nothing in it to indicate that the author's standing-point is earlier than the Babylonian captivity.

Then the Jews and the Asiatic nations in general are introduced trembling at the imminent downfall of the Babylonian empire.

Quite distinct from the spiral is the old Babylonian cloak, which was thrown over the left shoulder, passed under the right 1 See e.g.

The old Babylonian hero Gilgamesh and the Egyptian Bes (perhaps of foreign extraction) are nude, and so in general are the figurines of the Ishtar-Astarte type.

The ceremonial clothing of the god on the occasion of festal processions, undertaken in Egypt by the `` master of secret things," may be compared with the well-known Babylonian representations of such promenades.

The Babylonian temples received garments as payment in kind, and the Egyptian lists in the Papyrus Harris (Rameses III.) enumerate an enormous number of skirts, tunics and mantles, dyed and undyed, for the various deities.

In several old Babylonian representations the priests or worshippers appear before the deity in a state of nature.'

This breast ornament finds analogies in the royal and high priestly dress of Egypt, and in the six jewels of the Babylonian king. ?

His chief temple at Nippur was known as E-Kur, signifying "mountain house," and such was the sanctity acquired by this edifice that Babylonian and Assyrian rulers, down to the latest days, vied with one another in embellishing and restoring Bel's seat of worship, and the name itself became the designation of a temple in general.

It was no doubt owing to his position as the second figure of the triad that enabled him to survive the political eclipse of Nippur and made his sanctuary a place of pilgrimage to which Assyrian kings down to the days of Assur-bani-pal paid their homage equally with Babylonian rulers.

It naturally falls into two divisions, the northern being more or less mountainous, while the southern is flat and marshy; the near approach of the two rivers to one another, at a spot where the undulating plateau of the north sinks suddenly into the Babylonian alluvium, tends to separate them still more completely.

The dense population was due to the elaborate irrigation of the Babylonian plain which had originally reclaimed it from a pestiferous and uninhabitable swamp and had made it the most fertile country in the world.

The only ancient authority of value on Babylonian and Assyrian history is the Old Testament.

What the event should be was determined by the government and notified to all its officials; one of these notices, sent to the Babylonian officials in Canaan in the reign of Samsuiluna, the son of Khammurabi, has been found in the Lebanon.

One of these is the so-called " Synchronous History of Assyria and Babylonia," consisting of brief notices, written by an Assyrian, of the occasions on which the kings of the two countries had entered into relation, hostile or otherwise, with one another; a second is the Babylonian Chronicle discovered by Dr Th.

Pinches, which gave a synopsis of Babylonian history from a Babylonian point of view, and was compiled in the reign of Darius.

The great engineering works by means of which the marshes were drained and the overflow of the rivers regulated by canals went back to Sumerian times, like a considerable part of later Babylonian religion and the beginnings of Babylonian law.

The cuneiform system of writing Semitic. w as still in process of growth when it was borrowed influence p g and adapted by the new comers, and the Semitic Babylonian language was profoundly influenced by the older language of the country, borrowing its words and even its grammatical usages.

Sumerian in its turn borrowed from Semitic Babylonian, and traces of Semitic influence in some of the earliest Sumerian texts indicate that the Semite was already on the Babylonian border.

Babylonian art, however, had already attained a high degree of excellence; two seal cylinders of the time of Sargon are among the most beautiful specimens of the gem-cutter's art ever discovered.

The Babylonian god Ea, however, is more likely to be meant.

It is generally assumed that two dynasties reigned at Ur and claimed suzerainty over the other Babylonian states, though there is as yet no clear proof that there was more than one.

A great literary revival followed the recovery of Babylonian independence, and the rule of Babylon was obeyed as far as the shores of the Mediterranean.

Among the latter is one ordering the despatch of 2 4 0 soldiers from Assyria and Situllum, a proof that Assyria was at the time a Babylonian dependency.

Constant intercourse was kept up between Babylonia and the west, Babylonian officials and troops passing to Syria and Canaan, while " Amorite " colonists were established in Babylonia for the purposes of trade.

One of the most important works of this " First Dynasty of Babylon," as it was called by the native historians, was the compilation of a code of laws (see Babylonian Law).

Babylon, however, remained the capital of the kingdom and the holy city of western Asia, where the priests were all-powerful, and the right to the inheritance of the old Babylonian empire could alone be conferred.

Sargon, who meanwhile had crushed the confederacy of the northern nations, had taken (717 B.C.) the Hittite stronghold of Carchemish and had annexed the future kingdom of Ecbatana, was now accepted as king by the Babylonian priests and his claim to be the successor of Sargon of Akkad acknowledged up to the time of his murder in 705 B.C. His son Sennacherib, who succeeded Serena- hi m on the 12th of Ab, did not possess the military or cherlb. ?

Samas-sum-yukin became more Babylonian than his subjects; the viceroy claimed to be the successor of the monarchs whose empire had once stretched to the Mediterranean; even the Sumerian language was revived as the official tongue, and a revolt broke out which shook the Assyrian empire to its foundations.

Of the reign of the last Babylonian king, Nabonidus, however, and the conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus, we now have a fair amount of information.'

Cyrus now claimed to be the legitimate successor of the ancient Babylonian kings and the avenger of Bel-Merodach, who was wrathful at the impiety of Nabonidus in removing the images of the local gods from their ancestral shrines to his capital Babylon.

For the views of other writers on the chronology, see § viii., Chronological Systems. The Babylonian Dynasties from cir.

The permission to do so was embodied in a proclamation, in which the conqueror endeavoured to justify his claim to the Babylonian throne.

E-Saggila, the great temple of Bel, however, still continued to be kept in repair and to be a centre of Babylonian patriotism, until at last the foundation of Seleucia diverted the population to the new capital of Babylonia and the ruins of the old city became a quarry for the builders of the new seat of government.'

The Babylonian king remained a priest to the last, under the control of a powerful hierarchy; the Assyrian king was the autocratic general of an army, at whose side stood in early days a feudal nobility, and from the reign of Tiglath-pileser III.

A considerable amount of Semitic Babylonian literature was translated from Sumerian originals, and the language of religion and law long continued to be the old agglutinative language of Chaldaea.

The zodiac was a Babylonian invention of great antiquity; and eclipses of the sun as well as of the moon could be foretold.

In Babylonia the abundance of clay and want of stone led to the employment of brick; the Babylonian temples are massive but shapeless structures of crude brick, supported by buttresses, the rain being carried off by drains, one of which at Ur was of lead.

As time went on, however, the later Assyrian architect began to shake himself free from Babylonian influences and to employ stone as well as brick.

It will be convenient to begin with the later historical periods, and then to push our inquiry back into the earlier periods of Babylonian and Sumerian history.

Thus all historians are agreed with regard to the Babylonian chronology back to the year 747 B.C., and with regard to that of Assyria back to the year 911 B.C. It is in respect of the periods anterior to these two dates that different writers have propounded differing systems of chronology, and, as might be imagined, the earlier the period we examine the greater becomes the discrepancy between the systems proposed.

Since its publication in 1884 the Babylonian List of Kings has furnished the framework for every chronological system that has been proposed.

In its original form this document gave a list, arranged in dynasties, of the Babylonian kings, from the First Dynasty of Babylon down to the Neo-Babylonian period.

In addition to the Kings' List, other important chronological data consist of references in the classical authorities to the chronological system of Berossus; chronological references to earlier kings occurring in the later native inscriptions, such as Nabonidus's estimate of the period of Khammurabi (or Hammuribi); synchronisms, also furnished by the inscriptions, between kings of Babylon and of Assyria; and the early Babylonian date-lists.

From a Babylonian chronicle in the British Museum 9 we now know that Dynasty II.

Some time must elapse before absolute uniformity in the transliteration of these proper names is to be expected; and since different scholars still adopt varying spellings of Babylonian and Assyrian proper names, it has been considered undesirable in this work to ignore the fact in individual articles contributed by them.

The main difficulty in the reading of Babylonian and Assyrian proper names arises from the preference given to the " ideographic " method of writing them.

So, for -example, the word for " name " may be written by a sign MU, or it may be written out by two signs shu-mu, the one sign MU representing the " Sumerian " word for " name," which, however, in the case of a Babylonian or Assyrian text must be read as shumu - the Semitic equivalent of the Sumerian MU.

In this case the signs representing Sumerian words were treated merely as syllables, and, without reference to their meaning, utilized for spelling Babylonian words.

Yet, even in those days, the Babylonian syllabary continued to be a mixture of ideographic and phonetic writing.

Thus the name of the chief god of the Babylonian pantheon, Marduk, is written by two signs to be pronounced Amar-Ud, which describe the god as the "young bullock of the day " - an allusion to the solar character of the god in question.

Until, therefore, through parallel passages or through explanatory lists prepared by the Babylonian and Assyrian scribes in large numbers as an aid for the study of the language, 5 the exact phonetic reading of these divine names was determined, scholars remained in doubt or had recourse to conjectural or provisional readings.

In many cases they will probably turn out to be descriptive epithets of gods 3 The Assyrian language is practically identical with the Babylonian, just as the Assyrians are the same people as the Babylonians with some foreign admixtures.

It is therefore not surprising that scholars should differ considerably in the reading of Sumerian names, where we have not helps at our command as for Babylonian and Assyrian names.

For further details regarding the formation of Sumerian and Babylonian-Assyrian proper names, as well as for an indication of the problems involved and the difficulties still existing, especially in the case of Sumerian names,' see the three excellent works now at our disposal for the Sumerian, the old Babylonian, and the neoBabylonian period respectively, by Huber, Die Personennamen den Keilschrifturkunden aus der Zeit der Konige von Ur and Nisin (Leipzig, 1907); Ranke, Early Babylonian Proper Names (Philadelphia, 1905); and Tallqvist, Neu-Babylonisches Namenbuch (Helsingfors, 1905).

This racial question can hardly be determined till those Hatti records, whether in cuneiform or pictographic script, which are couched in a native tongue, not in Babylonian, are read.

Some bear figures of the conventionalized sacred tree with worshippers, similar to Babylonian designs.

The combination of Yah with Ea, one of the great Babylonian gods, seems to have a peculiar fascination for amateurs, by whom it is periodically " discovered."

Scholars are now agreed that, so far as Yahu or Yah occurs in Babylonian texts, it is as the name of a foreign god.

He was the last of seven French popes in succession who had done so, and had perpetuated for seventy-three years what ecclesiastical writers are fond of terming "the Babylonian captivity of the church."

That one of the earlier dates is correct seems probable from the fact that the Falashas know nothing of either the Babylonian or Jerusalem Talmud, make no use of phylacteries (tefillin), and observe neither the feast of Purim nor the dedication of the temple.

For details as to the former, see Babylonian And Assyrian Religion.

But we are far from having exhausted the evidence of Babylonian influence on the Hebrew cosmogony.

For a commentary on this see the opening of the Babylonian account referred to above, which refers to the period of chaos as one in which there were neither reeds nor trees, and where " the lands altogether were sea."

Nor ought we to find a discrepancy between the Babylonian and the Hebrew, accounts in the creation of the heavenly bodies after the plants, related in Gen.

On the whole, the Hebrew statement of the successive stages of creation corresponds so nearly to that in the Babylonian epic that we are bound to assume that one has been influenced by the other.

An important element in this culture would be mythic representations of the origin of things, such as the Babylonian Creation and Deluge-stories in various forms. Indeed, not only Canaan but all the neighbouring regions must have been pervaded by Babylonian views of the universe and its origin.

Myths of origins there must indeed have been in those countries before Babylonian influence became so overpowering, but, if so, these myths must have become recast when the great Teacher of the Nations half-attracted and halfcompelled attention.

Arabia (whence the Israelites may have come) and in Canaan prior to the great extension of Babylonian influence.

We say " in a purely formal aspect," because the strictness with which Babylonian mythic elements have been adapted in Gen.

Even in the time of the later Amoraim there is no mention of a written Palestinian Targum, though the official Babylonian Targum is repeatedly referred to in the Babylonian Talmud, in the Midrashim, and at times also by Palestinian Amoraim.

This old Targum tradition, however, never received official recognition in Palestine, and was unable, therefore, to hold its own when the new Babylonian version was introduced.

Finally, the name of Tidal, king of Goiim, may be identical with a certain Tudhulu the son of Gazza, a warrior, but apparently not a king, who is mentioned in a Babylonian inscription, and Goiim may stand for Gutim, the Guti being a people who lived to the east of Kurdistan.

Nevertheless, there is as yet no monumental evidence in favour of the genuineness of the story, and at the most it can only be said that the author (of whatever date) has derived his names from a trustworthy source, and in representing an invasion of Palestine by Babylonian overlords has given expression to a possible situation.

The most important of these systems in what we call ancient times were the Babylonian, the Greek and the Roman.

Meanwhile, the material found by Botta and Layard, and other successors, in the ruins of Nineveh, has been constantly augmented through the efforts of companies of other investigators, and not merely Assyrian, but much earlier Babylonian and Chaldaean texts in the greatest profusion have been brought to the various museums of Europe and America.

When we turn to the field of Babylonian and Assyrian archaeology, however, the case is very different.

The particular tablets in question date only from about the 7th century B.C., but it is agreed among Assyriologists that they are copies of older texts current in Babylonia for many centuries before, and it is obvious that the compilers of Genesis had access to the Babylonian stories.

From the standpoint of the historian even greater interest attaches to the records of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings when compared with the historical books of the Old Testament.

The Hebrew account of the death of Sennacherib is corroborated by a Babylonian inscription.

Within the past generation records of Cyrus have been brought to light, as well as records of the conquered Babylonian king himself, which show that the Hebrew writers of the later day had a peculiarly befogged impression of a great historical event - their misconception being shared, it may be added, by the Greek historian Herodotus.

This king, as appears from his own records, had a son named Belshazzar, who commanded Babylonian armies in outlying provinces, but who never came to the throne.

As to the confusion of Babylonian names - in which, by the way, the Hebrew and Greek authors do not agree - it is explained that the general, Belshazzar, was perhaps more directly known in Palestine than his father the king.

Strangely enough, all the letters are written in the Babylonian character, and most of them are in the Babylonian language.

They afford, therefore, most striking evidence of a widespread diffusion of Babylonian culture.

Seemingly the widespread Babylonian culture had not reached the Aegean peoples; yet these peoples cannot have been wholly ignorant of things with which commercial intercourse brought them in contact.

It is the basis of the famous Canon of kings, also called Mathematical Canon, preserved to us in the works of Ptolemy, which, before the astonishing discoveries at Nineveh, was the sole authentic monument of Assyrian and Babylonian history known to us.

On account of the difference in the length of the Julian and Babylonian years, the conversion of dates according to the era of Nabonassar into years before Christ is attended with considerable trouble.

This temple had been razed and a fortress built upon its ruins, in the Greek or Seleucid period, some of the bricks found bearing the inscription in Aramaic and Greek of a certain Hadad-nadin-akhe, king of a small Babylonian kingdom.

It was beneath this fortress that the numerous statues of Gudea were found, which constitute the gem of the Babylonian collections at the Louvre.

In a small outlying mound de Sarzec discovered the archives of the temple, about 30,000 inscribed clay tablets, containing the business records, and revealing with extraordinary minuteness the administration of an ancient Babylonian temple, the character of its property, the method of farming its lands, herding its flocks, and its commercial and industrial dealings and enterprises; for an ancient Babylonian temple was a great industrial, commercial, agricultural and stock-raising establishment.

One figure called Sarapo appears to be the Egyptian Serapis, and others are perhaps Babylonian deities.

The chronographers generally retain the name Ochus, and in the Babylonian inscriptions he is called "Umasu, who is called Artakshatsu."

As an illustration of his theory Gunkel seeks at great length to establish the Babylonian origin of chap. xii.

In other words, it has been taken over from pre-existing material - either Christian or Jewish - and the materials of which it is composed are ultimately derived from non-Jewish sources - either Babylonian, Greek or Egyptian - and bore therein very different meanings from those which belong to them in their present connexion.

At the base of this account lies the Babylonian myth' of the birth of the sun-god Marduk, his escape from the dragon who knows him to be his destined destroyer, and the persecution of Marduk's mother by the dragon.

But Gunkel's explanation is an attempt to account for one ignotum per ignotius; for hitherto no trace of the myth of the sun-god's birth and persecution and the flight into the wilderness has been found in Babylonian mythology.

Moreover, Gunkel no longer lays emphasis on the Babylonian, but merely on the mythical origin of the details.

The culture-myth on which the account of Berossus rests has not yet been found in Babylonian literature, but there are numerous indications in hymns and incantations that confirm the indentification with Ea, and also prove the substantial correctness of the conceptions regarding Oannes-Ea as given by Berossus.

But the Babylonian Empire followed upon traditional lines and thrust back Egypt, and Nabonidus (553 B.C.) claims his vassals as far as Gaza.

It appears, too, that a register of the population of each clan was kept during the Babylonian captivity and its totals were published on their return to Jerusalem.

The doctrine of monotheism was formally expressed in the period immediately before and during the Exile, in Deuteronomy" and Isaiah; and at the same time we find angels prominent in Ezekiel who, as a prophet of the Exile, may have been influenced by the hierarchy of supernatural beings in the Babylonian religion, and perhaps even by the angelology of Zoroastrianism."

It may be noticed that a Thamudaean legend has been found on a Babylonian cylinder of about woo B.C., and it is remarkable that the Sabaean satara, " write," seems to be borrowed from Assyrian shataru.

On the Shabwat inscription `Athtar is the father of Sin, and it is noteworthy that these two deities also appear as nearly related in the Babylonian legend of 'Ishtar's descent to Hades, where `Ishtar is conversely the daughter of the god Sin.

As the standard of the coins of Attic type is not Attic but Babylonian, we must not think of direct Athenian influence.

Is he a pale form of the Babylonian chaos-dragon, or of the serpent of Iranian mythology who sprang from heaven to earth to blight the" good creation "?

Still there are four Babylonian stories which may serve as partial illustrations of the Hebrew Adam-story.

Some better monumental illustration may some day be found, for it is clear that the Babylonian sacred literature had much to tell of offences against the gods in the primeval age.

Babylonian influence, as is now well known, was strongly felt for many centuries in Canaan, and even the cuneiform script was in common use among the high officials of the country.

When the Israelites entered Canaan, they would learn myths partly of Babylonian origin.

From the Kenites, at any rate, they may have received, not only a strong religious impulse, but a store of tales of the primitive age, and these stories too may have been partly influenced by Babylonian traditions.

The special god of this city was Ea, god of the sea and of wisdom, and the prominence given to this god in the incantation literature of Babylonia and Assyria suggests not only that many of our magical texts are to be traced ultimately to the temple of Ea at Eridu, but that this side of the Babylonian religion had its origin in that place.

Certain of the most ancient Babylonian myths, especially that of Adapa, may also be traced back to the shrine of Ea at Eridu.

Calculating from the present rate of deposit of alluvium at the head of that gulf, Eridu should have been founded as early as the seventh millennium B.C. It is mentioned in historical inscriptions from the earliest times onward, as late as the 6th century B.C. From the evidence of Taylor's excavations, it would seem that the site was abandoned about the close of the Babylonian period.

The first Babylonian month Nisan, dedicated to Anu and Bel, was that of " sacrifice "; and its association with the Ram as the chief primitive object of sacrifice is thus intelligible.'

Sagittarius, figured later as a Centaur, stood for the Babylonian Mars.

The doubling of the sign of Pisces still recalls, according to Sayce, 8 the arrangement of the Babylonian calendar, in which a year of 360 days was supplemented once in six years by a thirteenth month, a second Adar.

See generally Franz Boll, Sphaera (Leipzig, 1903); also the bibliographies to ASTROLOGY and BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN RELIGION.

While the ruins of Calah were remarkably rich in monumental material, enamelled bricks, bronze and ivory objects and the like, they yielded few of the inscribed clay tablets found in such great numbers at Nineveh and various Babylonian sites.

Babylonia had already been conquered as far as the marshes of the Chaldaeans in the south, and the Babylonian king put to death.

The "Seth" of Numbers is sometimes identified with the Bedouin, who appear as Sutu in Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions.

There was a mythic bird-cherub, and then perhaps a winged animal-form, analogous to the winged figures of bulls and lions with human faces which guarded Babylonian and Assyrian temples and palaces.

The other system, the Babylonian or superlinear, is chiefly found in certain Yemen MSS.

For example, the recent discovery of the Code of Khammurabi, which contains some remarkable resemblances to the Pentateuchal codes, raises the question of the relation of Hebrew to Babylonian law.

Of late, too, it has been much argued, and often somewhat confidently maintained, that Hebrew monotheism is derivative from Babylonian monotheism.

It was still an Egyptian province, and the Babylonian language, in which the correspondence is written, shows that the country must have been for a considerable time past, before it came into the possession of Egypt, under Babylonian 60 215 430 influence.

It may be explained here that the dates of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings can be reduced to years B.C. by means of the socalled " Canon of Ptolemy," which is a list of the Babylonian and Persian kings, with the lengths of their reigns, extending from Nabonassar, 747 B.C., to Alexander the Great, drawn up in the 2nd century A.D.

The Babylonian deity Nabu (in Old Testament Nebo) is a contraction from Na-bi-u, which thus corresponds closely with the Hebrew nablti a and originally signified the speaker or proclaimer of destiny.

On the other hand the cult of a specific storm-god in ancient Babylonia is vouched for by the occurrence of the sign Im - the "Sumerian" or ideographic writing for Adad-Ramman - as an element in proper names of the old Babylonian period.

The Babylonian system was sexagesimal, thus (18) --

The name "Babylonian foot" used by Böckh (2) is only a theory of his, from which to derive volumes and weights; and no evidence for this name, or connexion with Babylon, is to be found.

The Babylonian system was very similar (18) --

Another division (in a papyrus) (38) is a silver weight of 6/10 kat = about 88 -- perhaps the Babylonian siglus of 86.

This is the system of the "Babylonian" talent, by Herodotus = 70 minae Euboic, by Pollux = 70 minae Attic, by Aelian = 72 minae Attic, and, therefore, about 470,000 grains.

In the Mandaean speculations the Seven are introduced with the Babylonian names of the planets.

But this reference to Babylonian religion does not solve the problem which is here in question.

For in the Babylonian religion the planetary constellations are reckoned as the supreme deities.

This can only be explained on the assumption that some religion hostile to, and stronger than the Babylonian, has superimposed itself upon this, and has degraded its principal deities into daemons.

We are at first inclined to think of Christianity itself, but it is certainly most improbable that at the time of the rise of Christianity the Babylonian teaching about the seven planet-deities governing the world should have played so great a part throughout all Syria, Asia Minor and Egypt, that the most varying sections of syncretic Christianity should over and over again adopt this doctrine and work it up into their system.

A combination of the Babylonian with the Persian religion could only be effected by the degradation of the Babylonian deities into half-divine, half-daemonic beings, infinitely remote from the supreme God of light and of heaven, or even into powers of darkness.

They are derived from the same period in which the underlying idea of the Gnostic systems also originated, namely, the time at which the ideas of the Persian and Babylonian religions came into contact, the remarkable results of which have thus partly found their way into the official documents of Parsiism.

Neither would it be correct to identify her entirely with the great goddess Ishtar of the old Babylonian religion.

There was a quarter or suburb of the old Babylonian city of Lagash whose name was written in the same way; this may possibly have been the home of those settlers from Babylonia who gave its name to the Assyrian city.

Tens of thousands of clay tablets, systematically arranged on shelves, contained the classics of the Babylonian literature for which his scribes ransacked and copied the treasures of all then known centres of literary life.

It is probable that this Babylonian sect had absorbed Christian elements.

According to Kessler, these prayers are closely related to the Mandaean and the ancient Babylonian hymns.

The extracts containing the Babylonian cosmology, the list of the antediluvian kings of Babylonia, and the Chaldaean story of the Deluge, have been shown by the decipherment of the cuneiform texts to have faithfully reproduced the native legends; we may, therefore, conclude that the rest of the History was equally trustworthy.

The cult of Ninib can be traced back to the oldest period of Babylonian history.

It seems unwarranted to make this Sarapsi= Sarapis travel to Sinope and thence to Alexandria as the type of the Egyptian god; but whether or no the Egyptian appellation Sarapis was applied to express the Babylonian Sarapsi, the part it played in the last days of Alexander may have determined the choice by which the Egyptian Osiris-Apis supplied the name and some leading characteristics to the god of Alexandria.

The interesting parallels between the Babylonian Marduk (Merodach) god of light and Christ as a world saviour are ingeniously set forth by Zimmern in K.A.T., 3rd ed., pp. 376-391, but the total impression which they leave is vague.

The absence of any equivalent names in Babylonian or Assyrian documents is noteworthy, 3 especially as the Babylonians spoke of the "Sea-Country" (mat Tamtim).

Bitumen is found at Hit, whence perhaps its name (Babylonian Id in Tukulti Ninib II.'s inscription referred to above), and near the Tigris.2 Climate.

It may be that some of the early north Babylonian kingdoms, such as Kish, extended control thither.

The earliest Babylonian monarch of whose presence in Mesopotamia there is positive evidence is Lugalzaggisi (before 2500 s.c.), who claims, with the help of En-lil, to have led his countless host victorious to the Mediterranean.

Not quite so successful eventually was the similar enterprise farther north at Asshur [or Assur (q.v.)] on the east margin of Mesopotamia, although we do not know the immediate outcome of the struggle between Asshur and the first Babylonian king, Sumu-abi.

It is just as uncertain how long Asshur remained under the Babylonian suzerainty of which there is evidence in the time of Khammurabi, and what the relation of Asshur to western Mesopotamia was under the early kings whose names have lately been recovered.

Among the Aramaic-speaking people the revolution which displaced the Arabian court of Damascus in favour of a cosmopolitan world centred at the Babylonian seat of the civilizations dealt with in the preceding paragraphs naturally gave an impulse to the wider scholarship. Translations were made from Greek, as, e.g.

The tablets which reveal this state of affairs are written in the language and script of Babylonia, and thus show indirectly the extent to which Babylonian culture had penetrated Palestine and Phoenicia; at the same time they illustrate the closeness of the relations between the Canaanite towns and the dominant power of Egypt.

The mistress of Gebal was no doubt `Ashtart (Astarte in Greek, `Ashtoreth in the Old Testament, pronounced with the vowels of bosheth, " shame "), a name which is obviously connected with the Babylonian Ishtar, and, as used in Phoenician, is practically the equivalent of " goddess."

At the same time Philo did not invent all the nonsense which he has handed down; he drew upon various sources, Greek and Egyptian, some of them ultimately of Babylonian origin, and incidentally he mentions matters of interest which, when tested by other evidence, are fairly well supported.

Older than these are the Babylonian oracle (97-154) and the Persian (381-387).

This etymological connexion, suggested by Jensen (Kosmologie, 84), brings the festival of Purim into close relation with the Babylonian New Year festival known as Zagmuku, in which one of the most prominent ceremonials was the celebration of the assembly of the gods under the presidency of Marduk (Merodach) for the purpose of determining the fates of the New Year.

At the same time it is difficult to understand why Jews in Palestine and Egypt should have accepted a purely Persian or Babylonian festival long after they had ceased to be connected with the Persian Empire.

In the spelling Mar-tu, the name is as old as the first Babylonian dynasty, but from the 15th century B.C. and downwards its syllabic equivalent Amurru is applied primarily to the land extending northwards of Palestine as far as Kadesh on the Orontes.

If the people of the first Babylonian dynasty (about 21st century B.C.) called themselves "Amorites," as Ranke seems to have shown, it is possible that some feeling of common origin was recognized at that early date.

The Babylonian name Shumer was used in the cuneiform inscriptions together with Akkad, viz.

That Shumer actually did mean all Babylonia appears evident from the biblical use of Shinar=Shumer to describe the district which contained the four chief Babylonian cities, viz.

In short, there can be no doubt that the biblical name Shinar was practically equivalent to the mat Shumeri u Akkadi= non-Semitic Kengi-Uri of the Babylonian inscriptions.

Furthermore, the fact that the Syriac Sen'ar = Shinar was later used to denote the region about Bagdad (northern Babylonia) does not necessarily prove that Shinar-Shumer meant only northern Babylonia, because, when the term Sen'ar was applied to the Bagdad district the great southern Babylonian civilization had long been forgotten and " Babylonia " really meant only what we now know as northern Babylonia.

Others have seen in the ancient Babylonian place-name Gir-su an inversion of Su-gir = Su-ngir, which has also been identified with Shumer.

All that can be said at present about this difficult etymology is that in the non-Semitic Babylonian the medial m represented quite evidently an indeterminate nasal which could also be indicated by the combination rig.

In a great number of Babylonian inscriptions an idiom has long been recognized which is clearly not ordinary Semitic in character.

The solution of this problem is of vital importance in connexion with the early history of man's development in the Babylonian region.

Previous to Professor Friedrich Delitzsch's masterly work on the origin of the most ancient Babylonian system of writing,' no one had correctly understood the facts regarding the beginnings of the cuneiform system, which is now generally recognized as having been originally a pure picture writing which later developed into a conventionalized ideographic and syllabic sign-list.

On the philological methods of the ancient Babylonian priesthood, see Prince, Materials for a Sumerian Lexicon, Introduction.

With the decay of the Babylonian power the high-priests succeeded in making themselves independent kings, and Assur became the capital of an important kingdom.

This journey resulted not only in the discovery of the missing tablets, but of fragments which recorded the succession and duration of the Babylonian dynasties.

Scientific research might prosper, just as poetry withered, under the patronage of kings, and such research had now a vast amount of new material at its disposal and could profit by the old Babylonian and Egyptian traditions.

Diogenes, the Stoic philosopher (head of the school in 156 B.C.), was a " Babylonian," i.e.

The visit of the three great philosophers, Diogenes the " Babylonian," Critolaus and Carneades in 155, was an epoch-making event in the history of Hellenism at Rome.

Pharaoh Hophra (Apries), 589570 B.C., fomented rebellion against the Babylonian suzerainty in Judah, but accomplished little there.

The Babylonian army began to lay siege to Jerusalem in the ninth year of his reign, and a vain attempt was made by Pharaoh Hophra to cause a diversion.

Ba11, 3 Lamech is an adaptation of the Babylonian Lamga, a title of Sin the moon god, and synonymous with Ubara in the name Ubara-Tutu, the Otiartes of Berossus, who is the ninth of the ten primitive Babylonian kings, and the father of the hero of the Babylonian flood story, just as Lamech is the ninth patriarch, and the father of Noah.

The principal ruins of the town of Pasargadae at Murghab are a great terrace like that of Persepolis, and the remainders of three buildings, on which the building inscription of Cyrus, "I Cyrus the king the Achaemenid" (sc. " have built this"),, occurs five times in Persian, Susian and Babylonian.

This conception of the strife of God with the devil was further interwoven, before its introduction into the Antichrist myth, with another idea of different origin, namely, the myth derived from the Babylonian religion, of the battle of the supreme God (Marduk) with the dragon of chaos (Tiamat), originally a myth of the origin of things which, later perhaps, was changed into an eschatological one, again under Iranian influence?

There is no precise Babylonian or Egyptian equivalent, though attempts have been made to produce points of contact with Babylonian or Egyptian beliefs.

Though there is no direct evidence of this connexion, enormous numbers of tumuli, probably of Phoenician origin, exist on the Bahrein Is., which also contain tumuli of Babylonian age.

Babylonian tumuli have also been found at Bushire.

They were, On the Liberty of a Christian Man, An Address to the Nobility of the German Nation, and On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church of God - the three primary treatises, as they have been called.

Although Syria and Palestine now became Babylonian, this revival of the Egyptian Empire aroused hopes in Judah of deliverance and led to revolts (under Jehoiachin and Zedekiah), in which Judah was apparently not alone.'

Biblical history itself recognizes in the times of Artaxerxes, Nehemiah and Ezra the commencement of a new era, and although only too much remains obscure we have in these centuries a series of vicissitudes which separate the old Palestine of Egyptian, Hittite, Babylonian and Assyrian supremacy from the land which was about to enter the circle of Greek and Roman civilization.

Oriental law is primitive or advanced according to the social conditions, with the result that antiquity of ideas is no criterion of date, and modern desert custom is more archaic than the great code of the Babylonian king Khammurabi Babylonian g y g Law.

The Babylonian code is essentially class-legislation, and from the point of view of the idealism of the Old Testament prophets, which raises the rights of humanity above everything else, the steps which the code takes to safeguard the rights of property (slaves included therein) would naturally seem harsh.

The existence of other laws, however, is to be presupposed, and there appear to be cases where the Babylonian code lies in the background.

An independent authority concludes that " the co-existing likeness and differences argue for an independent recension of ancient custom deeply influenced by Babylonian law."

After a lengthy development in the history of the human race a definite stage seems to have been reached about 5000 B.C., which step by step led on to those great ancient cultures (Egyptian, Aegean, Babylonian) which surrounded Palestine.

This has been the origin of the long succession of Semitic waves - Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite, Hebrew, Nabataean, Moslem - that have flowed over Mesopotamia and Palestine; there is every reason to suppose that they will be followed by others, and that the Arab will remain master at the end, as he was in the beginning.

It is now generally agreed that the present adjustment of the older historical books of the Old Testament to form a continuous record of events from the creation to the Babylonian' exile is due to an editor, or rather to successive redactors, who pieced together and reduced to a certain unity older memoirs of very different dates; and closer examination shows that the continuity of many parts of the narrative is more apparent than real.

As the tenth patriarch Noah corresponds to the tenth prehistoric Babylonian king, Xisuthros in Berossus, Ut-napistim or Atrahasis in the cuneiform tablets, the hero of the Babylonian flood story.

Mild attempts, to be sure, to group the chief deities associated with the most important religious and political centres into a regular pantheon were made - notably in Nippur and later in Ur - but such attempts lacked the enduring quality which attaches to Khammurabi's avowed policy to raise Marduk - the patron deity of the future capital, Babylon - to the head of the entire Babylonian pantheon, as 1 Even in the case of the "Semitic" name of the famous Sargon I., whose full name is generally read Sharru-kenu-sha-ali, and interpreted as "the legitimate king of the city," the question has recently been raised whether we ought not to read "` Sharru-kenushar-ri" and interpret as "the legitimate king rules" - an illustration of the vacillation still prevailing in this difficult domain of research.

The older incantations, associated with Ea, were re-edited so as to give to Marduk the supreme power over demons, witches and sorcerers; the hymns and lamentations composed for the cult of Bel, Shamash and of Adad were transformed into paeans and appeals to Marduk, while the ancient myths arising in the various religious and political centres underwent a similar process of adaptation to changed conditions, and as a consequence their original meaning was obscured by the endeavour to assign all mighty deeds and acts, originally symbolical of the change of seasons or of occurrences in nature, to the patron deity of Babylon - the supreme head of the entire Babylonian pantheon.

His grandson Assur-bani-pal, with a view of reestablishing amicable relations, restored the statue to the temple E-Saggila in Babylon and performed the time-honoured ceremony of "taking the hand of Bel" as a symbol of his homage to the ancient head of the Babylonian pantheon.

An important factor which thus served to maintain the rites in a more or less stable condition was the predominance of what may be called the astral theology as the theoretical substratum of the Babylonian religion, and which is equally pronounced in the religious system of Assyria.

The persistent prominence which astrology continued to enjoy down to the border-line of the scientific movement of our own days, and which is directly traceable to the divination methods perfected in the Euphrates valley, is a tribute to the scope and influence attained by the astral theology of the Babylonian and Assyrian priests.

In such a movement as early Christian gnosticism, Babylonian elements - modified, to be sure, and transformed - are largely present, while the growth of an apocalyptic literature is ascribed with apparent justice by many scholars to the recrudescence of views the ultimate source of which is to be found in the astral-theology of the Babylonian and Assyrian priests.

Of special texts and monographs bearing on the religion may be mentioned various volumes in the new series of cuneiform texts from Babylonian tablets, &c., in the British Museum (London, 1901 -), especially parts v., xii., xv., xvii., xviii., xx.

To this Akkadian occupation succeeded an occupation by the first Semitic dynasty of Ur, and the constructions of Ur-Gur or Ur-Engur, the great builder of Babylonian temples, are superimposed immediately upon the constructions of Naram-Sin.

With the establishment of the Babylonian empire, under Khammurabi, early in the 2nd preChristian millennium, the religious as well as the political centre of influence was transferred to Babylon, Marduk became the Bel or lord of the pantheon, many of En-lil's attributes and myths were transferred to him, and E-kur was to some extent neglected.

The excavations at Nippur were the first to reveal to us the extreme antiquity of Babylonian civilization, and, as already stated, they give us the best consecutive record of the development of that civilization, with a continuous occupancy from a period of unknown antiquity, long ante-dating 5000 B.C., onward to the middle ages.

But while Nippur has been more fully explored than any other old Babylonian city, except Babylon and Lagash, still only a small part of the great ruins of the ancient site had been examined in 1909.

Excavation at Nippur is particularly difficult and costly by reason of the inaccessibility of the site, and the dangerous and unsettled condition of the surrounding country, and still more by reason of the immense mass of later debris under which the earlier and more important Babylonian remains are buried.

Fisher, Excavations at Nippur (1st part 1905, 2nd part 1906); Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, a monumental edition of the cuneiform texts found at Nippur, with brief introductions and notes of a more general character (1893 foil.).

Though mutilated portions of only a few of its lines have been preserved, and the text contains no proper name, it is clear that the tablet represents part of a Babylonian version of the Deluge Legend.'

The portion of the story covered by the text relates to the warning given by Ea to Ut-napishtim, the Babylonian equivalent of the Hebrew Noah.

For several years the existence of Babylonian versions of the legend had been detected among collections of tablets dating from the earlier historical periods.

According to its discoverer it represents the oldest account of the Babylonian Deluge story extant; and he considers it of fundamental importance for determining the age of Israel's earliest traditions, since he would regard it as having been written "before Abraham had left his Babylonian home in Ur of the Chaldees."

A number of hymns and prayers addressed to the chief Babylonian gods, and written throughout in the Sumerian language, have been found at Nippur, and these may be dated in the era of the kings of Ur and Isin, since some of them are mentioned by name in the petitions.

The possibility that Hebrew traditions were subject to Babylonian influence from the period of the Canaanite conquest has long been recognized, and to the Exilic and post-Exilic Jew the mythology of Babylon may well have presented many familiar features.

According to the Babylonian account, the resting-place of the Ark was "on the Mountain of Nizir," which some writers have identified with Mount Rowanduz, and others with Mount Elburz, near Teheran.

The Babylonian Ea, who sometimes has serpent attributes, introduced - like the American serpent Votan - knowledge and culture.

In Babylonian myth a serpent, apparently in a well or pool, deprived Gilgamesh of the plant which rejuvenated old age, and if it was the rightful guardian of the wonderful gift, one is reminded of the Hebrew story, now reshaped in Gen.

A Babylonian cylinder represents two figures (divine?) on either side of a fruit-tree, and behind one of them a serpent coils upwards.

The word is of Babylonian origin, adopted by the Jews with other calendar names after the Babylonian exile.

As II of the 12 which have meanings are to be found in the Assyrian-Babylonian syllabaries, he suggests a possible Babylonian origin.

So also if Kaf corresponds to the Babylonian Kappu, " hollow-hand," the Sabaean form which Hommel5 interprets as the outline of the hand with the fingers turned in and the thumb raised is a better pictograph than the various meaningless forms of k (&c.).

Kewan is probably the old Babylonian Ka(y)awanu, the planet Saturn, another (the Akkadian) name for which is Sakkut, which appears as Siccuth in the earlier part of the verse.

On Babylonian tablets both the forms Khishiarshu and Akkashiarshi occur amongst others.

They produced a brilliant succession of eminent scholars and scientists who transmitted to the Moslems the results of Babylonian civilization and Greek learning, and their influence at the court of Baghdad secured more or less toleration for Sabianism, although in the reign of Harlan al-Rashid the Harranians had already found it necessary to establish a fund by means of which the conscientious scruples of Moslem officials might be overcome.

Larsa is mentioned in Babylonian inscriptions as early as the time of Ur-Gur, 2700 or 2800 B.C., who built or restored the ziggurat (stage-tower) of E-Babbar, the temple or Shamash.

It finally lost its independence under Samsu-iluna, son of Khammurabi, c. 1900 B.C., and from that time until the close of the Babylonian period it was a subject city of Babylon.

Loftus found also the remains of an ancient Babylonian cemetery.

No reference to Cyprus has been found in Babylonian orA.ssyrian records before the reign of Sargon II.

The whole was in two great recensions, Palestinian and Babylonian.

Rab Abina (died 499), heads of the academy of Sura, the Babylonian recension became practically complete.

The Palestinian Talmud, although used by the Qaraites in their controversies, fell into neglect, and the Babylonian recension became, what it has since been, the authoritative guide.

At the same time, the polemics had useful results since the literary controversy in the 16th century (when Johann Reuchlin took the part of the Jews) led to the editio princeps of the Babylonian Talmud (Vienna, 1520-23).

Babylonian speculation embraced the world in a triad of divine powers, Anu the god of heaven, Bel of earth and Ea of the deep; and these became the symbols of the order of nature, the divine embodiments of physical law?

Not only does a sky-god like Varuna, or a sun-god like the Babylonian Shamash, survey all human things, and take cognizance of the evil-doer, but the daily course of the world is itself the expression of an intellectual and moral power.

In the chains of Zagros we find, in Babylonian and Assyrian times, no trace of Iranians; but partly Semitic peoplesthe Gutaeans, Lulubaeans, &c.partly tribes that we can refer to no known ethnological group, e.g.

In the latter Nineveh is destroyed by the Mede Arbaces and the Babylonian Belesys about 880 B.C., a period when thi Assyrians were just beginning to lay the foundations of their power.

Thus the old figures of the Aryan folk-religion return to the foreground, there to be amalgamated with the Babylonian divinities.

The goddess of springs and streams (of the Oxus in particular) and of all fertilityA rdvisura Anahsla, Ana-ilis is endowed with the form of the Babylonian Ishtar and Belit.

The royal edifices and sculptures are dependent, mainly, on Babylonian models, but, at the same time, we can trace in them the, influence of Greece, Egypt and Asia Minor; the last in the rock-sepulchres.

The chronology is exactly verified by the Ptolemaic canon, bI numerous Babylonian and a few Egyptian documents, and by thi evidence of the Greeks.

The Babylonian towns, especially Seleucia (q.v.), were handed over by Phraates to his favorite, the Hyrcanian Himerus, who punished them severely for their resistance.

The Tell el-Amarna tablets found in Upper Egypt in 1887 are a series of despatches in cuneiform script from Babylonian kings and Phoenician and Palestinian governors to the Pharaohs (c. 1400 B.C.).

Chrysippus's im mediate successors were Zeno of Tarsus, Diogenes of Seleucia (often called the Babylonian) and Antipater of Tarsus, men of no originality, though not without ability; the two lastnamed, however, had all their energies taxed to sustain the conflict with Carneades (q.v.).

Diogenes the Babylonian had written a treatise on language and one entitled The Laws.

But thanks in some measure to the intestine troubles in Elam, the Babylonian army and its allies were defeated and driven into Babylon, Sippara, Borsippa and Cutha.

The exterior of the palace wall exhibited a system of groups of half columns and stepped recesses, an ornament familiar in Babylonian architecture.

As already stated, the matrices of ancient Babylonian and Assyrian seals, usually cut on precious stones, are in cylinder form.

The fine collection in the British Museum presents us with Babylonian specimens of even archaic times, Assyrian followed by an historical series, the earliest of which is of nearly 4500 years B.C. The Assyrian series is not so full.

The sudden rise of the later Babylonian empire under Nebuchadrezzar, the son of Nabopolassar, must have tended to produce so thorough an amalgamation of the Chaldaeans and Babylonians, who had theretofore been considered as two kindred branches of the same original Semite stock, that in the course of time no perceptible differences existed between them.

Consequently, the term "Chaldaean" came quite naturally to be used in later days as synonymous with "Babylonian."

When subsequently the Babylonian language went out of use and Aramaic took its place, the latter tongue was wrongly termed "Chaldee" by Jerome, because it was the only language known to him used in Babylonia.

As just shown, "Chaldaean" and "Babylonian" had become in later times practically synonymous, but the term "Chaldaean" had lived on in the secondary restricted sense of "wise men."

This name in later times, owing to the racial amalgamation of the Chaldaeans and Babylonians, lost its former national force, and became, as it occurs in Daniel, a distinctive appellation of the Babylonian priestly class.

It is possible, though not certain, that the occurrence of the word kalu (priest) in Babylonian, which has no etymological connexion with Kaldu, may have contributed paronomastically towards the popular use of the term "Chaldaeans" for the Babylonian Magi.

Among the Semitic peoples (with the notable exception of the Hebrews) a supreme female deity was worshipped under different names - the Assyrian Ishtar, the Phoenician Ashtoreth (Astarte), the Syrian Atargatis (Derketo), the Babylonian Belit (Mylitta), the Arabian Ilat (Al-ilat).

But this was not the case, because the Babylonian language survived until a later date than that of the events portrayed in Daniel.'

The latest connected Babylonian inscription is that of Antiochus Soter (280-260 B.C.), but the language was probably spoken until Hellenic times; cf.

It is now the general opinion of most modern scholars who study the Old Testament from a critical point of view that this work cannot possibly have originated, according to the traditional theory, at any time during the Babylonian monarchy, when the events recorded are supposed to have taken place.

All the above evidences are merely internal, but we are now able to draw upon the Babylonian historical sources to prove that Daniel could not have originated at the time of Nebuchadrezzar.

Had Nabonidus been descended from Nebuchadrezzar he could hardly have failed in his records, which we possess, to have boasted of such a connexion with the greatest Babylonian monarch; yet in none of his inscriptions does he trace his descent beyond his father.

Had the work been composed during the Babylonian era, it would be more natural to expect prophecies of the return of the exiled Jews to Palestine, as in Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah, rather than the acclamation of an ideal Messianic kingdom such as is emphasized in the second part of Daniel.

The author takes a genuine prophecy, undoubtedly intended by Jeremiah to refer simply to the duration of the Babylonian captivity, and, by means of a purely arbitrary and mystical interpretation, makes it denote the entire period of Israel's degradation down to his own time.

The work, which is certainly not a forgery, but only a consolatory political pamphlet, is just as powerful, viewed according to the author's evident intention, as a consolation to God's people in their dire distress at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, as if it were, what an ancient but mistaken tradition had made it, really an accurate account of events which took place at the close of the Babylonian period.'

This, like the earliest Babylonian altars, is of baked earth.

With the exception of Babylonian dated tablets and some Egyptian inscriptions, we possess no contemporary evidence about the reign of Cambyses but the short account of Darius in the Behistun inscription.

After the days of Khammurabi, the cult of Marduk eclipses that of Bel (q.v.), and although during the five centuries of Cassite control in Babylonia (c.1750-1200B.C.), Nippur and the cult of the older Bel enjoy a period of renaissance, when the reaction ensued it marked the definite and permanent triumph of Marduk over Bel until the end of the Babylonian empire.

His high-priest, a Babylonian, was deposed in order that Aristobulus III., Mariamne's brother, might hold the place to which he had some ancestral right.

Esther is a modification of Ishtar, the name of the Babylonian goddess of fertility and of the planet Venus, whose myth must have been partially known to the Israelites even in pre-exilic times,' and after the fall of the state must have acquired a still stronger hold on Jewish exiles.

Following the real or fancied light of these names, Prof. Jensen holds that the Esther-legend is based on a mythological account of the victory of the Babylonian deities over those of Elam, which in plain prose means the deliverance of ancient Babylonia from its Elamite oppressors, and that such an account was closely connected with the Babylonian New Year's festival, called Zagmuk, just as the Esther-legend is connected with the festival of Purim.

The conceptions connected with Nusku are of distinctly popular origin, as is shown by his prominence in incantations, which represent the popular element in the cult, and it is significant that in the astro-theological system of the Babylonian priests Nusku-Girru is not assigned to any particular place in the heavens.

He married Amuhia, daughter of the Median king, according to Abydenus, and in 605 B.C. defeated Necho at Carchemish, driving the Egyptians out of Asia and annexing Syria to the Babylonian empire.