CHAPTER VII.

The Deities as Social-Powers.

The religious origin of the city--Slight evidence from Mesopotamia, more from early Greece--Early Mesopotamian kingship of divine type--The king inspired and occasionally worshipped--The Hittite monuments show the divine associations of the king--Proto-Hellenic kingship probably of similar character--Social usages protected by religion in the whole of this area--No family cult of the hearth at Babylon--The code of Hammurabi--Comparatively secular in its enactments concerning homicide--Religious feeling perceptible in the laws concerning incest--The legal system attached to religion at certain points, but on the whole, independent of it--In early Hellas the religion an equally strong social force, but many of its social manifestations different--Religion tribal and “phratric” in Greece; not so in Babylon--Purification from bloodshed could not have been borrowed from Mesopotamia