247 
(2.) Assyria. 
37. Discoveries recently made among slabs,, bricks, cylinders, 
and clay tablets belonging to the mined cities of Upper and 
Lower Mesopotamia, have had the effect of so strongly confirm- 
ing Scripture as almost to create a new science, viz., biblical 
archaeology. It was not to be expected that many of these 
discoveries would bear upon facts so early as those contained 
in the Pentateuch. Such, however, as do so, afford the greatest 
witness to it, and this is all we can expect. When the book 
of Genesis, for example, says that Asshur, the son of Shem, 
“ went forth and built Nineveh and Calah” (x. 11), we should 
naturally expect two things — first, to find Asshur, the founder 
of those ancient cities, deified in the national Pantheon ; and, 
secondly, that both those cities would be distinct seats of 
empire at different periods of the national history. Well, 
such is exactly the case. Asshur, “the great God,” stands 
everywhere at the head of Assyrian polytheism. He is some- 
times called “Father of the Gods.” He is always put first in 
invocations, and is regarded in all the inscriptions as the 
tutelary deity of the kings. In like manner, we find the 
monuments not only speaking of Nineveh and Calah sepa- 
rately, but Calah is evidently for a long time the capital, while 
Nineveh is only mentioned as a provincial town.* 
38. In the Assyrian Pantheon we find also another god 
named Ilea, the presiding deity of “ the great deep,” and the 
source of “ knowledge and science.” There is no means at 
present of determining the precise meaning of the cuneiform 
Hea, says Bawlinson ; but “it may reasonably be supposed to 
be connected with the Arabic Hiya, which equally signifies 
f life/ and ‘ a serpent ; ; for Hea is not only the god of 
f knowledge/ but also of ‘ life 5 ; and there are very strong 
grounds for connecting him with the serpent of Scripture, and 
the paradisaical tradition of the tree of knowledge and tree of 
life,”t A further proof of this is given in Fergusson^s History 
of Tree and Serpent Worship , J where we have a Babylonian 
cylinder presented to us, on which there is the portrait of a 
man and woman seated on each side of a fruit-tree, both in the 
act of plucking the fruit ; while, behind the woman, and with 
its head close to the woman’s ear, stands a serpent on its tail. 
* Rawlinson’s Five Great Monarchies , vols. i. and ii. 
f See Essay X. to Rawlinson’s Herodotus , p. 493. 
X P. 72, 
