In the Astronomical Tablets, which Professor Sayce dates about B.C. 1600, we have the continual association of eclipse and flood: ‘On the fifteenth day an eclipse takes place. The king dies; and rains in the heaven, floods in the channels are.’ ‘In the month of Elul (August), the fourteenth day, an eclipse takes place.... Northward ... its shadow is seen; and to the King of Mullias a crown is given. To the king the crown is an omen; and over the king the eclipse passes. Rains in heaven, floods in the channels flow. A famine is in the country. Men their sons for silver sell.’ ‘After a year the Air-god inundates.’[27]
In the Chaldæo-Babylonian cosmogony the three zones of the universe were ruled over by a Triad as follows: the Heaven by Anu; the surface of the earth, including the atmosphere, by Bel; the under-world by Nouah.[28] This same Nouah is the Assyrian Hea or Saviour; and it is Noah of the Bible. The name means a rest or residence,—the place where man may dwell. When Tiamat the Dragon, or the Leviathan, opens ‘the fountains of the great deep,’ and Anu ‘the windows of Heaven,’ it is Hea or Noah who saves the life of man. M. François Lenormant has shown this to be the probable sense of one of the most ancient Accadian fragments in the British Museum. In it allusion is made to ‘the serpent of seven heads ... that beats the sea.’[29] Hea, however, appears to be more clearly indicated in a fragment which Professor Sayce appends to this:—
Below in the abyss the forceful multitudes may they sacrifice.
The overwhelming fear of Anu in the midst of Heaven encircles his path.
The spirits of earth, the mighty gods, withstand him not.
The king like a lightning-flash opened.
Adar, the striker of the fortresses of the rebel band, opened.
Like the streams in the circle of heaven I besprinkled the seed of men.
His marching in the fealty of Bel to the temple I directed,
(He is) the hero of the gods, the protector of mankind, far (and) near....