of the modern Greek world and which may be regarded as an immemorial tradition. In this divination, the divine spokesman was the power of the underworld. And this was the most important difference between the Western and the Eastern society in respect of the divine agency. In an early period of Hellenic history that may be called pre-Apolline, the earth-mother was conspicuously oracular by the vehicle of dreams; and this power of hers was generally shared by the nether god and buried heroes. Nor could the religion of Apollo suppress this “chthonian” divination. But in Mesopotamia the earth-powers and the nether world have no part or lot in this matter. It is almost the prerogative of Shamash, the sun-god, though Adad is sometimes associated with him;[302.1] {303} both being designated as “Bēlē-Biri” or “Lords of Oracles.”[303.1] Another remarkable distinction is the fact that the ecstatic or enthusiastic form of prophecy, that of the Shaman or Pythoness possessed and maddened by the inworking spirit of god, is not found in the Babylonian record, which only attests the cool and scientific method of interpreting by signs and dreams and the stars. Perhaps Mesopotamia from the third millennium onward was too civilised to admit the mad prophet and prophetess to its counsels. But such characters were attached to certain Anatolian cults, especially to those of Kybele,[303.2] and also to the Syrian goddess at Hierapolis;[303.3] we have evidence of them also in a record of the Cretan Phaistos in the service of the Great Mother.[303.4] Some scholars have supposed that prophetic ecstasy was only a late phenomenon in Hellas, because Homer is silent about it. But there are reasons for suspecting that demoniac possession was occasionally found in the pre-Homeric divination of Hellas,[303.5] an inheritance perhaps from the pre-Hellenic period. In any case, the theory that primitive Hellas was indebted to Babylonia for its divination-system is strongly repugnant to the facts. CHAPTER XIV. Summary of Results. {304} This comparative exposition of the Sumerian-Babylonian and the most complex and developed pre-Christian religion of Europe cannot claim to be complete or at any point finally decisive, but it may at least have helped to reveal the high value and interest of these phenomena for the workers in this broad field of inquiry. This was one of the main objects of this course. The other was the discussion of a question of religious ethnology, concerning the possible influence of Mesopotamia on the earliest development of Hellenic religion. The verdict must still remain an open one, awaiting the light of the new evidence that the future will gather. But the evidence at present available--and it may be hoped that none of first importance has been missed--constrains us to a negative answer or at least a negative attitude of mind.