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In addition to the architectural magnificence of the buildings, the gates and walls were embellished with a great variety of sculptures: images of animals, of every form and in every attitude; and men, single and in groups, models of great sovereigns, and representations of hunting scenes, battle scenes, and great events in the Babylonian history.
The Babylonians were unable to penetrate beyond the eastern part of the Delta; the Greek troops fought too well. The limits of the Babylonian empire were permanently fixed at the frontiers of Palestine. That empire, however, was overthrown by Cyrus, and it was easy to see that the conqueror who had proved so irresistible in Asia would not allow Egypt to remain at peace.
They were simply and concisely worded thus: "On the east bank of the Euphrates, nearly opposite the 'Hermitage, there is the sunken fragment of a bronze Gate, formerly belonging to the Palace of the Babylonian Kings.
It was Ham's time-honored custom to tease his aunt, and while she snorted and sniffed, she enjoyed it, for whatever she thought of a Babylonian life, she secretly worshiped this brilliant young nephew who so well fitted its stress and turmoil. "Were you down-stairs at dinner tonight, flirting with the grand dukes and big-wigs?" he demanded as he kissed her pale cheek.
From these peripatetic scholars perhaps came the martyrs of 1270, referred to in the Memorbuch of Mayence. It was Rabbi Moses who, while still in Russia, corresponded with Samuel ben Ali, head of the Babylonian Academy, and called the attention of Western scholars to certain Gaonic decisions.
Perhaps, too, in the final shape given to the tales connected with the creation of the gods and of men we may detect an Assyrian influence on Babylonian thought, some concession made at a period of Assyrian supremacy to certain religious conceptions peculiar to the north.
Anu the god of the sky, Rimmon the god of the air, Nebo the interpreter and prophet of Bel-Merodach, were all adored in Palestine, and their names were preserved to later times in the geography of the country. Even Ashtoreth, in whom all the other goddesses of the popular cult came to be merged, was of Babylonian origin.
Passing to higher forms, it is sufficient to note the suggestive story of Balder among the Scandinavians, and, in the ancient world, the Egyptian Osiris myth, the Great Dragon myth of the Babylonian cosmogony, the various forms of the story of a primeval paradise, and the ceremonies and ideas that have arisen in connection with the death of a god.
Bezold in his great catalogue of the Kouyunjik Collection, a fair idea of the general character of the Babylonian omen literature may be formed. On what principle the omens were derived, it is again difficult to determine in detail, but that some logical principles controlled the interpretations cannot be doubted.
Lajard's view, that all Babylonian and Assyrian deities were androgynous, hardly needs discussion now. +409+. Of a more definite character are expressions in two Phoenician inscriptions. The word shem means 'name, and, if it be so interpreted as to give the goddess the name of a male divinity, she may be understood to have partly male form.
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