Resolution No. 2. Moved by Dr. JAMES W. THIRTLE, seconded by Mr. W. HOSTE: 66 That Mr. Alfred W. Oke, B.A., LL.M., Sir Robert W. Dibdin, F.R.G.S., Dr. Alfred H. Burton, B.A., C.M., and Major H. Pelham Burn, retiring Members of Council, be re-elected." Resolution No. 3. It was also moved and seconded by the same gentlemen: "That Mr. E. Luff-Smith, the retiring Auditor, be re-elected at a fee of three guineas." This was also agreed upon unanimously. Resolution No. 4. Moved by Mr. W. HOSTE, seconded by Mr. W. DALE : 66 That the cordial thanks of this Meeting be passed to Dr. James W. Thirtle for presiding on this occasion." This was passed by acclamation, and the Meeting was then declared closed. 669TH ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING. HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, WESTMINSTER, S.W. 1, ON MONDAY, DECEMBER 8TH, 1924, AT 4.30 P.M. DR. JAMES W. THIRTLE, M.R.A.S., F.R.G.S., IN THE CHAIR. The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read, confirmed and signed, and the Honorary Secretary announced the following Elections since the last Meeting:-W. Bell Dawson, Esq., M.A., D.Sc. (son of the well-known scientist, Sir William Dawson, an honoured Member of the Victoria Institute), as a Member, and the Rev. S. S. Farrow, L. T. Chambers, Esq., W. J. Scales, Esq., Miss A. A. Browne, R.R.C., Mrs. E. S. C. Hutchinson, the Rev. W. D. Vater, E. R. Wheeler, Esq., M.D., F.R.C.S., Miss M. W. Rouzee, B.A., Wilfred M. Clayton, Esq., the Rev. James Holroyde, M.A., and Louis H. Loft, Esq., as Associates. The Chairman then introduced Professor T. G. Pinches, LL.D., M.R.A.S., the well-known Assyriologist, to read his paper on "The Worship of Idols in Assyrian History in Relation to Bible References." THE WORSHIP OF IDOLS IN ASSYRIAN HISTORY By PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S. the is probably which the reader more than the unique position occupied by the chosen people owing to the religious isolation in which they found themselves. On every side, far or near, they were surrounded by heathendom. And this fact comes to our notice so often that the reader is tempted to take it as a most natural state of things, as though it had existed from the beginning of the history of the nations of the Near East; but the truth of the matter seems to be, that there was no monotheism in the Mediterranean coast-lands before the arrival of Abraham, who, about 2,000 years before Christ, brought that creed with him from Ur of the Chaldees, when Amraphel, who is identified with Hammurabi, the Ammurapi of a late Assyrian letter, ruled over Western Asia. Though this letter is of no great importance, it shows that he had a certain amount of popularity in the northern kingdom of Assyria, just as the fragments of an Assyrian copy of his laws show that he was also renowned as a lawgiver in the Mesopotamian tract. That his laws should have been known-and probably well known-in Syria and Palestine during his lifetime, when he was lord of Amurruthe land of the Amorites--is not without its significance, and that fact may have some bearing on the subject of idol-worship in the district with which we are now dealing. Abraham, the father of the Israelites, on arriving in Palestine, found himself in a land which, like Babylonia, whence he had come, possessed quite a pantheon of gods. In this district there were not only the native deities, but also many from other countries, including Babylonia and, possibly, Assyria, though the latter country had not yet attained the renown which it acquired in later centuries, when it had thrown off the Babylonian yoke. The fact that Babylonian deities had reached Palestine and the neighbourhood before the arrival of Abraham implies considerable intercourse between Babylonia and the western tract long before the time of Hammurabi, the king who ruled in Abraham's time. And in this connection we may quote the name of the goddess Ištar, who was always known in that district as Ashtoreth, with a feminine suffix which certainly did not belong to the name, seeing that the original language —that in which the name arose was the genderless Sumerian. In connection with the worship of this important goddess in the Near Eastern world of 2,000 years before Christ it is noteworthy that a tablet from Babylonia in the British Museum seems to give no less than ten identifications with a divinity called Asratum, which is probably the asherah, "grove," of the Old Testament and the English translations. Such a text as this list naturally shows that as yet we have but meagre details of the heathen worship of the Canaanites. Of all the Babylonian deities which we should expect to find sympathetic to the Hebrews, we may take the Babylonian king of the gods, Merodach, as being the most to their liking. . This, in fact, seems to have been really the case, for, as I have pointed out before, a name containing, as its main element, that of the deity in question, namely, Mordechai (better Maredachai) introduced during the Babylonian captivity, is to be found among the Jews even to-day. But it was not the Babylonian Merodach whom they thus honoured, but Jahwah under his Babylonian name. The only passage where Merodach is mentioned--and that as a Babylonian god-is Jer. 1, 2 :-"Declare ye among the nations and publish, and set up a standard; publish, and conceal not; say: Babylon is taken, Bel is put to shame, Merodach is dismayed (or broken down): her images are put to shame, her idols are dismayed (or broken down)." Notwithstanding that Bel and Merodach are here spoken of as though they were different deities, they were really one and the same; for although all the gods of Babylonia were, in their degree, bêlē or "lords," Merodach bore this title in a special sense as bêl bêlē, "lord of lords "-chief of all the other gods bearing that title. As a fine Babylonian hymn handed down to us by the Assyrians tells us, he was :--- The merciful one among the gods, The merciful one who loves to give life to the dead--- King of Babylon, lord of E-sagila, Heaven and earth are thine- Yea, heaven and earth are thine; The philtre of life is thine, Sar-azaggu, gu abzu (the glorious pronouncement, the word of the Deep), is thine. Mankind, the black-head race (= the Babylonians), The creatures of life, as many as announce a name (and) exist in the land, The regions four as many as exist, The Igigi of the host of heaven and earth, as many as exist Verily to thee are their ears [directed]. An idealized idolatry, this, which sets up a king of heaven and earth, and makes everything, even the "five-one-one "-the Igigi-the five planets and the sun and the moon, subject to him, without acknowledging their likeness to him except by setting the divine prefix before the word. Was it this conception of the lord of creation on the part of the Babylonians which appealed to the Hebrews and led them to look indulgently upon the personality of their chief god? And here it is worthy of note, as the fact has a tendency to be overlooked, that there awelu a were, in ancient times, several statues of gods-seven, or eight, or nine in number-set up at Babylon, near the gate (probably the chief entrance to the city), and each of those gods bore a title. The teacher, we find (or was it the preacher ?-the word is broken away) was an image of Nebo; &+, sag-sub-bara, meaning, among numerous other possible significations, "the chief overthrowing the boundary," or the like, was the “official title," as it were, of Nergal, and if this be the rendering it should designate him as god of war-or, perhaps better, unwarranted hostile (surprise) attack. After this comes mubarrû, "the discerner," the title of the god EA, d. Di-kud-that is, "judgment-deciding," in Semitic dayanu, “the judge, Babylonian word taken into Hebrew under the form of 7, dayan, used by the Jews even now. Last on the list is the zazzaku, the title borne by the god Papilsag, well known to the Assyriological student as the equivalent of Architenens, "the Archer" of the signs of the Zodiac. These divine names occur on the reverse of that well-known tablet first published in the Journal of the Victoria Institute, vol. xvi, pp. 8-10---the monotheistic tablet," on the obverse of which 14 or more Babylonian deities are identified with Merodach. In this important inscription Enlil, or Illil, the, élil (plural, élīlim, "idols" of the Hebrews), appears as "Merodach of Lordship and counsel "--Maruduk sa bêlutu u mitluktu, the last word in the sense, apparently, of reflection and consideration, with a view to the rule either of the heavenly kingdom, which was Merodach's domain, or any earthly kingdom to whose ruler he might give advice. Though we only know this inscription from the late copy published in the Journal of this Institute, I am inclined to think that it dates from the time of the first Dynasty of Babylonthat of Hammurabi- and if this be the case, the monotheistic doctrine contained therein may easily have emanated from "the land of the Amorites," the Semitic predecessors of the Jews. Upon this point Prof. Clay, of Yale, will probably, later on, enlighten us. He thinks that the Babylonian story of the Flood may have originated with them, and early took on that monotheistic form which Genesis has handed down to us. But there is no evidence that the Amorites were in any sense monotheists the identification of all the gods with Merodach was a belief held by those, in the time of the "dynasty of Babylon" (which was, it would seem, a foreign dynasty), who |