to assign to the religion of Mesopotamia any other place
than the first among the great faiths of the world. The ancient
connection between Mesopotamia and Egypt, surmised till now rather
than known, is coming to light, and it appears, at least, possible
that the first of these countries may have to be regarded as the
source of all the civilisations of antiquity. The pantheon of Egypt
has striking similarities to that of Babylonia, and some of the
Egyptian temples show traces of derivation from the lands of the
Tigris and Euphrates. The similarities in the case of China are not
so marked, but they are substantial. In Babylonia, therefore, we may
be dealing not with one of three isolated religions, but with the
mother of the other two. If, as Mr. Lockyer holds,[1] Egypt borrowed
astronomy from Babylon in connection with temple-building, more than
5000 years B.C., the religion of Babylon must indeed be carried far
into the past.

[Footnote 1: _Dawn of Astronomy_, 1894.]

People and Literature.--Certain parts of Babylonian religion are much
ruder and more superstitious than the exalted star-worship which is
its central feature, and these have been ascribed to peoples who
dwelt in Babylonia before the supposed Semitic conquest, viz. the
Accadians in the north and the Sumerians to the south, peoples not
related to the Semites in blood or in language, but generally called
Turanian, and thought to be perhaps akin to the Chinese. The
cuneiform writing which remained in use for millenniums after the
Semitic immigration as the sacred literary form, was supposed to have
been the invention of these peoples, who had also made some progress
in plastic art.

There is, however, no direct evidence of the alleged early Semitic
invasion, and the Sumerian hypothesis of which it is a feature is now
regarded by some with less confidence. It is based on linguistic
phenomena. Hammurabi, 2250 B.C., reigned over a realm whose subjects
were of different tongues, and entrusted his records to two methods
of writing. The old Sumerian language, which cannot, in the opinion
of the best scholars, be shown to have affinity with any language of
the ancient world, came to be confined to matters of religion and
magic, and was superseded by the Assyro-Babylonian, which was
Semitic. But the feeble ray of the Sumerian hypothesis can be
dispensed with in the light which is shining on ancient Babylonia
from other quarters. For its information about that an