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By a play upon his name, resting upon an arbitrary division of Anshar into An and Shar, the deity becomes the 'one that embraces all that is above. The element An is the same that we have in Anu, and is the 'ideographic' form for 'high' and 'heaven. Shar signifies 'totality' and has some connection with a well-known Babylonian word for 'king. The natural consort to an all-embracing upper power is a power that 'embraces all that is below'; and since Ki is the ideographic form for 'earth, it is evident that Ki-Shar is a creation of the theologians, introduced in order to supply Anshar with an appropriate associate.

I may kneel on the roof with streaming, uplifted face, with outspread arms, and awe-struck heart, adoring the Eternal: the next, I may strut like a cock, wanton as sin, lusting to burn a city, to wallow in filth, and, like the Babylonian maniac, calling myself the equal of Heaven. But it was not to write of this of all this !

Art strove to emulate nature with a certain measure of success, and the lofty rocks and various trees of this wonderful Paradise, if they were not a very close imitation of Median mountain scenery, were at any rate a pleasant change from the natural monotony of the Babylonian plain, and must have formed a grateful retreat for the Babylonian queen, whom they reminded at once of her husband's love and of the beauty of her native country.

The Prophet and his companions had become familiar in their captivity with the gigantic palaces and temples which Assyrian and Babylonian monarchs had a passion for rearing. They had learned to regard the king as equally magnified by his conquests and by his buildings.

Merodach, a solar deity, vanquished Tiamat, cut her body in two, and with one-half of it made a firmament supporting the upper waters in the sky, etc., etc." The Babylonian gods, like even those of the classics, were criminals fit only for prison or death.

Diogenes the Babylonian was a follower of the doctrine of Chrysippus; and in that book which he wrote, entitled "A Treatise concerning Minerva," he separates the account of Jupiter's bringing-forth, and the birth of that virgin, from the fabulous, and reduces it to a natural construction. XVI. Thus far have I been rather exposing the dreams of dotards than giving the opinions of philosophers.

The history of the temples takes us back to the earliest period of Babylonian history, and the temples of Assyria likewise date from the small beginnings of the Assyrian power. The oldest inscriptions of Mesopotamian rulers commemorate their services as builders of temples.

It is probable that Syria formed one of the links by which we may explain the Babylonian elements that are attested in prehistoric Egyptian culture. But another possible line of advance may have been by way of Arabia and across the Red Sea into Upper Egypt. Cf.

The documents in question are small, roughly formed tablets of clay very similar to those employed in the early periods of Babylonian history, but the signs and characters impressed upon them offer the greatest contrast to the Sumerian and early Babylonian characters with which we are familiar.

Among the Assyrian kings who in other respects also show less dependence upon the doctrines evolved in the Babylonian schools, and whose inscriptions reflect to a greater degree the purely popular phases of the faith, we find Anu mentioned with tolerable frequency, and in a manner that betrays less emphasis upon the position of the god as a member of the triad.