15. The host of heaven and earth.

It is not until we come to the fifth tablet of the series, which describes the appointment of the heavenly bodies—the work of the fourth day of creation, according to Genesis—that the narrative is again preserved. Here we read that the Creator “made beautiful the stations of the great gods,” or stars, an expression which reminds us of the oft-recurring phrase of Genesis: “And God [pg 024] saw that it was good.” The stars, moon, and sun were ordered to rule over the night and day, and to determine the year, with its months and days. The latter part of the tablet, however, like the latter part of the first tablet, is destroyed, and of the next tablet—that which described the creation of animals—only the first few lines remain. “At that time,” it begins, “the gods in their assembly created (the living creatures). They made beautiful the mighty (animals). They made the living beings come forth, the cattle of the field, the beast of the field, and the creeping thing.” What follows is too mutilated to yield a connected sense.

There is no need of pointing out how closely this Assyrian account of the Creation resembles that of Genesis. Even the very wording and phrases of Genesis occur in it, and though no fragment is preserved which expressly tells us that the work of the Creation was accomplished in seven days, we may infer that such was the case, from the order of events as recorded on the tablets. But, with all this similarity, there is even greater dissimilarity. The philosophical conceptions with which the Assyrian account opens, the polytheistic colouring which we find in it further on, have no parallel in the Book of Genesis. The spirit of the two narratives is essentially different.

The last tablet probably contained an account of the institution of the Sabbath. At all events, we learn that the seventh day was observed as a day of rest among the Babylonians, as it was among the Jews. It was even called by the same name of Sabbath, a word which is defined in an Assyrian text as “a day of rest for the heart,” while the Accadian equivalent is explained to mean “a day of completion of labour.” A calendar of [pg 025] saints' days for the month of the intercalary Elul makes the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of the lunar month Sabbaths, on which certain works were forbidden to be done. On those days, it is stated, “flesh cooked on the fire may not be eaten, the clothing of the body may not be changed, white garments may not be put on, a sacrifice may not be offered, the king may not ride in his chariot, nor speak in public, the augur may not mutter in a secret place, medicine of the body may not be applied, nor may any curse be uttered.” Nothing, in fact, that implied work was allowed to be done. Where the Babylonian Sabbath differed from the Jewish one was in its essentially lunar character. The first Sabbath was the first day of a month, whatever might be the length of the month that preceded it. While Sabbaths and new moons are distinguished from one another in the Old Testament, they are found united in the Babylonian ritual. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Babylonians were acquainted with a week of seven days, each day of which was dedicated to one of the seven planets; it was the space of time naturally marked out by the four quarters of the moon.

No account of the Fall of Man, similar to that in Genesis, has as yet been found among the fragments of the Assyrian libraries. Mr. George Smith, indeed, supposed that he had discovered one, but the text which he referred to the Fall, is really an ancient hymn to the Creator. It is, nevertheless, pretty certain that such an account once existed. An archaic Babylonian gem represents a tree, on either side of which are seated a man and woman, with a serpent behind them, and their hands are stretched out towards the [pg 026] fruit that hangs from the tree. A few stray references in the bilingual (Accadian and Assyrian) dictionaries throw some light upon this representation, and inform us that the Accadians knew of “a wicked serpent,” “the serpent of night” and “darkness,” which had brought about the fall of man. The tree of life, of which so many illustrations occur on Assyrian monuments, is declared to be “the pine-tree” of Eridu, “the shrine of the god Irnin;” and Irnin is a name of the Euphrates, when regarded as the “snake-river,” which encircled the world like a rope, and was the stream of Hea, “the snake-god of the tree of life.” The Euphrates, we must remember, was one of the rivers of Paradise.

The site of Paradise is to be sought for in Babylonia. The garden which God planted was in Eden, and Eden, as we learn from the cuneiform records, was the ancient name of the “field” or plain of Babylonia, where the first living creatures had been created. The city of Eridu, which the people of Sumir called “the good” or “holy,” was, as we have seen, the shrine of Irnin, and in the midst of a forest or garden that once lay near it grew “the holy pine-tree,” “the tree of life.” The rivers of Eden can be found in the rivers and canals of Babylonia. Two of them were the Euphrates and Tigris, called by the Accadians id Idikla, “the river of Idikla,” the Biblical Hiddekhel, while Pishon is a Babylonian word signifying “canal,” and Gihon may be the Accadian Gukhan, the stream on which Babylon stood. Even the word cherub is itself of Babylonian derivation. It is the name given to one of those winged monsters, with the body of a bull and the head of a man, which are sometimes placed in the Assyrian sculptures on either side of the tree of life. [pg 027] They stood at the entrance of a Babylonian palace, and were supposed to prevent the evil spirits from entering within. The word comes from a root which means “to approach” or “be near,” and perhaps originally signified one who was near to God.

Like cherub, Adam also was a Babylonian word. It has the general sense of “man,” and is used in this sense both in Hebrew and in Assyrian. But as in Hebrew it has come to be the proper name of the first man, so, too, in the old Babylonian legends, the “Adamites” were “the white race” of Semitic descent, who stood in marked contrast to “the black heads” or Accadians of primitive Babylonia. Originally, however, it was this dark race itself that claimed to have been “the men” whom the god Merodach created; and it was not until after the Semitic conquest of Chaldea that the children of Adamu or Adam were supposed to denote the white Semitic population. Hence it is that the dark race continued to the last to be called the Adamatu or “red-skins,” which a popular etymology connected with Adamu “man.” Sir H. Rawlinson has suggested a parallel between the dark and white races of Babylonia and the “sons of God” and “daughters of men” of Genesis. Adam, we are told, was “the son of God” (Luke iii. 38). But nothing similar to what we read in the sixth chapter of Genesis has as yet been met with among the cuneiform records, and though these speak of giant heroes, like Ner and Etanna, who lived before the Flood, we know nothing as yet as to their parentage.

The Babylonians, however, were well aware that the Deluge had been caused by the wickedness of the human race. It has often been remarked that though [pg 028] traditions of a universal or a partial deluge are found all over the world, it is only in the Old Testament that the cause assigned for it is a moral one. The Chaldean account of the Deluge, discovered by Mr. George Smith, offers an exception to this rule. Here, as in Genesis, Sisuthros, the Accadian Noah, is saved from destruction on account of his piety, the rest of mankind being drowned as a punishment for their sins.

The story of the Deluge formed the subject of more than one poem among the Accadians. Two of these were amalgamated together by the author of a great epic in twelve books, which described the adventures of a solar hero whose name cannot be read with certainty, but may provisionally be pronounced Gisdhubar. The amalgamated account was introduced as an episode into the eleventh book, the whole epic being arranged upon an astronomical principle, so that each book should correspond to one of the signs of the Zodiac, the eleventh book consequently answering to Aquarius. Sisuthros, who had been translated without dying, like the Biblical Enoch, is made to tell the story himself to Gisdhubar. Gisdhubar had travelled in search of health to the shores of the river of death at the mouth of the Euphrates, and here afar off in the other world he sees and talks with Sisuthros. Fragments of several editions of the poem have been found, not only among the ruins of Nineveh, but also in Babylonia; and by fitting these together it has been possible to recover almost the whole of the original text. The translations of it made by different scholars have necessarily improved with the progress of Assyrian research, and though the first translation given to the world by Mr. George Smith was substantially correct, there were [pg 029] many minor inaccuracies in it which have since had to be corrected. The latest and best version is that which has been published by Professor Haupt. The following translation of the account is based upon it:—

(Col. I) “Sisuthros speaks to him, even to Gisdhubar: Let me reveal unto thee, Gisdhubar, the story of my preservation, and the oracle of the gods let me tell to thee. The city of Surippak, the city which, as thou knowest, is built on the Euphrates, this city was already ancient when the gods within it set their hearts to bring on a deluge, even the great gods as many as there are—their father Anu, their king the warrior Bel, their throne-bearer Adar, their prince En-nugi. Ea, the lord of wisdom, sat along with them, and repeated their decree: ‘For their boat! as a boat, as a boat, a hull, a hull! hearken to their boat, and understand the hull, O man of Surippak, son of Ubara-Tutu; dig up the house, build the ship, save what thou canst of the germ of life. (The gods) will destroy the seed of life, but do thou live, and bid the seed of life of every kind mount into the midst of the ship. The ship which thou shalt build, ... cubits shall be its length in measure, ... cubits the content of its breadth and its height. (Above) the deep cover it in.’ I understood and spake to Ea, my lord: ‘The building of the ship which thou hast commanded thus, if it be done by me, the children of the people and the old men (alike will laugh at me).’ Ea opened his mouth and said, he speaks to me his servant: ‘(If they laugh at thee) thou shalt say unto them, (Every one) who has turned against me and (dis-believes the oracle that) has been given me, ... I will judge above and below. (But as for thee) shut (not) the door (until) the time comes of which I will send thee [pg 030] word. (Then) enter the door of the ship, and bring into the midst of it thy corn, thy property, and thy goods, thy (family), thy household, thy concubines, and the sons of the people. The cattle of the field, the wild beasts of the field, as many as I would preserve, I will send unto thee, and they shall keep thy door.’ Sisuthros opened his mouth and speaks; he says to Ea, his lord: ‘(O my lord) no one yet has built a ship (in this fashion) on land to contain the beasts (of the field). (The plan?) let me see and the ship (I will build). On the land the ship (I will build) as thou hast commanded me.’...