The same conclusion may be drawn from another fact. The spelling of the Babylonian and Assyrian letters is in general extraordinarily correct. We meet, of course, with numerous colloquialisms which do not occur in the literary texts, and now and then with provincial expressions, but it is seldom that a word is incorrectly written. Even in the Tel-el-Amarna tablets, where all kinds of local pronunciation are reproduced, the orthography is usually faultless, in spite of the phonetic spelling. All this shows how carefully the writers must have been instructed at school. The correctness of the spelling in the Assyrian letters is really marvellous, especially when we consider all the difficulties of the cuneiform script, and what a tax it must have been to the memory to remember the multitudinous characters of the syllabary with their still more multitudinous phonetic and ideographic values. It gives us a high idea of the perfection to which the teachers’ art had already been brought. In Assyria, however, the writers usually belonged to the special class of scribes who employed the same conventional hand and devoted their lives to the acquisition of learning. It is probable that they acted as private secretaries as well as public clerks, and that consequently many of the letters which purport to come from other members of the community were really written by the professional scribes. But in Babylonia it is difficult to find any traces of the public or private letter-writer who is still so conspicuous a figure in the East. It is seldom if ever that the Babylonian, whoever he may be, betrays any ignorance of the art of reading and writing, and the endless variety of handwritings and the execrable character of many of them indicate pretty plainly that the aid of the professional letter-writer was rarely invoked. In a commercial community like that of Babylonia an ability to write was of necessity a matter of primary importance. CHAPTER XI. RELIGION As in other countries, so too in Babylonia, the official and the popular religion were not in all respects the same. In the popular faith older superstitions and beliefs still lingered which had disappeared from the religion of the state or appeared in it in another form. The place of the priest was in large measure taken by the sorcerer and the magician, the ceremonies of the public cult were superseded by charms and incantations, and the deities of the official creed were overshadowed by a crowd of subordinate spirits whose very existence was hardly recognized among the more cultured classes. The Babylonian was inordinately superstitious, and superstition naturally flourished most where education was least.