Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/49

ASSYRIA ASTER 37 mas, the sun ; Sin, the moon ; Nergal, the god of war; Nin, the god of hunting; Iva, the wielder of the thunderbolt ; and the like. The great temple at Asshur is the only one yet dis- covered specially dedicated to him ; from which some hav% inferred that instead of sepa- rate temples he had the first place in the fanes of all the other divinities. It is more probable that in Assyrian mythology he occupied the place of Brahma in that of the Hindoos. After this supreme god, the source of all being, and the supreme arbiter of all events, came a series of secondary gods, arranged in two series of double triads, male and female. The first con- sists of Ann, masculine, Anat, feminine Pluto ; Bel, m., Bilit, f. Jupiter; Hea, m., Daokina, f. Neptune. The second triad is Sin, the moon ; Shamas, the sun ; Iva, the air : in this triad the moon occupies the place of precedence. Then there is a secondary group of five plane- tary divinities : Ninip, Saturn ; Merodach, Ju- piter; Nergal, Mars; Ishtar, Venus; Nebo, Mercury. This pentad in time seems to have superseded in popular esteem the older triads, Nebo, like Hermes and Mercury, being the espe- cial patron of learning and eloquence, and the symbol of royal authority. The two triads and the pentad constituted the 12 great deities of the Assyrian pantheon, below which there was a host of inferior divinities, prominent among whom was Nisroch or Salman, the eagle- headed and winged god, whose figure appears so frequently in the sculptures. How little these religious notions served to raise the moral character of the nation, and chiefly of its rulers, is best proved by the sculptural rec- ords of the latter, whose greatest and constant boast is the successful hunting of men and beasts, the burning of cities, and flaying and mangling of captives. The monuments of Nine- veh more than justify the bitterest invectives of the Hebrew prophets against " the bloody city," which was " full of lies and robbery," with " a multitude of slain " and " no end of corpses." In certain departments of science the Assyrians attained to considerable eminence. Their system of astronomy was in advance of that of the Egyp- tians. They knew the synodical period of the moon, the true length of the year, and even, though not quite accurately, the precession of the equinoxes ; they made it 30" instead of 50", so that their great cosmical year was 43,200 years instead of 26,000, its true length. They ascribed solar eclipses to their true cause, and calculated lunar eclipses with great accuracy. They must therefore have been acquainted with the golden cycle of 223 lunations, after which eclipses recur in the same order. They fixed this period at 18 years and 10 days, which is within less than 8 hours of the true period. For further particulars relating to the geogra- phy and history of Assyria, see the articles BABYLON, BABYLONIA, CUNEIFORM INSCRIP- TIONS, KURDISTAN, MESOPOTAMIA, NINEVEH, and TURKEY. The principal authorities are : Rich's "Journey to the Site of Babylon" (London, 1839) ; Botta and Flandin's Monument de Ninive (5 vols. fol., Paris, 1849-'50) ; Layard's " Nineveh and its Remains " (2 vols., London, 1849), "Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon" (London, 1853), and "Monu- ments of Nineveh" (1849, and continued for several years); Vaux's "Nineveh and Perse- polis " (London, 1850) ; Brandis's UeJ>er den historischen Gewinn aus der Entzifferung der Assyrigchen Imchriften (Berlin, 1856) ; M. von Niebnhr's Geschichte Assurs und Babels seit Phul (Berlin, 1857) ; G. Rawlinson's " Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World " (vol. i., London, 1862) ; Oppert's Let inscriptions assyriennes des Sargonides (Versailles, 1863) ; Philip Smith's "Ancient History of the East" (London, 1870). ASTARTE. See ASHTOHETH. ASTER (Gr. aarfp, a star), a genus of plants of the great family of composites, so widespread as to induce Lindley to give its name to the China Aster, Doable. whole family, asteraeea. The plants popularly called asters belong to several genera, but the typical genus is by far the richest in species. Although many parts of the world, as China, the Cape of Good Hope, the Alps, and Siberia, furnish species, many of great beauty, Amer- ica, and especially New England, seems most amply supplied. Of nearly 200 species cul- tivated in Europe, 150 are natives of North America. They are mostly annuals, with co- rymbed, panicled, or racemose heads; flowers radiate, the rays white, purple, or blue, and fertile, the disk yellow or reddish. In the cul- tivated species the disk flowers give place to repeated series of ray flowers, and assume the appearance of the well known China asters. The finest American species are : A. Nona Anglia, whose erect, narrow-leafed stem, 3 to 8 feet high, crowned with large corymbed heads of violet-purple flowers, is often seen by the roadsides; A. ptmiceus, with a purplish