With the fall of the Assyrian empire in 606 B.C., Mesopotamia once more regained her national status. This meant that her national god Merodach was no longer subservient to the Assyrian Asshur in a political sense and regained his place as sole head of the Mesopotamian pantheon.Great must have been the satisfaction of the people of Sumeria when this comparatively mild tyranny removed; they could worship their gods in their way, free from the humiliating remembrance that their north...

The 18th, 19th, and first 20th Dynasties guided Egypt to its climax of power. Still, throughout the latter portion of the 20th Dynasty (identified as the Ramessid Age), that influence began to decline as the priests of Amun obtained more unimaginable resources and authority, and the situation of the pharaohs depreciated. The temple's capacity can best recognize the Cult of Amun's capability to the God at Karnak, which each new Kingdom leader added to. By the New Kingdom's conclusion, over ...

In their origin, the great cities of the Sumerians were little more than collections of rude huts constructed at first of reeds cut in the marshes and gradually giving place to rather more substantial buildings of clay and sun-dried brick. From the very beginning, the shrine of the Anunnaki Gods played an essential part in the foundation and subsequent development of each center of the population. Of the prehistoric period in Sumeria, we know little, but it may be assumed that already at t...

Marikoriko, the first woman, and Tiki, her Creator.Hupene, the old Tohunga, squats muttering on the floor beside his carved ancestor Tiki.Tiki is a God who in the dim long ago helped to build the world, and the whose carved image is now supporting the middle pillar of the house. His eyes of pawa-shell, which once commanded in the Ten Heavens and were full of fire and wisdom, glisten out of the silent twilight; they stare far, far into the Darkness, which Hine-nui-te-po is s...

In their origin, the great cities of the Sumerians were little more than collections of rude huts constructed at first of reeds cut in the marshes and gradually giving place to rather more substantial buildings of clay and sun-dried brick. From the very beginning, the shrine of the Anunnaki Gods played an essential part in the foundation and subsequent development of each center of the population. Of the prehistoric period in Sumeria, we know little, but it may be assumed that already at t...

Writing under the ambiguous pseudonyms ‘Waif Wander’ and ‘W. W.’, Mary Fortune penned a staggering 500 detective stories over a forty-year span, from 1868 to 1908. Narrated by the fictional detective Mark Sinclair, the series comprises Sinclair’s memoirs as he looks back through a “detective’s album” of mugshots from his long police career. This volume includes eight classic stories from one of the pioneers in the detective writing genre.

In the spring of 1852, Layard was obliged to close his excavations for want of funds, and he returned to England with Rassam, leaving all the northern half of the great mound of Kuyûnjik unexcavated. He resigned his position as Director of Excavations to the British Museum's Trustees, and Colonel (later Sir) H. C. Rawlinson, Consul-General of Baghdâd, undertook to direct any further excavations that might be possible to carry out later on. During the summer, the Trustees received a further...

Before dealing with the special varieties of the Egyptians' belief in gods, it is best to try to avoid a misunderstanding of their whole conception of the supernatural. The term god has come to tacitly imply to our minds such a highly specialized group of attributes, that we can hardly throw our ideas back into the more remote conceptions to which we also attach the same name. It is unfortunate that every other word for supernatural intelligence has become debased so that we cannot well sp...

The objects found in the graves of the predynastic Egyptians, i.e., vessels of food, flint knives, and other weapons, etc., prove that these early dwellers in the Nile Valley believed in some kind of a future existence. However, as the art of writing was unknown to them, their graves contain no inscriptions, and we can only infer from texts of the dynastic Period what their ideas about the Other World were. They did not consider it of great importance to preserve the dead body in as comple...

There is no document of greater importance to the study of the pre-Columbian mythology of America than the "Popol Vuh." It is the chief source of our knowledge of the mythology of the Kiché people of Central America, and it is further of considerable comparative value when studied in conjunction with the mythology of the Nahuatlacâ, or Mexican peoples. This interesting text, the recovery of which forms one of the most romantic episodes in the history of American bibliography, was written b...

From a time beyond the dawn of history, humanity has been seeking to explain the universe. At first, the effort did not concern itself further than to make a supposition as to the causes of the various phenomena presented to the senses. As knowledge increased, first by observation and later by experiment also, the ideas as to these causes passed progressively through three stages—the theological (the causes were thought to be spirits or gods); the metaphysical (the causes were thought in t...

Regarding the origin of the American mythologies, it is difficult to discover traces of foreign influence in either Mexico or Peru's religion. At the time of their subjugation by the Spaniard's legends were ripe in both countries of beneficent white and bearded men, who brought a fully developed culture. The question of Asiatic influences must not altogether be cast aside as an untenable theory; but it is well to bear in mind that such influences, did they ever exist, must have been of the...