Izdubar, as he warns us, is only a temporary makeshift name or sound, adopted by him for the present,
and to be given up as soon as he shall be satisfied as to the proper sound to be given to the cuneiform characters in which the name stands written. Whatever the true sound of his name, he was a celebrated hero or king in the early days of Babylon. His name frequently occurs in other inscriptions, and his exploits are still more frequently figured on Babylonian cylinders. The peculiar cast of his countenance, and the very marked way in which his beard and his hair are ever made to fall in long rolls or curls, cause him to be recognized at a glance, even in the coarsest representations. We might almost call him the Babylonian Hercules. All that has been thus far learned concerning him tends strongly to identify this as yet nameless hero with “Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord” (Gen. x, 8, 9, 10).
The first ten tablets, which exist only in the usual thoroughly-mutilated condition, tell us of his adventures, wars, victories, and ultimate attainment of great power. At last, having lost his trusted friend and counsellor Heabani, and finding himself stricken with a foul disease, he sets out on a long and difficult journey to seek the sage Hasisadra, in order to be cured by him.
This Hasisadra, as the tablet calls him—or Xisuthrus, as the Greeks have the name—is no other than the patriarch Noe, whom the Chaldean legend supposes not to have died, but to have been translated from among men, as Henoch was, without seeing death, and to have been placed in some divinely guarded spot where, by a special favor from the gods, he enjoys immortality. To him, after surmounting many difficulties, Izdubar succeeds in coming; and their speeches to each
other are commenced toward the close of the tenth tablet. On the eleventh Izdubar questions him about the Deluge, and he replies:
“Hasisadra after this manner also said to Izdubar:
Be revealed unto thee, Izdubar, the concealed story,
And the judgment of the gods be related to thee.”
In the course of the narrative, which he then gives, we are told of the anger of the gods, and their purpose to destroy the world because of its sin; of the command given to Hasisadra to build a ship after the manner they would show him, in order that therein “the seed of life might be saved”; of the building of the ship; of its size (different from the measures given in Genesis), the lining of it three times with bitumen, and the launching of it. Into this ship, at the proper time, there enter Hasisadra and all his family, and “all his male servants and his female servants,” as also “the beasts of the field and the animals of the field,” which God “had gathered and sent to him to be enclosed in his door.” Hasisadra brought in also “wine in the receptacle of goats,” which he had “collected like the waters of a river,” and “food” in abundance “like the dust of the earth,” “his grain, his furniture, his goods,” all his “gold,” and all his “silver.” Also, as the text reads, “the sons of the people all of them I caused to go up.” The number of persons saved would thus far exceed the number specially mentioned by Moses.
“A flood Shamas made, and