See, in this connection, the Assyrian inscription of Esarhaddon, the son of Sennacherib,[337] in description of his great palace at Nineveh: “I filled with beauties the great palace of my empire, and I called it ‘The Palace which Rivals the World.’ Ashur, Ishtar of Nineveh, and the gods of Assyria, all of them, I feasted within it. Victims precious and beautiful I sacrificed before them, and I caused them to receive my gifts. I did for those gods whatever they wished.”[338] It is even claimed by Assyrian scholars, that in this inter-communion with the gods, worshipers might partake of the flesh of animals which was forbidden to them at all other times[339]--as among the Brahmans of India, to-day. In farther illustration of the truth, that inter-communion with the gods was shown in partaking of sacred food with the gods, H. Fox Talbot, the Assyriologist, says of the ancient Assyrian inscription: “There is a fine inscription, not yet fully translated, describing the soul in heaven, clothed in a white radiant garment, seated in the company of the blessed, and fed by the gods themselves, with celestial food.”[340] Among the Parsees, or the Zoroastrians, who intervene, as it were, between the primitive peoples of Assyria and India, and the later inhabitants of the Persian empire, there prevailed the same idea of divine-human inter-union through blood, and of divine-human inter-communion through sharing the flesh of the proffered and accepted sacrifice, at the altar, or at the table, of the gods, Ormuzd and Ahriman. The horse was a favorite substitute victim of sacrifice, among the Parsees; as also among the Hindoos and the Chinese. Its blood was the means of divine-human inter-union. “The flesh of the victim was eaten by the priest and the worshipers; the ‘soul’ [the life, the blood], of it only was enjoyed by Ormazd.”[341] The communion-drink, in the Parsee sacrament, as still observed, is the juice of the _haoma_, or _hom_. “Small bread [or wafers] called Darun, of the size of a dollar, and covered with a piece of meat, incense, and Haoma, or Hom,” the juice of the plant known in India as Soma, are used in this sacrament. “The Darun and the Hom [having been presented to the gods] are afterwards eaten by the priests,” as in communion.[342] This is sometimes called the “Sacrament of the Haoma.”[343]