ht outside its bounds.

The tablets having to do with omens, exorcisms, and the like magic
practices make up an astonishingly large proportion of the Babylonian
records. In viewing them it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the
superstitions which they evidenced absolutely dominated the life of
the Babylonians of every degree. Yet it must not be forgotten that the
greatest inconsistencies everywhere exist between the superstitious
beliefs of a people and the practical observances of that people. No
other problem is so difficult for the historian as that which confronts
him when he endeavors to penetrate the mysteries of an alien religion;
and when, as in the present case, the superstitions involved have been
transmitted from generation to generation, their exact practical
phases as interpreted by any particular generation must be somewhat
problematical. The tablets upon which our knowledge of these omens is
based are many of them from the libraries of the later kings of Nineveh;
but the omens themselves are, in such cases, inscribed in the original
Accadian form in which they have come down from remote ages, accompanied
by an Assyrian translation. Thus the superstitions involved had back of
them hundreds of years, even thousands of years, of precedent; and
we need not doubt that the ideas with which they are associated were
interwoven with almost every thought and deed of the life of the people.
Professor Sayce assures us that the Assyrians and Babylonians counted no
fewer than three hundred spirits of heaven, and six hundred spirits of
earth. "Like the Jews of the Talmud," he says, "they believed that
the world was swarming with noxious spirits, who produced the various
diseases to which man is liable, and might be swallowed with the food
and drink which support life." Fox Talbot was inclined to believe that
exorcisms were the exclusive means used to drive away the tormenting
spirits. This seems unlikely, considering the uniform association
of drugs with the magical practices among their people. Yet there is
certainly a strange silence of the tablets in regard to medicine.
Talbot tells us that sometimes divine images were brought into the
sick-chamber, and written texts taken from holy books were placed on the
walls and bound around the sick man's members. If these failed, recourse
was had to the influence of the mamit, which the evil powers were unable
to resist. On a tablet, written in the Accadian language only, th