Thus, then, the Semites believed in the immortality of the soul; but monotheism was far from being a privilege of their race, by which it would be possible to explain the origin of the Judaic religion without providential intervention and regulation; and thus we see the Chaldæan poets combat along the whole line the assertions of M. Renan respecting their belief and genius alike. Never did facts with more pitiless emphasis give the lie to the learned; and it seems as if the historian of the Semetic languages had had a secret presentiment of humiliations which would result to him from a more generally extended study of Assyriology, when at its outset, about fifteen years ago, he attacked it with a determination which has not been forgotten.(44) Another historical fact which may be gathered from the Babylonian epic is the mythological signification of the signs of the zodiac. The cuneiform inscriptions have already shown us that not only was Asia the cradle of the human race, but that it was also the primitive nursery of civilization. It can no longer be doubted that it was from thence, instead of, as has been supposed, from Egypt, that Greece herself received indirectly her first lessons in the arts, as it was also from thence that she received her metals. It is equally in Chaldæa that we find the origin of astronomy and of the zodiacal signs; the nomenclature of the latter, as it remains at the present day, differing in no essential point from that established by the Babylonian astronomers, although its value and signification have hitherto been very obscure. This obscurity has been dissipated by _The Poem of Izdubar_, which shows that the ancient Assyrian mythology bestowed on the signs their figures and their names. The myths relating to each of the months formed the subjects of the twelve episodes of the poem. Thus, for instance, the second narrated the capture of the winged bull; and the second month is designated as “the month of the propitious bull,” and has Taurus for its sign. Again, the sixth song related the marriage of Istar with Izdubar, and began with the goddess’ message to the hero: the sixth month is called “the month of the message of Istar,” and has for its sign the archeress, of which we have made Virgo, the virgin, who, according to the attestation of the prism of Assurbanipal, was the goddess Istar herself. The eleventh tablet is consecrated to the god Bin, “the inundator—he who pours abroad the rain,” and the sign of that month is the shedder of water, or the vase pouring it forth. Thus crumbles away the whole chronological scaffolding raised by the school of Dupuis, according to whom the zodiacal signs were only to be explained as having direct relation to agricultural labors, and the phases of the seasons to be regarded in reference to the productions of the earth—an interpretation which made it necessary to withdraw the origin of man to an enormously distant period of the past, in order to reach a time