(Col. II) “... On the fifth day (after it was begun) in its circuit(?) fourteen measures its hull (measured); fourteen measures measured (the roof) above it. I made it a dwelling-house(?).... I enclosed it. I compacted it six times, I divided (its passages) seven times, I divided its interior (seven) times. Leaks for the waters in the midst of it I cut off. I saw the rents, and what was wanting I added. Three sari of bitumen I poured over the outside. Three sari of bitumen I poured over the inside. Three sari of men, carrying baskets, who carried on their heads food, I provided, even a saros of food for the people to eat, while two sari of food the boatmen shared. To (the gods) I caused oxen to be sacrificed; I (established offerings) each day. In (the ship) beer, food, and wine (I collected) like the waters of a river, and (I heaped them up) like the dust(?) of the earth, and (in the ship) the food with my hand I placed. (With the help) of Samas [the Sun-God] the compacting of the ship was finished; (all parts of the ship) were made strong, and I caused the tackling to be carried above and below. (Then of my household) went two-thirds: all that I had I heaped together; all that I had [pg 031] of silver I heaped together; all that I had of gold I heaped together; all that I had of the seed of life I heaped together. I brought the whole up into the ship; all my slaves and concubines, the cattle of the field, the beasts of the field, the sons of the people, all of them, did I bring up. The season Samas fixed, and he spake, saying: ‘In the night will I cause the heaven to rain destruction. Enter into the midst of the ship and close thy door.’ The season came round; he spake, saying: ‘In the night will I cause the heaven to rain destruction.’ Of that day I reached the evening, the day which I watched for with fear. I entered into the midst of the ship and shut the door, that I might close the ship. To Buzur-sadi-rabi, the boatman, I gave the palace, with all its goods. Then arose Mu-seri-ina-namari (The Water of Dawn at Daylight) from the horizon of heaven (like) a black cloud. Rimmon in the midst of it thundered, and Nebo and the Wind-God go in front: the throne-bearers go over mountain and plain: Nergal the mighty removes the wicked; Adar goes overthrowing all before him. The spirits of earth carried the flood; in their terribleness they sweep through the land; the deluge of Rimmon reaches unto heaven; all that was light to (darkness) was turned.
(Col. III) “(The surface) of the land like (fire?) they wasted; (they destroyed all) life from the face of the land; to battle against men they brought (the waters). Brother saw not his brother; men knew not one another. In heaven the gods feared the flood, and sought a refuge; they ascended to the heaven of Anu. The gods, like a dog in his kennel, crouched down in a heap. Istar cries like a mother, the great goddess utters her speech: ‘All to clay is turned, and the evil I [pg 032] prophesied in the presence of the gods, according as I prophesied evil in the presence of the gods, for the destruction of my people I prophesied (it) against them; and though I their mother have begotten my people, like the spawn of the fishes they fill the sea.’ Then the gods were weeping with her because of the spirits of earth; the gods on a throne were seated in weeping; covered were their lips because of the coming evil. Six days and nights the wind, the flood, and the storm go on overwhelming. The seventh day when it approached the storm subsided, the flood which had fought against (men) like an armed host was quieted. The sea began to dry, and the wind and the flood ended. I watched the sea making a noise, and the whole of mankind was turned to clay; like reeds the corpses floated. I opened the window, and the light smote upon my face; I stooped and sat down; I weep, over my face flow my tears. I watch the regions at the edge of the sea; a district rose twelve measures high. To the land of Nizir steered the ship; the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship, and it was not able to pass over it. The first day, the second day, the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship. The third day, the fourth day, the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship. The fifth day, the sixth day, the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship. The seventh day when it approached I sent forth a dove, and it left. The dove went and returned, and found no resting-place, and it came back. Then I sent forth a swallow, and it left. The swallow went and returned, and found no resting-place, and it came back. I sent forth a raven, and it left. The raven went and saw the carrion on the water, and it ate, it swam, it wandered away; it did not return. I sent (the animals) forth to the four winds, I [pg 033] sacrificed a sacrifice. I built an altar on the peak of the mountain. I set vessels [each containing the third of an ephah] by sevens; underneath them I spread reeds, pine-wood, and spices. The gods smelt the savour; the gods smelt the good savour; the gods gathered like flies over the sacrifices. Thereupon the great goddess at her approach lighted up the rainbow which Anu had created according to his glory. The crystal brilliance of those gods before me may I not forget;
(Col. IV) “those days I have thought of, and never may I forget them. May the gods come to my altar; but may Bel not come to my altar, since he did not consider but caused the flood, and my people he assigned to the abyss. When thereupon Bel at his approach saw the ship, Bel stopped; he was filled with anger against the gods and the spirits of heaven: 'Let none come forth alive! let no man live in the abyss!' Adar opened his mouth and spake, he says to the warrior Bel: ‘Who except Ea can form a design? Yea, Ea knows, and all things he communicates.’ Ea opened his mouth and spake, he says to the warrior Bel: ‘Thou, O warrior prince of the gods, why, why didst thou not consider but causedst a flood? Let the doer of sin bear his sin, let the doer of wickedness bear his wickedness. May the just prince not be cut off, may the faithful not be (destroyed). Instead of causing a flood, let lions increase, that men may be minished; instead of causing a flood, let hyænas increase, that men may be minished; instead of causing a flood, let a famine happen, that men may be (wasted); instead of causing a flood, let plague increase, that men may be (reduced). I did not reveal the determination of the great gods To Sisuthros alone a dream I sent, and he heard the [pg 034] determination of the gods.’ When Bel had again taken counsel with himself, he went up into the midst of the ship. He took my hand and bid me ascend, even me he bid ascend; he united my wife to my side; he turned himself to us and joined himself to us in covenant; he blesses us (thus): ‘Hitherto Sisuthros has been a mortal man, but now Sisuthros and his wife are united together in being raised to be like the gods; yea, Sisuthros shall dwell afar off at the mouth of the rivers.’ They took me, and afar off at the mouth of the rivers they made me dwell.”
It is hardly necessary to indicate the points of agreement and disagreement between this Babylonian account of the Deluge and that of Genesis. The most striking difference between the two, that which first meets the eye, is the polytheism of the Babylonian version, in contrast with the monotheism of the Biblical narrative. Here, in place of the gods of Chaldea, we are confronted by the one supreme Deity; we have no longer to do with a Bel who requires the intercession of Ea before he will consent not to destroy the guiltless with the guilty; it is the Lord Himself who “said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake.” In the Babylonian legend, moreover, Noah and Enoch have been confounded together; Sisuthros is not only saved from the waters of the flood, but translated to the abode of the gods. The vessel itself in which the seed of life was preserved is not the same in the two accounts. According to the Hebrew narrative, it was an ark; according to the Babylonian poem, a ship. It is true that in one place it is called “a palace,” the word used being the same as that which in many passages of the Old Testament is applied to God's “palace” of heaven; [pg 035] but it is provided with a pilot, Buzur-sadi-rabi, “the Sun-god of the mighty mountain,” and Sisuthros is made to expostulate on the strangeness of building a ship which should sail over the land. It must, however, be noticed that the shrines in which the images of the gods were carried in Babylonia were called “ships,” and that these “ships” corresponded with the ark of the Hebrew tabernacle.
The land of Nizir, in which the vessel of Sisuthros rested, was among the mountains of Pir Mam, to the north-east of Babylonia. Rowandiz, the highest peak in this part of Asia, rises a little to the north of the Pir Mam, and it seems probable, therefore, that it represents “the mountain of Nizir.” The whole country had been included by the Accadians in the vast territory of Guti, or Gutium, which roughly corresponds with the modern Kurdistan. It is accordingly worth notice that a wide-spread eastern tradition makes Gebel Gudi, or Mount Gudi, the mountain on which the ark rested, and that in early Jewish legend this mountain is called Lubar or Baris, the boundary between Armenia and Kurdistan, in the land of the Minni. Ararat, or Urardhu, as it is written in the cuneiform inscriptions, denoted Armenia, and more particularly the district about Lake Van; so that “the mountains of Ararat,” of which Genesis speaks, might easily have been the Kurdish ranges of Southern Armenia. It was not until a very late period that the name of Ararat was first applied and then confined to the lofty mountains in the north.
Rowandiz seems also to have been regarded in Accadian mythology as the Olympos on which the gods dwelt. In this case it was usually called “the mountain of the east;” but the east was here the north-east, since [pg 036] other legends identified it with Aralu, or Hades, the mountain of gold which was fabled to be in the far north. It is to this Accadian Olympos that reference is made in Isa. xiv. 13, where the King of Babylon is described as boasting that he would “ascend into heaven, and exalt his throne above the stars of the gods,” that he would “sit on the mountain of the assembly of the gods in the extremities of the north.” The mountain was sometimes known as the “mountain of the world,” since the firmament was supposed to revolve on its peak as on a pivot. We must not imagine, however, that the Accadians, any more than the Greeks, actually believed the gods to live above the clouds on the terrestrial Rowandiz, except at a very early period in their history. Just as we do not think of the sky when we use the word heaven in a spiritual sense, so by “the mountain of the assembly of the gods” they meant a spiritual mountain, of which Rowandiz was the earthly type. It is in this way that we must explain the position assigned to Sisuthros after his translation. He does not live along with the gods in the north, but has his station fixed “at the mouth of the rivers” Euphrates and Tigris, which in ancient times flowed into the Persian Gulf through separate channels. At an epoch when the geographical knowledge of the Accadians did not extend very far, the unknown district beyond the mouth of the Euphrates became a representative of the other world; and the Euphrates itself was identified with Datilla, the river of “the God of life and death,” as well as with the stream or “great deep” which was supposed to encircle the earth like a monstrous serpent.
The name of the Chaldean Noah, Sisuthros, or, as it [pg 037] is written in the cuneiform, Khasis-adra, or Adra-khasis, is really a title, given to him on account of his righteousness, and signifying “wise (and) pious.” His proper name is one which means “the Sun of Life,” though the exact pronunciation of it is somewhat uncertain. Neither of these names agrees with that of the Biblical Noah, but the latter has received a full explanation from the Assyrian language, where it signifies “rest.”
After the Flood, we are told in Genesis that men journeyed from the east until they came to the plain of Shinar, where they built the tower of Babel, in the vain hope of ascending into heaven. God, however, confounded their language and scattered them over the face of the earth. The references in this narrative to Shinar and Babel, or Babylon, indicate that here again we may expect to find a Babylonian account of the Confusion of Tongues, just as we have found a Babylonian account of the Deluge. As we have seen, the Accadians regarded themselves as having come from the “mountain of the east” where the ark had rested, while Shinar is the Hebrew form of the native name Sumir—or Sungir, as it was pronounced in the allied dialect of Accad—the southern half of pre-Semitic Babylonia. Now Mr. George Smith discovered some broken fragments of a cuneiform text which evidently related to the building of the Tower of Babel. It tells us how certain men had “turned against the father of all the gods,” and how the thoughts of their leader's heart “were evil.” At Babylon they essayed to build “a mound” or hill-like tower, but the winds blew down their work, and Anu “confounded great and small on the mound,” as well as their “speech,” and “made strange their counsel.” The very word that is used in the sense of “confounding” [pg 038] in the narrative of Genesis is used also in the Assyrian text. The Biblical writer, by a play upon words, not uncommon in the Old Testament, compares it with the name of Babel, though etymologically the latter word has nothing to do with it. Babel is the Assyrian Babili, “Gate of God,” and is merely a Semitic translation of the old Accadian (or rather Sumirian) name of the town, Ca-dimíra, where Ca is “gate” and dimíra “God.” Chaldean tradition assigned the construction of the tower and the consequent confusion of languages to the time of the autumnal equinox; and it is possible that the hero-king Etanna (Titan in Greek writers), who is stated to have built a city in defiance of the will of heaven, was the wicked chief under whom the tower was raised.
The confusion of tongues was followed by the dispersion of mankind. The earth was again peopled by the descendants of the three sons of Noah—Shem, Ham, and Japhet. Shem is the Assyrian Samu, “olive-coloured,” Ham is Khammu, “burned black,” and Japhet Ippat, “the white race.” The tribes and races which drew their origin from them are enumerated in the tenth chapter of Genesis. The arrangement of this chapter, however, is geographical, not ethnological; the peoples named in it being grouped together according to their geographical position, not according to their relationship in blood or language. Here it is that the non-Semitic Elamites are classed along with the Semitic Assyrians, and that the Phœnicians of Canaan, who spoke the same language as the Hebrews, and originally came from the same ancestors, are associated with the Egyptians. When this fact is recognised, there is no difficulty in showing that the statements of the chapter are fully consistent with the conclusions of modern research.
The Assyrian inscriptions have thrown a good deal of light upon the names contained in it. Gomer, the son of Japhet, represents the Gimirrai of the inscriptions, the Kimmerians of classical writers. Pressed by the Scyths of the Russian steppes, they threatened to overrun the Assyrian empire under a leader named Teispes, but were defeated by Esar-haddon, in b.c. 670, in a great battle on the north-eastern frontier of his kingdom, and driven westwards into Asia Minor. There they sacked the Greek town of Sinôpè, and spread like locusts over the fertile plains of Lydia. Among the gifts sent to Nineveh by the Lydian king, Gugu or Gyges—a name in which we may see the Gog of Ezekiel—were two Kimmerian chieftains whom he had captured with his own hand. Gyges was afterwards slain in battle with the barbarians, and it required some years before they could be finally extirpated.