temptation was to eat of the tree of knowledge, and his promise was, "ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil." It is further affirmed in the tablet that man would labor, but would not enjoy the fruits of it; and that he would have much trouble. The records on the tablets are supplemented by pictorial erpresentations on seals, on cylinders, and on slabs of stone. The sacred tree is often figured with the man beside it and the serpent behind him; and also, strange to say, the sacred tree with the guarding cherubim on each side,' as described in Genesis.

THE CHALDEAN ACCOUNT OF THE DELUGE.

Next in chronological order among those remarkable Assyrian records is the Chaldean account of the deluge, contained on the eleventh tablet of the famous Izdubar series mentioned by Smith. Izdubar has been identified with the biblical Nimrod; and it is a singular fact that the traditional record of his life. and acts was originally deposited, and long preserved, in Erech, one of the cities which he founded,' so that it must have been written at least as early as the time of Abraham.

The Izdubar series are twelve in number. They narrate the early life and hunting exploits of the hero; and then, after many details of love and war, an account is given of his wanderings in search of an ancestor who, for distinguished piety, had been taken into the society of the gods. The name of this ancestor was Hasiadra, and he seems to be identical with Noah ; though, from the reference to his translation, the old Akkadian chronicler may have confounded him with Enoch.

Izdubar at length found Hasiadra, and asked him how he became immortal. In reply Hasiadra told him the story of the deluge, which is given in the form of a mythological poem. Its close resemblance in many of its details to the Mosaic narrative is very striking. It represents the deluge as a punishment for the grievous sin of man. The god of the legend says, "Make a ship after this (for) I destroy the sinner and life. Cause to ascend in the seed of life all of it, to the midst of the ship." Then the dimensions are given, but the numbers are

'Smith, "Chaldean Account of Genesis," pp. 89, 91.

2 Gen. 10: 10.

unfortunately gone: "The ship thou shalt make cubits shall be the measure of its length, and cubits the amount of its breadth and its height." The mode of building the ship is stated: "Its interior I examined planks against the waters within it I placed. I saw rents and the wanting parts I added. Three measures of bitumen I poured over the inside; three measures of bitumen I poured over the outside." The agreement here with the words of the Bible is very remarkable: "Thou shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.'

The record describes the entry into the ship of the man and his family, and all the beasts of the field, their being shut in, and the coming of the flood: "Enter and the door of the ship turn (shut?). Into the midst of it thy grain and thy furniture and thy goods, thy wealth, thy women-servants, thy female slaves and the young men, the beasts of the field, and the animals of the field-all I will gather and I will send to thee, and they shall be enclosed in thy door." These instructions are almost substantially identical with those given to Noah and recorded in Gen. 6:18-21. Then, as in Genesis, the details are repeated when Hasiadra obeys: "I caused to go up into the ship all my male servants and my female servants, the beast of the field, the animal of the field, the sons of the people, all of them I caused to go up. A flood Shamas made, and he spake, saying, In the night I will cause it to rain from heaven. Enter to the midst of the ship and shut thy door. A flood he raised, and he spake, saying, In the night I will cause it to rain from heaven heavily," etc. The effects of the flood are next given: "The spirits carried destruction, in their glory they swept the earth; of VUL the flood reached to heaven. The bright earth to a waste was turned. . . It destroyed all life from the face of the earth the strong deluge over the people reached to heaven." Its close is told with equal clearness : "Six days and nights passed, the wind, deluge, and storm overwhelmed. On the seventh day in its course was calmed the storm, and all the deluge, which had destroyed like an earthquake, quieted. . . . I opened

. Gen. 6: 14.

On

The dove went

the window. To the country of Nizir went the ship; the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship. the seventh day I sent forth a dove and it left. and turned, and a resting-place it did not find, and it returned. I sent forth a swallow and it left. A resting-place it did not find, and it returned. I sent forth a raven, and it left. The raven went, and the corpses on the water it saw, and it did eat, it swam, and wandered away and did not return."

Some details are here given almost in the words of the biblical narrative. The following points may be specially noted: "The ark rested on the mountains of Ararat.

Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: and he sent forth a raven, which went to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. Also he sent forth a dove from him. But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark," etc.'

At length Hasiadra left the ark, built an altar on the top of the mountain, and offered sacrifices and oblations of wine to the gods, who were propitiated. One other point of resemblance between the records and Genesis is of special importance, though somewhat obscurely stated in the former. Moses tells

of the covenant which God graciously made with man not again to destroy the earth with a flood, and of the rainbow as a sign. The tablet also mentions a covenant. According to it, Elu (doubtless the El or Elohim of the Bible) was the god of vengeance, who brought on the deluge. Another god called Hea interceded for man, and besought Elu to punish sin in future by famine and pestilence, and by the ravages of wild beasts; to this Elu agreed, and taking man from the ark, removed him to a place of safety."

THE TOWER OF BABEL AND CONFUSION OF TONGUES.

Following down the stream of early Old Testament history, the next event which powerfully arrests the attention of the

1 Gen. 8:4-II.

The whole tablet is given in "Records of the Past," vii., 133 et seq.

student is the building of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues. It was so wonderful in itself, and produced such an effect on the whole human race, that, if it was a fact and not a myth, one would expect its leading incidents to be preserved with great tenacity in primeval traditions. And such is the case. The narrative in Genesis is brief but graphic, and it contains a number of striking particulars-such as building with brick; the use of bitumen for mortar; the site of the tower, the plain of Shinar; the name of the place, Babel, "confusion ;" and the dispersion of mankind from that central region. The ruins of the city, afterwards so celebrated as Babylon, still exist, and the massive remains of the brick "tower" may be seen near it. The modern Arab calls it Birs Nimrûd, "The Tower of Nimrod," probably getting the name from a very ancient tradition which we shall mention presently; and the old Greeks named it Bar-sippa, "Tongue Tower," which is equivalent to the Hebrew Babel, and derived from the "confusion of tongues." In the Bible, the city and the tower" are mentioned as two distinct structures; and their ruins are still distinct, the Birs-Nimrûd being a few miles south-west of Babylon.

Several years ago, a cuneiform inscription was discovered by M. Oppert containing an account of the reconstruction of the Tower of Babel by Nebuchadnezzar, and the truth of the narrative is confirmed by the fact that bricks stamped with his name are found among the ruins. In the inscription, Nebuchadnezzar is represented as the speaker: "The tower, the eternal house which I founded and built. . . The first, which is the house of the earth's base, the most ancient monument of Babylon, I built and finished it. I have highly exalted its head with bricks covered with copper. We say for the other, that is, this edifice, the house of the seven lights of the earth, the most ancient monument of Barsippa. A former king built it, they reckon forty-two ages, but he did not complete its head. Since a remote time people had abandoned it, without order expressing their words. I did not change the site, nor did I

it, and to exalt its head. founded it, I made it. alted its summit.”’'

As it had been in former times, so I As it had been in ancient days, so I ex

Such is the testimony as to the Tower of Babel, given on an inscription of the age of Nebuchadnezzar (B.C. 625). But we have a still earlier record. On a fragment of a tablet found by the late Mr. Smith among the ruins of Nineveh is the story of the first erection of the tower. Though it is greatly mutilated, yet we can gather from its broken sentences the general outline of events."(The thoughts) of his (man's) heart were evil. The father of all the gods he turned from Babylon corruptly to sin went and small and great mingled on the mound. . . Their work all day they founded; to their stronghold in the night entirely an end he made. In his anger also the secret counsel he poured out, to scatter (abroad) his face he set; he gave a command to make strange their speech their progress he impeded

.

2

We note a striking agreement between this fragment and the narrative in Genesis: "The Lord said, Behold the people is one, and they have all one lip. Let us go down, and there confound their lip. And the Lord scattered them abroad thence upon the face of all the land; and they left off to build the city. Therefore was the name of it called Babel."'' The points of agreement are: The sin of the people; their uniting to build a tower; the anger of God; he confounds their speech; the building is abandoned; the people are scattered.

Babylon was thus abandoned, and it remained so for a time; but its history is again taken up in the Assyrian records, just as it is in the Bible.

NIMROD THE MIGHTY HUNTER.

In the genealogy of nations given in Genesis 10, it is said that "Nimrod began to be a mighty one in the earth.

a mighty hunter before the Lord.

He was

And the begin

ning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad (Akkad), It is here indicated that

and Calneh, in the land of Shinar."