112 



inscriptions, as on his cylinder, the Son of Bel-smna-ishun 



I'^^III '^ >^IT ^I ^TT ^^^ ^* ^^ probable that his father 



was the prince Bel-suma-ishun, who for a short time held 

 the throne of Assyria after the death of Assurbanipal. 

 A solution of this descent of Nergal-sharezer, which 

 seems to me very probable, though at present unsupported 

 by monumental evidence, is that Bel-simia-iskuii, who seized 

 the throne of Nineveh, was a son of Shamas-suma-uMn, the 

 rebellious brother of Assurbanipal, and that Nergal-sarra- 

 titzur was a younger son of his who had been brought up 

 at the court of Babylon. Jeremiah classes him among the 

 princes of Babylon, and thus indicates his royal descent ; 

 and if, on his usurpation of the throne in B.C. 560, 

 he had been a '^son of a nobody ^^ {abil mmnani) ho 

 would not have given his father's name, as he does in 

 his inscription (W. A. I., vol. i., pi. 67). The second 

 Neriglissar is a person of still greater interest on account 

 of the office which he held as Rab-mag. This office has usually 

 been regarded as that of chief of the Magi, a body of Median 

 priests, who certainly did not obtain any great hold in 

 Babylonia until after the conquest of the empire by Cyrus. 



The Pseudo Smerdis, the ^yy <^'y| j-lyj yyy J:|yy 0-u-ma-a-t, 



or Gomates of the Behistun Persian text is called /^^y^>-y 



>-Tyy <>— < YT/ y Syci Ma-gk-u-sh, the Magus or Magian ; 



but before that period the sect were not recognised in Babylon. 

 We must, therefore, look elsewhere foran explanation of the title 



of ^^"3.1 occurring as early as B.C. 587, and, as Dr. Frederick 



Delitzsch has shown, it is to be found in the Akkadian or 

 non-Semitic inscriptions of Babylonia. By a comparison of 

 the two passages (W. A. I., ii., pi. xxxii., No. 3, 19, and 

 W. A. I., ii., pi. li.. No. 2, 49, with v., xxiii. 46), we find that 



the Akkadian word Make >^^JI was borrowed by the Semitic 



inhabitants, but, in order to comply with the triliteralism of the 

 language, made into Mahh-il. The pronunciation of the Akkad 

 guttural KH was that of g in " log." Thus the MaJih or 

 Makhu had the sound of mciiju. In the bilingual lists 



Makhu *-^JJ *^ r I ^IIT^ ^^ given as a synonym of the 



words ^^^ "^ >T^ ^-fll*- esh-she-jpu-u and ^ ^y>- "^*- 



aS'Shi-pH, '' a sorcerer,'^ the Hebrew ^"^^ ; so that Nergal- 



