[6] Mount at the gate of hell whence demons rush forth. [7] Hell. ANCIENT HYMN FROM THE AVESTA. "I am the Keeper; I am the Creator and the Maintainer; I am the Discerner; I am the most beneficent Spirit. My name is the bestower of health; my name is the best bestower of health. My name is the Holy; my name is the most Holy. My name is the Glorious; my name is the most Glorious. My name is the far-seeing; my name is the Farthest-seeing. My name is Holiness; my name is the Great one; my name is the good Sovereign; my name is the best of Sovereigns. My name is the Wise One; my name is the Wisest of the Wise; my name is He who does good for a long time. These are my names. And he who in this material world, O Zoroaster! shall recite and pronounce these names of mine either by day or by night; He who shall pronounce them when he rises up or when he lays him down; when he lays him down or when he rises up; when he binds on the sacred girdle, or when he unbinds the sacred girdle; when he goes out of his dwelling-place, or when he goes out of his town, or when he goes out of his country and comes into another country; _That_ man, neither in that day nor in that night shall be wounded by the weapons of the foe...; not the knife, not the cross-bow, not the arrow, not the sword, not the club, not the sling-stone shall reach him and wound him. But these names shall come in to keep him from behind and to keep him in front ... from the evil ones, bent on mischief, and from that fiend which is all death--Angra Mainyu. It will be as if there were a thousand men watching over one man." --_Trans. Zend-Avesta: Sacred Books of the East. Max Muller, ed. V._ 4, 23, 31. [Illustration: PART OF ARCHER'S FRIEZE IN AN ANCIENT PERSIAN PALACE.] CHAPTER XXI. CONTRIBUTIONS OF BABYLONIA, ASSYRIA AND PERSIA TO MODERN CIVILIZATION.