I have already stated that Silik-mulu-khi became in time assimilated with the god possessing beauty or splendor, Mardux.[397] Here are extracts from a hymn addressed to him after the change:— “Merciful one among the gods, Generator who brought back the dead to life, Silik-mulu-khi, king of heaven and of earth. ... To thee is the lip of life! To thee are death and life! I have invoked thy name, I have invoked thy sublimity. ... May the invalid be delivered from his disease; Cure the plague, the fever, the ulcer.”[398] CHAPTER XII. THE PINE-CONE AS AN ATTRIBUTE OF ÆSCULAPIUS. The fruitful results of studies in oriental history, industriously and intelligently pursued by able and learned men in recent times, are making more and more apparent the borrowed character of many features of the civilization of Greece and other western nations. Greek, Latin, German, Irish, and other languages of the Indo-European races, have been shown to be largely derived from Sanskrit, or a source similar to it, and the various mythologies have also been proved to be more or less evolutions. Of late, the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Accadio-Sumerians, but especially the last, who were, as is said in the Bible, both “a mighty” and “an ancient nation,”[399] have been accorded a greater influence than formerly on other peoples. There is little or no ground for doubt that the first forms of belief, as well as art, came from the East. It is certain that in the fertile region, about the lower waters of the Euphrates and Tigris, there was, at very early period, a remarkable unfoldment of intellectual, social, and other elements of progress, from the savage state. The ideas brought with them three thousand years or more before our era, to the rich plains southward of Mesopotamia, and gathered there by the early inhabitants of the hills of Elam and their kin, the earlier inhabitants of Sumer,[400] have been potent everywhere to the westward. These Turanians, a dark-complexioned people, were conquered by the Semites settled in parts to the west of Babylonia, by whom their culture and civilization were appropriated.[401] The Accadio-Sumerians undoubtedly gave direction and shape to the religions of Babylonia, Assyria, Phœnicia, and other countries, including Egypt. This means a great deal, for in the earlier stages of civilization the religion, such as it may be, is a matter of the greatest possible significance, both in itself and its influence on everything else. The language of the Accadio-Sumerians long served as the sacred one in Babylonia and Assyria,[402] and has been characterized by Mr. Sayce as “the Sanskrit of the Turanian family.”[403] In it are the important early cuneiform inscriptions, all the originals of which were written eighteen hundred years or so before our era.