[375] The name is given in the cuneiform characters as found in Norris’s Assyrian Dictionary, p. 853. It is spelled phonetically. The first three wedges are the sign or determinative of deities.
[376] The devotion of Nebuchadnezzar to him is indicated in the Bible (see 2 Chron. xxxvi, 7, and Daniel, i, 2). The great king went so far as to say: “Merodach deposited my germ in my mother’s womb.” Records of the Past, vol. v, p. 113.
[377] In an article entitled “Nemrod et les Ecritures Cuneiformes,” M. Joseph Grivel has occasion to speak of the names of the god. Amar-ud, which is apparently the same as Nimrod, is a synonym of Merodach. See Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. iii, p. 136.
[378] The older Bel was Elum, father of the gods.
[379] Chaldean Magic, and the Beginnings of History. To M. Lenormant mainly belongs the credit of opening up the valuable stores of learning wrapped in the Accadian and closely allied idioms.
[380] A series of small volumes, twelve in number, issued a few years ago, in London.
[381] Silik-mulu-khi is rather a descriptive title than a name. It is the designation used in the magical and mythological texts of the Accadian inscriptions.
[382] Of this serpentine god of life and revealer of knowledge, Sir Henry Rawlinson remarks that “there is very strong grounds for connecting Hea, or Hoa, with the serpent of Scripture and the paradisiacal traditions of the tree of life.” See George Rawlinson’s second edition of Herodotus, vol. i, p. 600.
[383] Chaldean Magic, p. 19.
[384] Assyria, its Princes, Priests, and People, p. 59. London, 1885.