Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/290

 into his hands a large collection of Nabathæan writings, which had been rescued from Moslem fanaticism. The zealous Chaldæan devoted his life to their translation, and thus created a Nabathæo-Arabic library, of which three complete works, to say nothing of the fragments of a fourth, have descended to our days .” One of these is the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture, written by Kuthāmi the Babylonian. In it we find the following remarkable passage: “The contemporaries of Yanbūshādh assert that all the sekā’in of the gods and all the images lamented over Yanbūshādh after his death, just as all the angels and sekā’in lamented over Tammūzī. The images (of the gods), they say, congregated from all parts of the world to the temple in Babylon, and betook themselves to the temple of the Sun, to the great golden image that is suspended between heaven and earth. The Sun image stood, they say, in the midst of the temple, surrounded by all the images of the world. Next to it stood the images of the Sun in all countries; then those of the Moon; next those of Mars; after them, the images of Mercury; then those of Jupiter; after