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On Sippar, see Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, etc., 168-169, who finds in the Old Testament form "Sepharvayim" a trace of this double Sippar. Dr. Ward's suggestion, however, in regard to Anbar, as representing this 'second' Sippar, is erroneous. E.g., in Southern Arabia. See W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, I. 59.
Attention was directed a few years ago by Pognon and Sayce to the fact that the name of Hammurabi, as well as the names of four kings that preceded him, and of a number that followed, are not Babylonian.
IVR. 28, no. 1. Some specification of the kind of vessel meant. Inscriptions were written on various metals, gold, silver, antimony, lead, copper, etc. IVR. 20, no. 2. See above, p. 286. Published by Bertin in the Revue d'Assyriologie, no. 4, and translated by Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 573. I adopt Sayce's translation, Bertin's publication being inaccessible to me. Probably 'horizon.
Of modern works Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies and Rawlinson's Herodotus are the most valuable. Ragozin has written interesting books on Media, Persia, Assyria, and Chaldaea, making special note of the researches of European travellers in the East. Fergusson, Layard, Sayce, and George Smith have shed light on all this ancient region. Johnson's work is learned but indefinite.
Professor Sayce assures us that the Assyrians and Babylonians counted no fewer than three hundred spirits of heaven, and six hundred spirits of earth. "Like the Jews of the Talmud," he says, "they believed that the world was swarming with noxious spirits, who produced the various diseases to which man is liable, and might be swallowed with the food and drink which support life."
The facts of savage animal-worship, and their relations to totemism, seem still unknown to or unappreciated by scholars, with the exception of Mr. Sayce, who recognises totemism as the origin of the zoomorphic element in Egyptian religion. Our explanation, whether adequate or not, is not founded on an isolated case.
But totemism is a fact, whether 'totem' originally meant a clan-mark or sign-board in America or not. And, like Mr. Sayce, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Rhys, Dr. Robertson Smith, I believe that totemism has left marks in civilised myth, ritual, and religion, and that these survivals, not a 'disease of language, explain certain odd elements in the old civilisations. A Weak Brother
These legends of the Flood and the Tower of Babel were obviously borrowed by the Jews during their Babylonian captivity. Professor Sayce, in his Ancient Empires of the East, speaking of the Accadian king, Sargon I., says: Legends naturally gathered round the name of the Babylonian Solomon.
At Pterium was a principal sacred capital, and there, on a natural corridor of rock, they carved a procession of gods and kings and soldiers that excites the wonder of scholars. As I write, the announcement comes that Professor Sayce has at last discovered the secret of the Hittite hieroglyphs, and we may hope that very soon it will be possible to read them.
Sayce considers to have been an early form of Babylonian religion, and to afford an explanation of various features in it. Like the gods of Egypt and those of Greece, many of the gods of Babylon have animal emblems; this appears both in the representations of them and in their legends.
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