The Story of the Alphabet

by Edward Clodd

Fig. 43.—Deluge Tablet (Chaldean Epic) OBVERSE.

Fig. 44.—Deluge Tablet (Chaldean Epic) REVERSE.

The actual contents of the Tell-el-Amarna tablets are of secondary importance to the fact that cuneiform writing was in use in Palestine fifteen hundred years before Christ, and, therefore, that Babylonian myths and legends had, in all probability, circulated freely there centuries before the Book of Genesis took shape. Thus the legends of the Creation, the Fall, and the Deluge, the Chaldean origin of which is established (Figs. 42, 43, 44), "can very well have existed in Palestine at the time it was invaded by the Israelites, who would have learned them from the people they subdued, and would have found plenty of time to modify them into the forms in which they appear in Hebrew literature." (The Witness of Assyria, p. 11, by Chilperic Edwards.)

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CHAPTER VI

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EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS