Another legend was an endeavour to account for the origin of death. Adapa or Adama, the first man, who had been created by Ea, was fishing one day in the deep sea, when he broke the wings of the south wind. The south wind flew to complain to Anu in heaven, and Anu ordered the culprit to appear before him. But Adapa was instructed by Ea how to act. Clad in a garment of mourning, he won the hearts of the two guardians of the gate of heaven, the gods Tammuz and Gis-zida ("the firmly-fixed post"), so that they pleaded for him before Anu. Food and water were offered him, but he refused them for fear that they might be the food and water of death. Oil only for anointing and clothing did he accept. "Then Anu looked upon him and raised his voice in lamentation: 'O Adapa, wherefore atest thou not, wherefore didst thou not drink? The gift of life cannot now be thine.'" Though "a sinful man" had been permitted "to behold the innermost parts of heaven and earth," he had rejected the food and water of life, and death henceforth was the lot of mankind.
It is curious that the commencement of this legend, the latter portion of which has been found at Tel el-Amarna, had been brought to the British Museum from the ruins of the library of Nineveh many years ago. But until the discovery of the conclusion, its meaning and character were indecipherable. The copy made for the library of Nineveh was a late edition of the text which had been carried from Babylonia to the banks of the Nile eight hundred years before, and the fact emphasizes once more the Babylonian character of the culture and literature possessed by Palestine in the Patriarchal Age.
We need not wonder, therefore, if it is to Babylonia that the cosmological legends and beliefs of Phoenicia plainly point. The watery chaos out of which the world was created, the divine hierarchies, one pair of deities proceeding from another and an older pair, or the victory of Kronos over the dragon Ophioneus, are among the indications of their Babylonian origin. But far more important than these echoes of Babylonian mythology in the legendary lore of Phoenicia is the close relationship that exists between the traditions of Babylonia and the earlier chapters of Genesis. As is now well known, the Babylonian account of the Deluge agrees even in details with that which we find in the Bible, though the polytheism of Chaldæa is there replaced by an uncompromising monotheism, and there are little touches, like the substitution of an "ark" for the Babylonian "ship," which show that the narrative has been transported to Palestine. Equally Babylonian in origin is the history of the Tower of Babel, while two of the rivers of Eden are the Tigris and Euphrates, and Eden itself is the Edin or "Plain" of Babylonia.
Not so long ago it was the fashion to declare that such coincidences between Babylonian and Hebrew literature could be due only to the long sojourn of the Jews in Babylonia during the twenty years of the Exile. But we now know that the traditions and legends of Babylonia were already known in Canaan before the Israelites had entered the Promised Land. It was not needful for the Hebrew writer to go to Chaldæa in order that he might learn them; when Moses was born they were already current both in Palestine and on the banks of the Nile. The Babylonian colouring of the early chapters of Genesis is just what archaeology would teach us to expect it would have been, had the Pentateuch been of the age to which it lays claim.
Here and there indeed there are passages which must be of that age, and of none other. When in the tenth chapter of Genesis Canaan is made the brother of Cush and Mizraim, of Ethiopia and Egypt, we are carried back at once to the days when Palestine was an Egyptian province. The statement is applicable to no other age. Geographically Canaan lay outside the southern zone to which Egypt and Ethiopia belonged, except during the epoch of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, when all three were alike portions of a single empire. With the fall of that empire the statement ceased to be correct or even conceivable. After the era of the Israelitish conquest Canaan and Egypt were separated one from the other, not to be again united save for a brief space towards the close of the Jewish monarchy. Palestine henceforth belonged to Asia, not to Africa, to the middle zone, that is to say, which was given over to the sons of Shem.
There is yet another passage in the same chapter of Genesis which takes us back to the Patriarchal Age of Palestine. It is the reference to Nimrod, the son of Cush, the beginning of whose kingdom was Babel and Erech, and Accad and Calneh in the land of Shinar, and who was so familiar a figure in the West that a proverb was current there concerning his prowess in the chase. Here again we are carried to a date when the Kassite kings of Babylonia held rule in Canaan, or led thither their armies, and when the Babylonians were called, as they are in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, the Kassi or sons of Cush. Nimrod himself may be the Kassite monarch Nazi-Murudas. The cuneiform texts of the period show that the names borne by the Kassite kings were strangely abbreviated by their subjects; even in Babylonia, Kasbe and Sagarta-Suria, for instance, being written for Kasbeias and Sagarakti-Suryas, the latter of which even appears as Sakti-Surias, while Nazi-Murudas itself is found under the form of Nazi-Rattas. Similarly Duri-galzu and Kurigalzu take the place of Dur-Kurigalzi. There is no reason, therefore, why Nazi-Murudas should not have been familiarly known as Na-Muruda, more especially in distant Canaan.
Indeed we can almost fix the date to which the lifetime of Nimrod must be assigned. We are told that out of his kingdom "one went forth into Assyria," and there "builded" Nineveh and Calah, The cuneiform inscriptions have informed us who this builder of Calah was. He was Shalmaneser I., who was also the restorer of Nineveh and its temples, and who is stated by Sennacherib to have reigned six hundred years before himself. Such a date would coincide with the reign of Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the Oppression, as well as with the birth-time of Moses. It represents a period when the influence of Babylonia had not yet passed away from Canaan, and when there was still intercourse between the East and the West. Ramses claims to have overcome both Assyria and Shinar, and though the Shinar he means was the Shinar of Mesopotamia and not Chaldæa, it lay within the limits of Babylonian control. The reign of Ramses II. is the latest period down to which, with our present knowledge, we can regard the old influence of Babylonia in Canaan as still continuing, and it is equally the period to which, if we are to listen to the traditional teaching of the Church, the writer of the Pentateuch belonged. The voice of archaeology is thus in agreement with that of authority, and here as elsewhere true science declares herself the handmaid of the Catholic Church.