Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions

by Thomas Henry Huxley

It is of no use to appeal to contemporary history, although the annals of Babylonia, no less than those of Egypt, go much further back than 2000 B.C. All that can be said is, that the former are hardly consistent with the supposition that any catastrophe, competent to destroy all the population, has befallen the land since civilisation began, and that the latter are notoriously silent about deluges. In such a case as this, however, the silence of history does not leave the inquirer wholly at fault. Natural science has something to say when the phenomena of nature

are in question. Natural science may be able to show, from the nature of the country, either that such an event as that described in the story is impossible, or at any rate highly improbable; or, on the other hand, that it is consonant with probability. In the former case, the narrative must be suspected or rejected; in the latter, no such summary verdict can be given: on the contrary, it must be admitted that the story may be true. And then, if certain strangely prevalent canons of criticism are accepted, and if the evidence that an event might have happened is to be accepted as proof that it did happen, Assyriologists will be at liberty to congratulate one another on the "confirmation by modern science" of the authority of their ancient books.

It will be interesting, therefore, to inquire how far the physical structure and the other conditions of the region in which Surippak was situated are compatible with such a flood as is described in the Assyrian record.

The scene of Hasisadra's adventure is laid in the broad valley, six or seven hundred miles long, and hardly anywhere less than a hundred miles in width, which is traversed by the lower courses of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, and which is commonly known as the "Euphrates valley." Rising, at the one end, into a hill country, which gradually passes into the Alpine heights of Armenia; and, at the other, dipping beneath the shallow waters of the head of the Persian Gulf, which continues in the same direction, from north-west to south-east, for some eight hundred

miles farther, the floor of the valley presents a gradual slope, from eight hundred feet above the sea level to the depths of the southern end of the Persian Gulf. The boundary between sea and land, formed by the extremest mudflats of the delta of the two rivers, is but vaguely defined; and, year by year, it advances seaward. On the north-eastern side, the western frontier ranges of Persia rise abruptly to great heights; on the south-western side, a more gradual ascent leads to a table-land of less elevation, which, very broad in the south, where it is occupied by the deserts of Arabia and of Southern Syria, narrows, northwards, into the highlands of Palestine, and is continued by the ranges of the Lebanon, the Antilebanon, and the Taurus, into the highlands of Armenia.

The wide and gently inclined plain, thus inclosed between the gulf and the highlands, on each side and at its upper extremity, is distinguishable into two regions of very different character, one of which lies north, and the other south of the parallel of Hit, on the Euphrates. Except in the immediate vicinity of the river, the northern division is stony and scantily covered with vegetation, except in spring. Over the southern division, on the contrary, spreads a deep alluvial soil, in which even a pebble is rare; and which, though, under the existing misrule, mainly a waste of marsh and wilderness, needs only intelligent attention to become, as it was of old, the granary of western Asia. Except in the extreme south, the rainfall is small and the air dry. The heat in summer is intense, while bitterly cold northern blasts

sweep the plain in winter. Whirlwinds are not uncommon; and, in the intervals of the periodical inundations, the fine, dry, powdery soil is swept, even by moderate breezes, into stifling clouds, or rather fogs, of dust. Low inequalities, elevations here and depressions there, diversify the surface of the alluvial region. The latter are occupied by enormous marshes, while the former support the permanent dwellings of the present scanty and miserable population.

In antiquity, so long as the canalisation of the country was properly carried out, the fertility of the alluvial plain enabled great and prosperous nations to have their home in the Euphrates valley. Its abundant clay furnished the materials for the masses of sun-dried and burnt bricks, the remains of which, in the shape of huge artificial mounds, still testify to both the magnitude and the industry of the population, thousands of years ago. Good cement is plentiful, while the bitumen, which wells from the rocks at Hit and elsewhere, not only answers the same purpose, but is used to this day, as it was in Hasisadra's time, to pay the inside and the outside of boats.

In the broad lower course of the Euphrates, the stream rarely acquires a velocity of more than three miles an hour, while the lower Tigris attains double that rate in times of flood. The water of both great rivers is mainly derived from the northern and eastern highlands in Armenia and in Kurdistan, and stands at its lowest level in early autumn and in January.

But when the snows accumulated in the upper basins of the great rivers, during the winter, melt under the hot sunshine of spring, they rapidly rise,[^[171]] and at length overflow their banks, covering the alluvial plain with a vast inland sea, interrupted only by the higher ridges and hummocks which form islands in a seemingly boundless expanse of water.