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reward at the hands of God ; the faith in the immortality of 
the soul, in judgment to come, in a heaven of blessedness 
and a fiery hell of torment, are all now brought to light as 
articles of faith among Accadians and Semites alike, but 
gradually entangled and lost in the “ many inventions ” of 
the “ evil imagination of man’s heart,” and losing their only 
true significance and sanction as men “ did not like to retain 
God in their knowledge.” In fact the result of late investi- 
gation is that expressed by St. Paul in his epistle to the 
Romans. 
M. Lenormant thus writes : — 
When we penetrate beneath the surface of gross polytheism, it [the 
religion of Assyria and Babylonia] had acquired from popular superstition, 
and revert to the original and higher conceptions, we shall find the whole 
based on the idea of the unity of the Deity — the last relic of the primitive 
revelation disfigured by and lost in the monstrous ideas of pantheism, con- 
founding the creature with the Creator, and transforming the Deity into a god- 
world, whose manifestations are to be found in the phenomena of nature. * 
27. One point of special moment in its bearing on Abraham 
must be lightly touched, and afteiwvards more fully dealt 
with — I mean the resurrection of the dead. This belief was 
especially associated with Marduk (Merodach), the great god 
of Babylon. His Accadian name was Amar-utuki, or Amar-ud, 
and his worship must have been most ancient, as it was 
restored at Babylon by Agu-kak-rimi, whose date Mr. G. 
Smith places as “ most probably more than 2000 years before 
the Christian era ” ; f and he is mentioned as the son of Hea 
in the tablet of the seven wicked spirits. 
28. It was attributed to him that he could raise the dead 
to life, and he is himself “one of the types of those gods,” 
writes M. Lenormant, “who die and rise again to life periodi- 
cally, characteristic of the religions of the shores of the 
Euphrates and Tigris, of Syria and Phoenicia. The famous 
pyramid of the royal city of Babylon passed for his tomb, 
where they showed to devotees his sepulchral chamber, after- 
wards plundered by Xerxes, which they called “ the place of 
rest of Marduk .” 
29. The immortality of the soul and future blessedness of 
the righteous have been illustrated from the cuneiform texts 
* Anc. Hist, of the Hast, i. 452. 
t Note by Mr. Boscawen. This date must be placed about B.C. 1900, as 
the five kings in my,paper are evidently of the Median or Elamite dynasty. 
