effectiveness of the medical potions that were offered to the sufferer. As for the historical texts, the preceding chapters have illustrated how full they are of religious allusions, how at every turn we meet with the influence exerted by the priests as the composers of these texts. Almost all occurrences are given a religious coloring. That these texts furnish us with such valuable material, and such a quantity of it, is indeed to be traced directly to the fact that the historical literature is also the direct production of the religious leaders and guides of the people, acting at the command of rulers, who were desirous of emphasizing their dependence upon the gods of the country, and who made this dependence the basis of the authority they exerted. Such being the general aspect of Babylonian literature, it is not always possible to draw a sharp line separating religious productions from such as may properly be termed secular. For example, the zodiacal system of the Babylonians, which we shall have occasion to discuss, although presenting a scientific aspect, is in reality an outcome of the religious thought; and so at other points it is necessary to pass over into the region of secular thought for illustrations of the religious beliefs. Bearing this in mind, we may set up a fivefold division of the religious literature of the Babylonians in the stricter sense: (1) the magical texts, (2) the hymns and prayers, (3) omens and forecasts, (4) the cosmology, (5) epics and legends. It will be apparent that the first three divisions represent a practical part of the literature, while the two latter are of a more purely literary character. The magical texts, as well as the hymns and prayers and omens, we can well imagine were produced as circumstances called them forth, and one can also understand how they should, at an early age, have been committed to writing. The incantations serving the practical purpose already referred to of securing a control over the spirit, it will be readily seen that such as had demonstrated their effectiveness would become popular. The desire would arise to preserve them for future generations. With that natural tendency of loose custom to become fixed law, these incantations would come to be permanently associated with certain temples. Rituals would thus arise. The incantation would be committed to writing so that one generation of priests might be certain of furnishing orthodox instruction to the other; and, once written, they would form part of the temple archives, finding a place in these archives by the side of the contract tablets, for which the sacred edifices of the country also served as depositories. The large quantity of incantation texts that have been found in Ashurbanabal's library,[340] as well as the variations and contrasts they present when compared with one another, are probably due to the various sources whence the scribes of the king,