The Chaldean account of Genesis

by George Smith

Although it was known that Assyria borrowed its civilization and written characters from Babylonia, yet, as the Assyrian nation was throughout the greater part of its independent existence hostile to the southern and older kingdom, it could not be guessed beforehand that the peculiar national traditions of Babylonia would have been transported to Assyria.

Under these circumstances, for some years after the cuneiform inscriptions were first deciphered, nothing was looked for or discovered bearing upon the events described in Genesis; but, as new texts were brought into notice, it became evident that the Assyrians borrowed their literature largely from Babylonian sources, and it appeared likely that search among the fragments of Assyrian inscriptions would yield traces at least of some of these ancient Babylonian legends.

Attention was early drawn to this fact by Sir Henry Rawlinson, who pointed out several coincidences between the geography of Babylonia and the account of Eden in Genesis, and suggested the great probability that the accounts in Genesis had a Babylonian origin.

While preparing the fourth volume of Cuneiform Inscriptions for the trustees of the British Museum, Mr. George Smith noticed references to the Creation in a tablet numbered K 63 in the Museum collection, as well as allusions in other tablets to similar legends; he therefore searched through a series of tablets he had previously classed as “Mythological,” in order to find, if possible, some of these legends. This series of mythological tablets was one of six into which he had divided the Museum collection of cuneiform inscriptions for convenience of working. By placing all the tablets and fragments of the same class together, he had been able to complete several texts, to find easily any subject required, and to get, whenever it was needed, a general idea of the contents of the collection.

The mythological division contained all the tablets which related to Assyrian mythology, and all the legends in which the gods took a leading part, together with prayers and similar subjects.

A steady search among these fragments soon brought to light half of a curious tablet which had evidently contained originally six columns of text; two of these (the third and fourth) were still nearly perfect; two others (the second and fifth) were imperfect, about half being lost, while the remaining columns (the first and sixth) were entirely gone. A statement in the third column that “the ship” had rested on the mountain of Nizir, followed by an account of the sending forth of a dove, and its finding no resting-place and returning, convinced Mr. Smith that he had discovered a portion at least of the Chaldean account of the Deluge. He then proceeded to read through the document, and found it was in the form of a speech from the hero of the Deluge to a person whose name might be transcribed as Izdubar. The same name had already been read on the fragment of another tablet numbered K 231, which turned out to belong to the same series of tablets as the newly-found account of the Deluge. Mr. Smith was thus encouraged to make a search for other portions of the series.

The search was a long and heavy work, for there were thousands of fragments to be examined, and these were so small, and contained so little of the text, that it was extremely difficult to ascertain their meaning. The search, however, proved successful. A fragment of another copy of the Deluge was found containing a second account of the sending forth of the birds. Several other portions of the same tablet were gradually collected and fitted one after another into their places until the greater part of the second column was filled up. Portions of a third copy were next discovered, which, when joined together, completed a considerable part of the first and sixth columns. Mr. Smith now translated the text he had so laboriously pieced together, and published his discovery to the world at a meeting of the Society of Biblical Archæology, December 3rd, 1872. By this time he had made out that the series of Izdubar legends, as we may term them, contained twelve tablets or books. Of this series the tablet describing the Deluge was the eleventh and K 231 the sixth.

The interest excited by Mr. Smith’s discovery was naturally very great. Immediately after the meeting of the Society of Biblical Archæology, Mr. E. Arnold, in the name of the proprietors of the “Daily Telegraph,” asked the fortunate discoverer to reopen, at their cost, the excavations in Assyria in the hope of finding the missing portions of the story of the Deluge. The trustees of the British Museum granted Mr. Smith leave of absence for the purpose, and he accordingly started for the ruins of Nineveh, and there engaged in researches, the history of which is related in his work entitled “Assyrian Discoveries.” Hardly had he begun his excavations on the site of the palace of Assur-bani-pal at Kouyunjik, when he came across a new fragment of the Chaldean account of the Deluge belonging to the first column of the tablet, containing the command to build and fill the ark, and nearly filling up the most considerable blank in the story. Some other fragments, found afterwards, still further completed this tablet, which was already the most perfect one in the Izdubar series. The trench in which the fragment in question was discovered must have passed very near the part of the Library in which the Assyrians kept a series of inscriptions relating to the early history of the world. The same trench soon afterwards yielded a fragment of the sixth tablet, describing the destruction of the bull of Istar by Izdubar and Hea-bani, an incident often depicted on early Babylonian gems. The next discovery was a fragment which referred to the creation of the world; it formed the upper corner of a tablet, and gave a fragmentary account of the creation of animals. Two other portions of this legend were found further on in the trench, one of which contained a mutilated account of the war between the gods and evil spirits.

In the following year Mr. Smith was again in Assyria, in charge of an expedition sent out by the trustees of the British Museum, and succeeded in bringing home fresh fragments relating to the early traditions and legends of Babylonia. Among these is the fragment which seems to describe the building of the Tower of Babel. Then followed the disastrous expedition of 1875-6, in the course of which Mr. Smith fell a victim to over-fatigue and his zeal for Assyrian research. The subsequent explorations of Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, though rich in other results, have added very little to our knowledge of the old Babylonian legends; and it seems probable that the missing portions of the tablets which contained them have irretrievably perished. We must wait for further light upon the subject until the cities and libraries of Babylonia have been excavated. After all, the early Babylonian legends, of which copies were made for the Assyrian Library at Kouyunjik, were but a selected few; the Assyrians took little interest in that part of Babylonian literature which had no connection with their own history or beliefs, and we have reason to congratulate ourselves that among the traditions they borrowed from their older and more civilized neighbours were so many which bear upon the earlier chapters of Genesis.

The fragmentary condition of the legends we possess, however, is much to be lamented. The chief difficulties with which the Assyrian scholar has to contend, when dealing with them, are due to the mutilated state of the tablets. If the inscriptions were perfect, their translation would be a comparatively easy matter. As it is, so skilled a decipherer as Mr. Smith himself was deceived by the defective character of the text into imagining that a hymn addressed to the Creator was the Babylonian version of the Fall of Man.