365 
thority of Adsimun, Agathodaemon, and Hermes. They main- 
tained that the pyramid to the east was the grave of Agatho- 
dsemon, the other that of Hermes, and the coloured pyramid the 
grave of Ssabi, the son of Hermes, “from whom the Ssabians 
derive themselves. (Appendix B.) They devoted themselves 
to the worship of the heavenly bodies as mediators! (comp. Job 
xxxi. 27), and they probably gave those names to the days of 
the week, which we still continue to use. Perhaps we should 
use them with less satisfaction if the remembrance continued 
of the sickening human sacrifices described in the above pages. 
The sun, moou, and the five planets were the special objects of 
their reverence. 
Harran is spoken of (p. 412) as a city of the Ssabians, and 
there they had a celebrated temple dedicated to the moon, 
which was frequented up to the time of the Emperor Julian 
the Apostate (Appendix C), who, according to Theodoret, re- 
sorted thither for sacrifice, to ascertain the issue of his Parthian 
war by one of the modes of divination practised by the King of 
Babylon (see Ezek. xxi. 21) . 
This freethinking emperor had found associates quite to his 
mind in the Ssabians. It is not unlikely that even to our 
own day human sacrifices are occasionally perpetrated for the 
same end and in the same land. It is not many years since the 
disappearance of a person at Damascus was most calumniously 
ascribed to, and occasioned a persecution of the Jews ; but that 
he was put to death there was little doubt, and that for pur- 
poses connected with magic art. 
Babylon seems to have been the great centre of idolatry, and 
Nimrod (according to tradition) the head and front of the 
offending.^ It is thought by some that Asshur went forth out 
of that land leading a colony of those who expatriated themselves 
to avoid his government and religion. This inquiry leads us 
to this presumption, that there has lingered in the East a true 
remembrance of the origin, and in part, of the nature of the 
Chaldean idolatry, and of the worship of the heavenly bodies ; 
and, moreover, we find that, in opposition to all this, the pure 
views of monotheistic truth held by Abraham are set forth with 
great force and clearness by certain Arabian writers, and are 
described as descending from the days of Noah. 
* Dimeschoi, ut supra, p. 410. 
t Trans. Bib. Arch., iii. 143. 
J May there not be a connection between the worshippers of Nimrod 
(. Mardulc , the brilliant, — Trans. Bib. Arch., iii. 141) and the invasion of the 
disk-worshippers in Egypt ? 
