Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/40

24 A short time before them Ishíthá flourished, the founder of a religion which Kúthámí vehemently opposes, though he acknowledges that it exercised, in his own time, a salutary influence. Before Ishíthá, Adamí appears as the founder of agriculture in Babylon, acting the part of a civilizer (civilisateur) and hence named “The Father of Mankind.” Before him we find Azada, the founder of a religion which the higher classes persecuted, but which was cherished by the lower; Ankebúthá, Samáï-Nahari, the poet Húhúshi, whose attention was already directed to agricultural science; Askúlebíthá, a benefactor of mankind and the earliest astronomer; and finally Dewánáï, the most ancient lawgiver of the Shemites, who had temples, was honoured as a god, and was called “Master of Mankind.” The age of Dewánáï is, according to Dr. Chwolson, strictly historical, and Babylon was already, at that time, a completely organised state. There are indications, before Dewánáï, of great efforts towards