This so-called representation of a scene in the lower world from a bronze talisman has been misunderstood. The obverse has three registers. In the upper register are depicted the seven devils, all with animal heads, in attitude of ferocious attack upon a human soul. The middle register represents a sick man who is supposed to be possessed by the seven devils. He lies upon a bed. At his head and feet stand two priests each arrayed to appear like fish: these are symbolic of Ea, god of the sea and patron of all magic. They clothed themselves in a fishlike robe to signify that they derived their divinations and incantations from the sacred water, of which Ea was the god.
In the lower register are drawings of cult utensils, such as holy water bowls, censers, etc., and of the fever demon Labartu, who has been driven from the body of the man and is in flight by boat. The reverse of this bronze has in deep relief one of the seven devils who is in the act of peering over the upper edge of the bronze, and gazing upon the scene of atonement and magical healing below.
The cuneiform texts prescribe that fumigation, either for cleansing a person or exorcising a demon, may be performed by the wizard, with or without a censer, a bowl, or lighted torch.[982]
Apart from its permeation of Israel in legislation as indicated in connection with Hammurabi’s Code, the influence of Assyria stands out in other ways clearly. The semi-similarity of treatment of the Deluge has already been noticed, while the rendering in the stories of Sargon and Moses of a widespread legend[983] differs only in such points of detail as the substitution of the Nile or (according to Arabic tradition) of a fish-pond for the Euphrates, and of the irrigator Akki as the discoverer of the chest of reeds for Pharaoh’s daughter.[984]
“My lowly mother conceived me, in secret she brought me forth: She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she closed my door: She cast me into the river, which rose not over me: The river bore me up, unto Akki the irrigator it carried me.
And for ... four years I ruled the kingdom.”
The assertion that the Old Testament is fairly saturated with Babylonian culture and folklore, and that even in the days of the New Testament we have not passed beyond the sphere of its impression hardly overshoots the mark, when the similarity of these and other instances is borne in mind.
The earliest point of contact between Babylon and Palestine is recorded in Genesis xiv. 1, which makes Abraham the contemporary of “Amraphel King of Shinar,” who most probably can now be identified with Hammurabi in the light of the recent discoveries of Kugler.[985]
The first connection of Israel with Assyria proper occurs in the reign of Shalmaneser II., in whose Monolith Inscription figures, as one of the allies of Benhadad I. of Damascus, the name of Ahâbbu Sir’lai, generally identified with Ahab, King of Israel.