The Chaldean account of Genesis

by George Smith

The name of Khumbaba, or Khubaba, as it is occasionally written, is probably a compound of “Khumba,” or “Khumbume,” the name of one of the chief Elamite gods. Many other Elamite names compounded with Khumba are mentioned in the inscriptions: Khumba-sidir, an early chief; Khumba-undasa, an Elamite general opposed to Sennacherib; Khumba-nigas, an Elamite monarch opposed to Sargon; Tul-khumba, an Elamite city, &c.

The notice of foreign dominion, and particularly of Elamite supremacy at this time, may, perhaps, form a clue from which to ascertain the approximate age of the poems as we have them. We know that myths are localized in the country of those who hand them down to posterity, and assigned to an age which has made an impression on their narrators. There must have been some reason for the legendary siege and capture of Erech, some actual event around which the story of Izdubar has entwined itself.

Looking at the fragments of Berosus and the notices of Greek and Roman authors, we may ask whether there is any epoch of conquest and foreign dominion which can be fixed upon as representing such an actual event? Let us glance for a moment at the earlier history of Babylonia so far as it is known to us.

The earlier part of the list of dynasties quoted from Berosus gives the following periods from the Flood downwards:—

86 Chaldean kings from the Flood down to the Median conquest, reigning for 34,080 or 33,091 years.

8 Median kings who conquered and held Babylon, 234, or 224, or 190 years.

11 other kings, race and duration unknown.

49 Chaldean kings, for 458 years.

The last of these dynasties preceded a dynasty of kings called Arabian by the copyists of Berosus, and though neither the number of the reigns nor the length of time assigned to the dynasty agrees with what the monuments tell us of the Cassite or Cossæan line of kings, there is no other line which can in any way be identified with the Arabians of the Babylonian historian. The 49 Chaldean kings must, therefore, have reigned before Khammuragas, that is before B.C. 2000-1750. Now an inscription of Nabonidus informs us that Lig-bagas, the first monarch of all Chaldea of whom we know, flourished 700 years anterior to the reign of Khammuragas; he would, therefore, come among the 11 nameless kings of Berosus, supposing any reliance can be placed on the statements of the latter, and about 250 years before the accession of the Chaldean dynasty. But the engraved cylinders and seals of the age of Lig-bagas show that the legend of Izdubar was already popular, and we must accordingly seek a still older period in which to place its origin and attachment to a particular historical event. Hence it may well be that the siege of Erech, the memory of which is preserved in the first book of the Izdubar Epic, was the work of those foreign invaders whom the Babylonian historian has termed Median.

Now it is not improbable that the Median dynasty was really Elamite; or at all events belonged to the same race as the primitive inhabitants of Elam. This race was closely allied to the Accadians; and it was spread over the whole range of country which stretched from the southern shores of the Caspian to the Persian Gulf. The Protomedes, as they are sometimes called, were not conquered and supplanted by Aryan invaders from the east till the ninth century B.C. It was in their country that Kharsak-kurra, “the Mountain of the East,” was localized whereon the Accadians and their kinsfolk in Elam and Media believed the ark to have rested after the Flood, and which they regarded as the cradle of their race. It was therefore pre-eminently “the land,” mada in Accadian, and from this mada there is every reason to think the name of Media has been derived. Consequently, the Medians of Berosus, the inhabitants of mada “the land” of the east, need not have been more than one of the many Elamite swarms that from time to time descended into the fertile plains of Babylonia, and not unfrequently obtained a settlement there. Such were the Accadians, or “Highlanders” themselves; such, too, the two Cassite or Cossæan dynasties which we learn from the monuments long held sway over Chaldea.