'O Sun-god, king of heaven and earth, director of things above and below, O Sun-god, thou that clothest the dead with life, delivered by thy hands, judge unbribed, director of mankind, supreme in mercy for him that is in trouble, bidding the child and offspring come forth, light of the world, creator of all thy land, the Sun-god art thou! O Sun-god, when the bewitchment for many days is bound behind me and there is no deliverer, the expulsion of the curse and return of health are brought about (by thee). Among mankind, the flock of the god Ner, whatever be their names, he selects me: after trouble he fills me with rest, and day and night I stand undarkened. In the anguish of my heart and the sickness of my body there is ... O father supreme, I am debased and walk to and fro. In misery and affliction I held myself (?). My littleness (?) I know not, the sin I have committed I knew not. I am small and he is great: The walls of my god may I pass. O bird stand still and hear the hound! O Sun-god stand still and hear me! The name of the evil bewitchment that has been brought about overpower, whether the bewitchment of my father, or the bewitchment of my begetter, or the bewitchment of the seven branches of the house of my father, or the bewitchment of my family and my slaves, or the bewitchment of my free-born women and concubines, or the bewitchment of the dead and the living, or the bewitchment of the adult and the suckling (?), or the bewitchment of my father and of him who is not my father. To father and mother be thou a father, and to brother and child be thou a father. To friend and neighbour be thou a father, and to handmaid and man be thou a father. To the field thou hast made and thy ... be thou a father. May the name of my god be a father where there is no justice. To mankind, the flock of the god Ner, whatever be their names, who are in field and city, speak, O Sun-god, mighty lord, and bid the evil enchantment be at rest.' Even the science of the Babylonians and their Assyrian disciples was not free from superstition. Astronomy was mixed with astrology, and their observation of terrestrial phenomena led only to an elaborate system of augury. The false assumption was made that an event was caused by another which had immediately preceded it; and hence it was laid down that whenever two events had been observed to follow one upon the other, the recurrence of the first would cause the other to follow again. The assumption was an illustration of the well-known fallacy: 'Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.' It produced both the pseudo-science of astrology and the pseudo-science of augury.