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 
Judzan 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.! 
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., Pp. 358. 
