256 HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE vn 



agrees that he will be satisfied with what war, 

 pestilence, famine, and wild beasts can do in the 

 way of destroying men ; and that, henceforward, 

 he will not have recourse to extraordinary meas- 

 ures. Finally, it is Bel himself who, by way of 

 making amends, transports Hasisadra, his wife, and 

 the faithful Nes-Hea to the abode of the gods. 



It is as indubitable as it is incomprehensible to 

 most of us, that, for thousands of years, a great 

 people, quite as intelligent as we are, and living in 

 as high a state of civilisation as that which had 

 been attained in the greater part of Europe a few 

 centuries ago, entertained not the slightest doubt 

 that Ami, Bel, Ea, Istar, and the rest, were real 

 personages, possessed of boundless powers for good 

 and evil. The sincerity of the monarchs whose 

 inscriptions gratefully attribute their victories to 

 Merodach, or to Assur, is as little to be questioned 

 as that of the authors of the hymns and peniten- 

 tial psalms which give full expression to the 

 heights and depths of religious devotion. An 

 " infidel " bold enough to deny the existence, or to 

 doubt the influence, of these deities probably did 

 not exist in all Mesopotamia ; and even construc- 

 tive rebellion against their authority was apt to 

 end in the deprivation, not merely of the good 

 name, but of the skin of the offender. The adhe- 

 rents of modern theological systems dismiss these 

 objects of the love and fear of a hundred genera- 

 tions of their equals, offhand, as "gods of the 



