Still we are perhaps not entitled to conclude, from this comparative purity, that the Assyrian religion was really exempt from that worst feature of idolatrous systems--a licensed religious sensualism.

According to Herodotus the Babylonian worship of Beltis was disgraced by a practice which even he, heathen as he was, regarded as "most shameful." Women were required once in their lives to repair to the temple of this goddess, and there offer themselves to the embrace of the first man who desired their company.

In the Apocryphal Book of Baruch we find a clear allusion to the same custom, so that there can be little doubt of its having really obtained in Babylonia; but if so, it would seem to follow, almost as a matter of course, that the worship of the same identical goddess in the an joining country included a similar usage.

It may be to this practice that the prophet Nahum alludes, where he denounces Nineveh as a "well-favored harlot," the multitude of whose harlotries was notorious.
Such then was the general character of the Assyrian religion.

We have no means of determining whether the cosmogony of the Chaldaeans formed any part of the Assyrian system, or was confined to the lower country.