Our knowledge of the religion of these lands is too imperfect to admit of wide conclusions being drawn from it. We know what the higher religion of Babylonia was; and we also see that the higher worship never entirely prevailed in this land; the god, like Bel or Assur, who bore the character of a human over-lord, never drove out the old set of spirits, nor brought the service of them to an end. As in the case of Egypt, so here the attempts made in the direction of a pure and spiritual worship met with no ultimate success. Babylon and Assyria never came so near to Monotheism as did Egypt three millenniums before Christ. Nabonidos, the last king of Babylon, collected all the gods together in his capital, and endeavoured to organise them in a system under Merodach as their head; but this led to religious discord rather than to peace, since the minor deities vehemently resented the removal of their images from their accustomed shrines, and were understood to refuse their aid to the state on the new conditions. The religion of Babylon was too much broken up into independent local cults to admit of such a unification. The highest that was reached was that one great god was adored in one city, another in another, with some depth and spirituality. To nations which had attained a higher faith, that of Babylon appeared to be an idolatrous worship of many gods. That is a harsh judgment. This religion also had life in it and advanced from a lower to a higher stage; from a timid trafficking with spirits to a service of gods who were ideal heads of human communities, and friends of individual men. It was not a mere system, as the world has been accustomed to think, of astrology and of divination of other kinds. But when Babylon and Assyria ceased to be independent powers, and became provinces of Persia, Bel bowed down and Nebo stooped, not to rise again. The world of that day had no need of them. It had already attained in more than one country to a higher religion than that of these deities. BOOKS RECOMMENDED The Histories of Antiquity, viz.-- Maspero, _Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient_. Duncker, _The History of Antiquity_, from the German, by Evelyn Abbott. Rawlinson, _The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World: Chaldea, Assyria, Babylonia, Media, and Persia_. Ed. Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, 1884. The first volume embraces the History of the East to the foundation of the Persian Empire. Schrader, _Die Keilinschriften und das alte Testament_, 1903. Hilprecht, _Old Babylonian Inscriptions_ chiefly from Nippur, 1893. _Records of the Past_, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11. Sayce's _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887. Tiele, _Egyptische en Mesopotamische Godsdiensten_. Jastrow, _The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_, 1898. The most complete account of the whole subject. Jastrow, "Religion of Babylonia," in _Dictionary of the Bible_, vol. v. Jastrow, "On the Religion of the Semites," in _Oxford Proceedings_, vol. i. p. 225, _sqq._