Myths of Babylonia and Assyria

[464]The Land of the Hittites, J. Garstang, p. 354.

[465]The Old Testament in the Light of the Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia, T.G. Pinches, p. 343.

[466]Nat. Hist., v, 19 and Strabo xvi, 1-27.

[467]The Mahabharata: Adi Parva, sections lxxi and lxxii (Roy's translation, pp. 213 216, and Indian Myth and Legend, pp. 157 et seq.

[468] That is, without ceremony but with consent.

[469]The Golden Bough (The Scapegoat), pp. 369 et seq., (3rd edition). Perhaps the mythic Semiramis and legends connected were in existence long before the historic Sammu-rammat, though the two got mixed up.

[470]Herodotus, i, 184.

[471]De dea Syria, 9-14.

[472]Strabo, xvi, 1, 2.

[473]Diodorus Siculus, ii, 3.

[474]Herodotus, i, 105.

[475]Diodorus Siculus, ii, 4.

[476]De dea Syria, 14.

[477] This little bird allied to the woodpecker twists its neck strangely when alarmed. It may have symbolized the coquettishness of fair maidens. As love goddesses were "Fates", however, the wryneck may have been connected with the belief that the perpetrator of a murder, or a death spell, could be detected when he approached his victim's corpse. If there was no wound to "bleed afresh", the "death thraw" (the contortions of death) might indicate who the criminal was. In a Scottish ballad regarding a lady, who was murdered by her lover, the verse occurs:

'Twas in the middle o' the night

The cock began to craw;

And at the middle o' the night

The corpse began to thraw.

[478] Langdon's Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, pp. 133, 135.

[479] Introduction to Lane's Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians.

[480] Tammuz is referred to in a Sumerian psalm as "him of the dovelike voice, yea, dovelike". He may have had a dove form. Angus, the Celtic god of spring, love, and fertility, had a swan form; he also had his seasonal period of sleep like Tammuz.

[481] Campbell's Superstitions of the Scottish Highlands, p. 288.

[482]Indian Myth and Legend, p. 95.

[483]Ibid., pp. 329-30.

[484]Crete, the Forerunner of Greece, C.H. and H.B. Hawes, p. 139

[485]The Discoveries in Crete, pp. 137-8.

[486]Religion of the Semites, p. 294.

[487]Egyptian Myth and Legend, p. 59.

[488] Including the goose, one of the forms of the harvest goddess.

[489]Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. ii, 230-1 and vol. iii, 232 (1899 ed.).

[490]Ibid., vol. iii, 217. The myrtle was used for love charms.

[491]The Golden Bough (Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild), vol. ii, p. 293 (3rd ed.).

[492]Herodotus, ii, 69, 71, and 77.

[493]Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. iii, p. 227.

[494] Cited by Professor Burrows in The Discoveries in Crete, p. 134.

[495] Like the Egyptian Horus, Nebo had many phases: he was connected with the sun and moon, the planet Mercury, water and crops; he was young and yet old--a mystical god.

[496]Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 94 et seq.

[497]Babylonian Magic and Sorcery, L.W. King, pp. 6-7 and 26-7.

[498]2 Kings, xiii, 3.

[499]2 Kings, xiii, 14-25.