monarchs. Their accounts of the construction and dedication of temples for
their gods afford striking parallels to the Bible account of the building
of the temple at Jerusalem by King Solomon.

[Illustration: EMBLEM OF ASSHUR.]

Not less prominently manifested is the religious spirit of these kings in
what we may call their sacred literature, which is filled with prayers
singularly like those of the Old Testament.

As to the Assyrian deities and their worship, these were in all their
essential characteristics so similar to those of the later Chaldaean
system, already described (see p. 45), that any detailed account of them
here is unnecessary. One difference, however, in the two systems should be
noted. The place occupied by Il, or Ra, as the head of the Chaldaean
deities, is in Assyria given to the national god Asshur, whose emblem was
a winged circle with the figure of a man within, the whole perhaps
symbolizing, according to Rawlinson, eternity, omnipresence, and wisdom.

CRUELTY OF THE ASSYRIANS.--The Assyrians have been called the "Romans of
Asia." They were a proud, martial, cruel, and unrelenting race. Although
possessing, as we have just noticed, a deep and genuine religious feeling,
still the Assyrian monarchs often displayed in their treatment of
prisoners the disposition of savages. In common with most Asiatics, they
had no respect for the body, but subjected captives to the most terrible
mutilations. The sculptured marbles taken from the palaces exhibit the
cruel tortures inflicted upon prisoners; kings are being led before their
conqueror by means of hooks thrust through one or both lips; [Footnote:
See 2 Chron. xxxiii. 10-13 (Revised Version).] other prisoners are being
flayed alive; the eyes of some are being bored out with the point of a