Ishtar of Arbela, the Ishtar of
Nineveh, and the Ishtar of Babylon, and find these goddesses invoked
separately, as distinct divinities, by one and the same king in one and
the same Inscription. In other cases, without this multiplication, we
observe expressions which imply a similar identification of the actual
god with the mere image. Tiglath-Pileser I., boasts that he has set Anu
and Vul (i.e., their images) up in their places. He identifies
repeatedly the images which he carries off from foreign countries with
the gods of those countries. In a similar spirit Sennacherib asks, by
the mouth of Rabshakeh, "_Where are the gods_ of Hamath and of Arpad?
_Where are the gods_ of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah?"--and again unable to
rise to the conception of a purely spiritual deity, supposes that,
because Hezekiah has destroyed all the images throughout Judaea, he has
left his people without any divine protection. The carrying off of the
idols from conquered countries, which we find universally practised, was
not perhaps intended as a mere sign of the power of the conqueror, and
of the superiority of his gods to those of his enemies; it was probably
designed further to weaken those enemies by depriving them of their
celestial protectors; and it may even have been viewed as strengthening
of the conqueror by multiplying his divine guardians. It was certainly
usual to remove the images in a reverential manner; and it was the
custom to deposit them in some of the principal temples of Assyria. We
may presume that there lay at the root of this practice a real belief in
the super-natural power of the in images themselves, and a notion that,
with the possession of the images, this power likewise changed sides and
passed over from the conquered to the conquerors.

Assyrian idols were in stone, baked clay, or metal. Some images of Nebo
and of Ishtar have been obtained from the ruins. Those of Nebo are
standing figures, of a larger size than the human, though not greatly
exceeding it. They have been much injured by time, and it is difficult
to pronounce decidedly on their original workmanship: but, judging by
what appears, it would seem to have been of a ruder and coarser
character than that of the slabs or of the royal statues. The Nebo
images are heavy, formal, inexpressive, and not over well-proportioned;
but they are not wanting in a certain quiet dignity which impresses the
beholder. They are unfortunately disfigured, like so many of