Scattered through various cuneiform inscriptions are other notices, names, or passages, connected with the Book of Genesis. Although the names of the Genesis patriarchs are not in the inscriptions which give the history of the mythical period, nevertheless some of the patriarchal names of Genesis are found here and there in the inscriptions.
The name Adam is in the Creation legends, but only in a general sense as man, as in Gen. i. 26, 27, 28.; v. 1, not as a proper name. Several of the other names of antediluvian patriarchs correspond with Babylonian words and roots, such as Methusael (Gen. iv. 18), which is the Assyrian mutu-sa-ili, “man of God,” and has been changed into Methuselah (Gen. v. 21) in order to assimilate it to the genius of the Hebrew language, or Noah, the Assyrian nukhu, “rest;” but, besides these, certain names appear as proper names also in Babylonia, among them Cainan, Lamech, and Laban.
Cainan is found as the name of a Babylonian town Kan-nan; the inhabitants of which were sometimes called Kanunai, which must not be confounded with the name of the Canaanites or “lowlanders,” originally the inhabitants of the coastland of Phœnicia and then, by extension, of all Palestine.
Lamech has already been pointed out by Palmer (“Egyptian Chronicles,” vol. i. p. 56), in the name of the deified Phœnician patriarch Diamich; this name is found in the cuneiform texts as Dumugu and Lamga, two forms of the Accadian name of the moon.
The two wives of Lamech, Adah and Zillah, seem to be the Assyrian edhutu or edhatu “darkness,” and tsillatu “the shades of night;” and the names of his two sons Jabal and Jubal are but varying forms of the Assyrian abil “son.” Dr. Oppert long ago pointed out that this Assyrian word was the origin of the name Abel which has been assimilated in spelling to a Hebrew word signifying “mere breath.”
Some of the names of the patriarchs after the Flood are found as names of towns in Syria, but not in Babylonia; among these are Reu or Ragu, Serug, and Harran.
Laban, on the other hand, as was first noticed by Dr. Delitzsch, is mentioned in a list of gods given in a cuneiform tablet (published in the “Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia,” iii. 66, 6.)
Mugheir, the site of Ur of the Chaldees.