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