In this respect the Hebrew prophet was unique. His name _nâbî_ is found in Babylonian, where it takes the form of _nabium_ or _nabu_, ‘the speaker.’ It was the name of the prophet-god of Babylon, Nebo, the interpreter of the will of Bel-Merodach, the supreme deity of the city. Nebo declared to mankind the wishes and commands of Merodach; he was, too, the patron of literature, the inventor, it may be, of writing itself. The name of the mountain whereon Moses died is a testimony that the worship of Nebo had been carried to the West in the old days of Babylonian dominion in Canaan, and we need not wonder that the word _nâbî_, with all that it implied, had been carried to the West at the same time. But it was not until after the age of Samuel that it made its way successfully into the Hebrew language. Samuel was still the _roeh_ or ‘Seer,’[383] though the Babylonian word in the form of a verb (_hithnabbê_) was already applied to his ecstatic companions who prophesied around him.[384] But the word answered to a need. As the Hebrew prophet ceased more and more to be a seer, it became necessary to find some new title for him which should express more accurately his true nature, and the word _nâbî_ was already at hand. The ‘seer,’ accordingly, fell into the background; the ‘prophet’ occupied his place. We can trace the beginning of this great religious movement in the age of Samuel. Samuel has often been called ‘the founder of the prophetic schools,’ and, to a certain extent, this is true. But they were not schools in the sense of establishments where his contemporaries could be educated in the older literature of their country, and be trained to take upon them the prophetic office. Schools of this kind were to come later in the history of Israel. They did not even resemble the early Christian monasteries of Egypt, where bodies of monks lived together under a head, sometimes in a single building, sometimes in a collection of separate cells. The earlier disciples of Samuel were wandering bands of enthusiasts, over whose religious ecstasies he exercised an exciting and a controlling influence. They were men, to use a Biblical expression, who were ‘drunk with the spirit’ of God.[385] The loss of the ark and the destruction of Shiloh must have quickened the movement which the Philistine troubles had begun. And it should be remembered that the ‘prophets’ among whom Saul was numbered were not all of them of the Dervish type. Among them must have been men like Samuel himself, the true predecessors of the prophets of later Hebrew history. In the generation which followed, we find men like Gad and Nathan, who have ceased to be seers and have become the preachers of Israel, the conscience-keepers of the king himself, and the chroniclers of his reign.[386] The literary traditions of Shiloh passed to them through the hands of Samuel.