[375] The name is given in the cuneiform characters as found in Norris’s Assyrian Dictionary, p. 853. It is spelled phonetically. The first three wedges are the sign or determinative of deities. [376] The devotion of Nebuchadnezzar to him is indicated in the Bible (see 2 Chron. xxxvi, 7, and Daniel, i, 2). The great king went so far as to say: “Merodach deposited my germ in my mother’s womb.” Records of the Past, vol. v, p. 113. [377] In an article entitled “Nemrod et les Ecritures Cuneiformes,” M. Joseph Grivel has occasion to speak of the names of the god. Amar-ud, which is apparently the same as Nimrod, is a synonym of Merodach. See Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. iii, p. 136. [378] The older Bel was Elum, father of the gods. [379] Chaldean Magic, and the Beginnings of History. To M. Lenormant mainly belongs the credit of opening up the valuable stores of learning wrapped in the Accadian and closely allied idioms. [380] A series of small volumes, twelve in number, issued a few years ago, in London. [381] Silik-mulu-khi is rather a descriptive title than a name. It is the designation used in the magical and mythological texts of the Accadian inscriptions. [382] Of this serpentine god of life and revealer of knowledge, Sir Henry Rawlinson remarks that “there is very strong grounds for connecting Hea, or Hoa, with the serpent of Scripture and the paradisiacal traditions of the tree of life.” See George Rawlinson’s second edition of Herodotus, vol. i, p. 600. [383] Chaldean Magic, p. 19. [384] Assyria, its Princes, Priests, and People, p. 59. London, 1885. [385] Another symbol of this god was the thunderbolt in the form of a sickle, with which he slew the dragon of the deep. [386] Chaldean Magic, p. 190. [387] Records of the Past, vol. iii, p. 139. [388] Herodotus, who visited the country, states that the Babylonians “have no physicians; but when a man is ill they lay him in the public square and the passers-by come up to him; and if they ever had his disease themselves, or have known any one who has suffered from it, they give him advice, recommending him to do whatever they found good in their own case or in the case known to them; and no one is allowed to pass the sick man in silence, without asking him what his ailment is” (i, 197). From this it would seem that Herodotus might rather have said that the Babylonians were all doctors, or presumed to be. However, it is thought that Jeremiah refers to the practice in Lamentations, i, 12, when he says: “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.” A similar plan was certainly practiced elsewhere than in Babylonia. Strabo says that the Egyptians resorted to it (xvi), and in St. Mark it is said that the people “laid the sick in the streets” (vi, 56) in order to be healed by Jesus as he passed along. [389] Deuteronomy, xi, 18. [390] Records of the Past, vol. iii, p. 140.