572 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



evidence that the Ekronian deity was one possessing the special 

 powers of protecting against the conveyance of disease by flies ; 

 because in the Hebrew Talmud, an author — although apparently 

 unaware of the purpose for which it was done — informs us that 

 the Ekronites made miniature images of flies. These they 

 carried on their persons, and sometimes kissed them. The 

 Talmud connects the Baal-Berek of Shechem with Baal-Zebub of 

 Ekron ; repeating that the latter was a fly deity. The Greek 

 equivalent Josephus gives for Zebub is Muia, which at once 

 calls up to memory the Greek god Zeus Apomuios, at Olympia. 



Among the immense number of antiquities discovered during 

 the last ten years by French explorers at Susa, in Persia, dating 

 from the old Elamite and Babylonian eras, was a small votive 

 object bearing, in cuneiform characters, a conjuration against 

 mosquitoes. It, magically, calls upon them to fly away (from the 

 amulet's possessor) and connects the insects in some way with 

 refuse. The precise translation, with our present knowledge, 

 is obscure. 



An illustration of this text is provided by a cylinder seal in 

 Mr. Pierpont Morgan's collection, bearing what Dr. Theo G. 

 Pinches, the Assyriologist, terms " the Fly Symbol " emblem 

 of Nergal, the Mesopotamian deity of disease and of death. 

 Other seals with a fly placed beside a god have been published 

 by Mr. Stephen Langdon and Dr. Pinches. 



Doubtless now that attention is called to these two relics 

 other inscriptions, or pictographs, of similar character will be 

 found among the hundreds of cuneiform incantations against 

 maladies and misfortunes, and the thousands of Assyrio-Baby- 

 lonian cylinder seals. 1 



These facts concerning ancient statements exhibiting views 

 prevalent in antiquity as to the distribution of disease, prove — 

 as is the case in many other matters — that the peoples of old 

 times often possessed in some cases more than merely a dim 

 notion of the discoveries of modern times. 



1 For such seals see Proceedings Society of Biblical Archceology, 191 1, p. 132, 

 and 1912, p. 158. In the Revue Assyriologique, 1914, p. 119, a cuneiform vocabu- 

 lary containing a list of insects is translated. 



