CHAPTER VIII.
RELIGION.
"The graven image, and the molten image."-- NAHUM i.

14 The religion of the Assyrians so nearly resembled--at least in its external aspect, in which alone we can contemplate it--the religion of the primitive Chaldaeans, that it will be unnecessary, after the full treatment which that subject received in an earlier portion of this work, to do much more than notice in the present place certain peculiarities by which it would appear that the cult of Assyria was distinguished from that of the neighboring and closely connected country.

With the exception that the first god in the Babylonian Pantheon was replaced by a distinct and thoroughly national deity in the Pantheon of Assyria, and that certain deities whose position was prominent in the one occupied a subordinate position in the other, the two religious systems may be pronounced, not similar merely but identical.

Each of them, without any real monotheism, commences with the same preeminence of a single deity, which is followed by the same groupings of identically the same divinities; and after that, by a multitudinous polytheism, which is chiefly of a local character.

Each country, so far as we can see, has nearly the same worship-temples, altars, and ceremonies of the same type--the same religious emblems--the same ideas.