HUMAN AND FISH SACRIFICES 383 



On the other hand, we possess, in historic and pre-historic 

 Assyria, no trustworthy evidence of human sacrifice. Sayce, 

 it is true, in 1875 published two texts, which, as he translated, 

 demonstrated that human sacrifice did prevail. These, refuted 

 by Ball, are not accepted as even a proper translation of the 

 passage, much less a proof of the practice. 



Jastrow has recently returned to the charge. He suggests 

 that, " His eldest son shall he burn at the Khamm of Adad," 

 and other passages, establish that at one time children were 

 offered in sacrifice, very much on the same lines as the later 

 Judaean immolation of their children to Moloch, as when King 

 Ahaz (2 Kings xvi. 3) " made his son to pass through the 

 fire " in the Tophet just outside the gates of Jerusalem. But 

 Jastrow finds even less favour now than Sayce did forty years 

 ago.i 



Campbell Thompson, after remarking that the existence of 

 human sacrifice among either the Babylonian or Assyrian is 

 not easy of satisfactory proof, concludes, " The fact is that 

 human sacrifice goes out in proportion as civilisation comes in, 

 and probably by the time men are ready to commit their 

 religious ritual to writing, human sacrifice has ceased to be a 

 regular and periodic rite : as the Assyrians were the highest 

 civilised of all the Semites before our era, so in all probability 

 fewest traces of this custom exist in their records." 



A semi-religious practice, not dissimilar in object to that of 

 the Scape-Goat, can be discerned, if not as a vehicle for carrying 

 away all the sins of the people, yet as a method of ridding the 

 individual by the agency of some beast or fish of the affliction 

 which lay upon him. 



In one of the so-called Penitential Psalms or incantations, 

 which the tablets from the library of Asur-bani-pal bequeath 

 us, the prayerful desire to be free of suffering finds utterance 

 in : — 



" Let me cast off my evil that the birds may fly up to Heaven 

 with it, 

 That the fish may carry off my affliction." 



1 Op. cit., p. 358. 



