One of the last acts recorded of the crown prince, Belshazzar, is the payment of a tithe, forty-seven shekels in amount, due from his sister to the temple of the sun-god at Sippara. The daily sacrifice was a fixed custom. Several of the technical terms of the Old Testament are {181} found also in Assyrian. For example: _torah_, law, has its counterpart in the Assyrian _tertu_; the biblical _kipper_, atonement, is the Assyrian _kuppuru_; _korban_, gift or offering, is the Assyrian _kurbannu_. The names for animal sacrifice, _zibu_, for meal offering, _manitu_, and for freewill offering, _nidbu_, all are found in their Hebrew forms in the Old Testament. As in the Hebrew legislation, a distinction is made between the offerings of the rich and the poor, and the sacrificial animal was to be without blemish. The Babylonian priest retained certain parts for himself, which was also the custom among the Hebrews (Deut. 18. 3), though the parts retained are not the same in the two cases. A ritual tablet shows that Babylonians sprinkled the blood of the lamb that was killed at the gate of the palace on the lintels, on the figures flanking the entrances, and on the doorposts to the right and the left, which has its parallel in the Hebrew passover ceremony. These illustrations, which by no means exhaust the list, reveal close similarities between the Hebrew ceremonial and that of the inhabitants of the Euphrates-Tigris valley, and the more we know of the Babylonian ritual, the more extensive and striking these resemblances become. They both start from the same principles and agree in many of their details. Between them, however, lies that deep gulf which separates the religion of {182} Israel from that of Babylonia as a whole. The one is monotheistic, the other polytheistic. Upon the basis of this fundamental difference the religious leaders of Israel gave to the similar forms adopted from other nations a new and deeper meaning and significance. Like the Hebrew religion, the religion of Babylonia has its guardian angels.[23] The Babylonian rulers stood in need of hosts of messengers to bear their behests into all quarters of their dominions. In a similar manner, it was thought, the gods needed their heavenly hosts to carry out their commissions. These angels are represented under various forms, but all of them are equipped with wings, so as to be able to carry upon the winds of heaven the commands of the gods to the children of men. Sometimes they are represented with eagles' heads, perhaps to indicate that they possess the keenness of vision and the rapidity of flight of an eagle; sometimes they have human countenances to denote their human intelligence. Frequently they appear as hybrid figures, with the body of a lion or bull, the wings of an eagle, and the head of a man, symbolizing strength, swiftness, and intelligence.