ASSYRIAN MONUMENTS. 53 



readily revealed to them the way of making a spirituous 

 liquor, had not earlier people known that art. 



That later the land was noted, as flowing with 'corn 

 and wine,' is sufficiently recorded. The drinker of wine 

 would acquire gaiety, talkativeness, vigor, and in short, 

 additional life. Well might this tree be considered the 

 * tree of life.' 



Lenormant, on the supposition that the sacred tree is 

 meant to represent the 'tree of life' — a sublime religious 

 notion of those people — argues to some length upon the, 

 so to speak, magnetic effect of the point of the cone- 

 fruit presented at the king, or at a tree, "as if it were 

 the means of communication between the protector and 

 the protected, the instrument by which grace and power 

 pass from the spirit to the mortal under his care." But, 

 I would ask, what becomes of this sublime spirituality 

 if the 'tree of life' admits of being taken in a vulgar 

 and realistic sense : that is, if this pretty notion of ' arbre 

 de vie' can after all be taken in the sense of the pro- 

 ducer of ' eau de vie,' viz. the tree from which wine can 

 be got, a liquor which imparts neiv life, and changes the 

 thoughts and humour of the drinker? 'Umar Khaiyam, 

 in his Rubdiyctt, has sufficiently sung of the powers of 

 wine. 



Indeed, Lenormant has not overlooked the realistic and 

 utilitarian part of his conception of the 'tree of life.' In 

 p. 8i, vol. i of his work — ' les Origines de I'Histoire' — he 



