432 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babyloniavarious kinds of offering that were presented to the gods. The
animal sacrifice had the name ofzîbu, the meal-offering being
known as manitu.^371 The free-will offering wasnidbu; the“gift”
or“benevolence”demanded by the god upon the produce of the
field beingqurbannu, the Hebrewqorbân. Other terms also were
employed, the exact sense of which is still uncertain; among
them is one which probably means“trespass-offering.”
It is impossible not to be struck by the many points of similarity
between the Babylonian ritual and arrangement of the temples and
that which existed among the Israelites. The temple of Solomon,
in fact, was little more than a reproduction of a Babylonian
[471] sanctuary. And just as the palace of the Hebrew king adjoined
the temple in which he claimed the right of offering sacrifice, so
too at Babylon the palace of Nebuchadrezzar—who, it must be
remembered, was a pontiff as well as a king—stood close to the
temple of Merodach. Even the bronze serpent which Hezekiah
destroyed finds its parallel in the bronze serpents erected in the
gates of the Babylonian temples.^372 The internal decoration of
the sanctuary, moreover, was similar in both countries. The walls
were made gorgeous with enamelled bricks, or with plaques of
gold and bronze and inlaid stones. Sometimes they were painted
with vermilion, the monsters of the Epic of the Creation being
pictured on the walls. But more often the painted or sculptured
figures were, as at Jerusalem, those of cherubim and the sacred
tree or other vegetable devices. At Erech, bull-headed colossi
guarded the doors.
But the resemblance between the Babylonian and Hebrew
rituals extends beyond the ceremonial of the temple of Solomon
into the Levitical Law. In fact, the very term for law, thetorâh,
as the Israelites called it, was borrowed from the Babylonian
tertu, as was first pointed out by Professor Haupt. It is even
(^371) See my Hibbert Lectures, p. 72, note 2.
(^372) WAI.i. 65, ii. 19-21; 54. iii. 48-50. See Trumbull,The Threshold Covenant,
pp. 110, 116.