BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 63 



his time, and vigorously to attack idolatry. 

 I am perfectly aware that professions of a 

 more theistic tendency were common among 

 the Shemetic nations ; but it would certainly 

 not be at Babylon where Shemetism, so to 

 say, was of so mingled a character, that one 

 would most expect to find it. But whenever 

 these professions of faith occur in remote 

 antiquity, it is never in the polemical, re- 

 flective, and systematic forms which they 

 assume in " The Book of Nabathsean Agri- 

 culture." Prof. Ewald is right in believing 

 that such passages bespeak the full develop- 

 ment of a monotheistical religion. 1 The kind 

 of incredulity towards the received religion 

 which peeps out in Kuthami and several of 

 his countrymen, and the atheism of which 

 some traces are perceptible in his writings, 

 point to the works of Berosus and San- 

 choniathon, and belong to the epoch of the 

 Seleucides. It is well known that the re- 

 ligious creeds in Babylon were much shaken 

 at that period, and that many persons 



1 Page 100. 



