Assyrian Empire, gave it its name,--his own being magnified and deified
by his warlike descendants. Assyria was the oldest of the great empires,
occupying Mesopotamia,--the vast plain watered by the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers,--with adjacent countries to the north, west, and east.
Its seat was in the northern portion of this region, while that of
Babylonia or Chaldaea, its rival, was in the southern part; and although
after many wars freed from the subjection of Assyria, the institutions
of Babylonia, and especially its religion, were very much the same as
those of the elder empire. In Babylonia the chief god was called El, or
Il. In Babylon, although Bab-el, their tutelary god, was at the head of
the pantheon, his form was not represented, nor had he any special
temple for his worship. The Assyrian Asshur placed kings upon their
thrones, protected their armies, and directed their expeditions. In
speaking of him it was "Asshur, my Lord." He was also called "King of
kings," reigning supreme over the gods; and sometimes he was called the
"Father of the gods." His position in the celestial hierarchy
corresponds with the Zeus of the Greeks, and with the Jupiter of the
Romans. He was represented as a man with a horned cap, carrying a bow
and issuing from a winged circle, which circle was the emblem of
ubiquity and eternity. This emblem was also the accompaniment of
Assyrian royalty.

These Assyrian and Babylonian deities had a direct influence on the Jews
in later centuries, because traders on the Tigris pushed their
adventurous expeditions from the head of the Persian Gulf, either around
the great peninsula of Arabia, or by land across the deserts, and
settled in Canaan, calling themselves Phoenicians; and it was from the
descendants of these enterprising but morally debased people that the
children of Israel, returning from Egypt, received the most pertinacious
influences of idolatrous corruption. In Phoenicia the chief deity was