ven he, heathen as he was,
regarded as "most shameful." Women were required once in their lives to
repair to the temple of this goddess, and there offer themselves to the
embrace of the first man who desired their company. In the Apocryphal
Book of Baruch we find a clear allusion to the same custom, so that
there can be little doubt of its having really obtained in Babylonia;
but if so, it would seem to follow, almost as a matter of course, that
the worship of the same identical goddess in the an joining country
included a similar usage. It may be to this practice that the prophet
Nahum alludes, where he denounces Nineveh as a "well-favored harlot,"
the multitude of whose harlotries was notorious.

Such then was the general character of the Assyrian religion. We have no
means of determining whether the cosmogony of the Chaldaeans formed any
part of the Assyrian system, or was confined to the lower country. No
ancient writer tells us anything of the Assyrian notions on this
subject, nor has the decipherment of the monuments thrown as yet any
light upon it. It would be idle therefore to prolong the present chapter
by speculating upon a matter concerning which we have at present no
authentic data.

CHAPTER IX.

CHRONOLOGY AND HISTORY.

The chronology of the Assyrian kingdom has long exercised, and divided,
the judgments of the learned. On the one hand, Ctesias and his numerous
followers--including, among the ancients, Cephalion, Castor, Diodorus
Siculus, Nicolas of Damascus, Trogus Pompeius, Velleius Paterculus,
Josephus, Eusebius, and Moses of Chorene; among the moderns, Freret,
Rollin, and Clinton have given the kingdom a duration of between
thirteen and fourteen hundred years, and carried hack its antiquity to a
time almost coeval with the founding of Babylon; on the other,
Herodotus, Volney, Ileeren, B. G. Niebuhr, Brandis, and many others,
have preferred a chronology which limits the duration of the kingdom to
about six centuries and a half, and places the commencement in the
thirteenth century B.C. when a flourishing empire had already existed in
Chaldaea, or Babylonia, for a thousand years, or more. The questions
thus mooted remain still, despite of the volumes which have been written
upon them, so far undecided, that it will be necessary to entertain and
discuss theirs at some length in this place, before entering on the
historical sketch which is needed to complete our account of the Second
Monarchy.