The loss of the latter's history of Babylon is deplorable indeed; its value would have been greater than the history of Herodotus, because it was based, as we know, on the records and documents preserved in Babylonian temples. How much of the history dealt with the religion of the people, it is difficult to determine, but the extracts of it found in various writers show that starting, like the Old Testament, with the beginning of things, Berosus gave a full account of the cosmogony of the Babylonians. Moreover, the early history of Babylonia being largely legendary, as that of every other nation, tales of the relations existing between the gods and mankind--relations that are always close in the earlier stages of a nation's history--must have abounded in the pages of Berosus, even if he did not include in his work a special section devoted to an account of the religion that still was practiced in his days. The quotations from Berosus in the works of Josephus are all of a historical character; those in Eusebius and Syncellus, on the contrary, deal with the religion and embrace the cosmogony of the Babylonians, the account of a deluge brought on by the gods, and the building of a tower. It is to be noted, moreover, that the quotations we have from Berosus are not direct, for while it is possible, though not at all certain, that Josephus was still able to consult the works of Berosus, Eusebius and Syncellus refer to Apollodorus, Abydenus, and Alexander Polyhistor as their authorities for the statements of Berosus. Passing in this way through several hands, the authoritative value of the comparatively paltry extracts preserved, is diminished, and a certain amount of inaccuracy, especially in details and in the reading of proper names,[8] becomes almost inevitable. Lastly, it is to be noted that the list of Babylonian kings found in the famous astronomical work of Claudius Ptolemaeus, valuable as it is for historical purposes, has no connection with the religion of the Babylonians. II. The sum total of the information thus to be gleaned from ancient sources for an elucidation of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion is exceedingly meagre, sufficing scarcely for determining its most general traits. Moreover, what there is, requires for the most part a control through confirmatory evidence which we seek for in vain, in biblical or classical literature.