[66]. Hindu Literature, Chaps. ii and iii.
[67]. Joshua xix, 38.
[68]. There is an Assyrian bas-relief now in the British Museum which represents Tīamat with horns and claws, tail and wings.
[69]. Eridu—the Rata of Ptolemy, was near the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris, on the Arabian side of the river. It was one of the oldest cities of Chaldea.
[70]. Cun. Ins. West Asia, Vol. IV, plate 15. Records of the Past.
[71]. This is one of the numerous bilingual texts, written in the original Accadian, with an interlinear Assyrian translation, which have been brought from the library of Assur-bani-pal at Nineveh.
[72]. Rimmon-Nirari III. Records of Past, Vol. IV, p. 88.
[73]. Ins. of Shalmanesar II. Records of P., Vol. IV, p. 66.
[74]. It is thought that the worship of Hea or Ea may have been a corruption of the worship of the God of Abraham, as Ea is another form of El, and the early followers of Ea were evidently monotheists.
Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, the eminent archæologist, who is a native of Assyria, claims that the early Assyrians worshipped the true God, but under peculiar names and attributes, and that instead of practicing the revolting sacrifices which were made by other gentile nations “they imitated the sacrifices of the Jewish rites.” He bases his proof largely upon his discovery of the bronze gate of Shalmanesar II, with its sculptured presentation of the sacrifice of rams and bullocks, and he says that “the same king, Shalmanesar, took tribute from Jehu, king of Israel, as an act of homage.”