388 FISH IN OFFERINGS, AUGURIES, ETC. 



" 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 simi- 

 larity of these and other instances is borne in mind. 



The earUest point of contact between Babylon and Palestine 

 is recorded in Genesis xiv. i, 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.^ 



The first connection of Israel with Assyria proper occurs in 

 the reign of Shalmaneser II., in whose MonoHth Inscription 

 figures, as one of the allies of Benhadad I. of Damascus, the 

 name of Ahabbu Sir'lai, generally identified with Ahab, King 

 of Israel. 



Fish are discovered playing a part in auguries and divinations 

 very similar to their role in Rome. Augury in both nations 

 was regarded with deep veneration. It reached in Assyria a 

 very high plane. It was practised as a recognised science by 



1 From Astronomy many Assyrian dates have been ascertained. Kugler 

 by stellar researches has settled the ve.xed question of the date of Hammurabi, 

 and probably that of Abram, at about 2120 B.C., which unites within one year 

 the latest conclusions of King, Jastrow, and Rogers, and so establishes an 

 important degree of accord among Assyriologists on events subsequent to 2200 

 B.C. as regards which thev have hitherto been wide apart. Then again modern 

 astronomers have worked' out that there was a total eclipse of the sun at Nineveh 

 on June 15, 763 B.C. The importance of the fixing of this date can as regards 

 Assyrian chronology hardly be exaggerated. The Assyrians, rejecting the 

 Babylonian system of counting time, invented a system of their own, by naming 

 the year after certain officers or terms of office, not unUke the system of the 

 Archonates at Athens, and the Consulates at Rome. These were termed 

 luniis : a list of these functionaries during four centuries has come down to 

 us. In the time of one of them. Pur Sagali, there is a mention of the eclipse 

 of the sun. As this eclipse has now been fixed for the year 763 B.C., we possess 

 an automatic date for every year after of the limus. 



