The pantheon of a religion presents us with the external phases of the religion in question. In order to penetrate further towards the core of the religion, and to see it at its best, the religious thought as manifested in the national literature constitutes our most valuable guide. The beginnings of Babylonian literature are enveloped in obscurity. We have seen that we are justified in passing beyond the period of Hammurabi[339] for these beginnings, but exactly when and precisely how the literary spirit first manifested itself in Babylonia will probably remain for a long time, if not for always, a matter of conjecture. The great political and religious centers of Babylonia, such as Ur, Sippar, Agade, Eridu, Nippur, Uruk, perhaps also Lagash, and later on Babylon, formed the foci of literary activity, as they were the starting-points of commercial enterprise. This intimate connection of religion with literature left its impress upon all branches into which the Babylonian literature was in the course of time differentiated. In a certain sense all the literature of Babylonia is religious. Even the legal formulas, as embodied in the so-called contract tablets, have a religious tinge. The priests being the scribes, a contract of any kind between two or more parties was a religious compact. The oath which accompanied the compact involved an invocation of the gods. The decree of the judges in a disputed suit was confirmed by an appeal to the gods. The terms in which the parties bound themselves consisted largely of religious phrases, and finally the dating of the tablet often contained a reference to some religious festival or to some event of religious import--such as the building of a sanctuary. Science, so far as it existed in Babylonia, never loosened the leading-strings that bound it to the prevailing religious thought. The observation of the stars was carried on under the belief of the supposed influence exerted by the heavenly bodies upon the fate of man; and surprising as we find the development of astronomical calculations and forecasts to be, mathematics does not pass beyond the limits of astrology. Medicine was likewise the concern of the priests. Disease was a divine infliction supposed to be due to the direct presence in the body, or to the hidden influence, of some pernicious spirit. The cure was effected by the exorcising of the troublesome spirit through prescribed formulas of supposed power, accompanied by symbolical acts. There is indeed no branch of human knowledge which so persistently retains its connection with religious beliefs among all peoples of antiquity as the one which to-day is regarded as resting solely upon a materialistic basis. As a consequence the Babylonians, although they made some progress in medicinal methods, and more especially in medical diagnosis, never dissociated medicinal remedies from the appeal to the gods. The recital of formulas was supposed to secure by their magic force the