[944] The myth of the Deluge is practically world-wide, except in Africa (including Egypt), “where native legends of a great flood are conspicuously absent—indeed, no clear case of one has yet been reported.” J. G. Frazer, Folklore in the Old Testament (London, 1918), vol. I. p. 40. Maspero seems quite wide of the mark in treating the semi-ritual myth of the Destruction of Man as “a dry deluge myth,” Dawn of Civilization (London, 1894), pp. 164 ff. For various accounts of the Deluge, see Hastings, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, article Deluge (Edinburgh, 1911).
[945] Annals of the Kings of Assyria, by Budge and King (1903), p. 138. ‘Dolphin’ is the translation of Nakhiri, doubtless from the same root, which in Arabic is Nakhara, to spout, and occurs in the same sense in Syriac and Ethiopic. In view of the evidence of Pliny and other authors as to the former existence of the whale in the Mediterranean, I suggested to Professor King an alternative rendering of nakhiri as ‘whale,’ and he informed me he accepts my suggestion as the more probable of the two.
[946] Another translation (R. Asiatic Proc., XIX. pp. 124-5) renders these lines “creatures of the Great Sea which the King of Egypt had sent as a gift, and entrusted to the care of men of his own country,” either as carriers or permanent attendants. But see p. 53 of the Introduction to The Annals of the Kings of Assyria, op. cit. Dr. St. Clair Tisdall writes: “If Nam-su-hu (Budge and King’s translation) be right, it is evidently the Egyptian name ’msuhu = crocodile, with the plural Na prefixed. Egypt in Arabic is still Mīsr.”
[947] Op. cit., Introduction, pp. 372 ff.
[948] The Assyrians, probably from having no admixture of the softer Sumerian blood, from living in a less enervating climate, and from Hittite influence, stand out as more virile, fiercer fighters, and crueller foes than the Babylonians.
[949] W. Hayes Ward, op. cit., p. 418, states the dog appears in cylinders very early—chiefly as guardian of the flock. Cf. Figures 391, 393, 394, 395. He is seen in the late Babylonian: cf. Figs. 549, 551, 552, and later still in hunting scenes, Figs. 630, 1064, 1076 and 1094, which last shows in a very spirited manner four dogs in a fight with two lions. The dog running away is fairly “making tracks!”
[950] Cf. Tobit v. 16, and xi. 4.
[951] Layard Monuments of Nineveh (op. cit.), vol. II. p. 438.
[952] The identification, which is avowedly more of a philological than a scientifically zoological nature, is in the cases of Nos. 2 and 3 a “terminological inexactitude,” for as Dr. Boulenger’s lists show, neither the turbot nor the sole occur in the Persian Gulf. Cf. Proc. Zoological Society, 1887, p. 653; 1889, p. 236, and 1892, p. 134.
[953] Monograph, Kleine Beiträge zum assyrischen Lexicon (Helsingfors, 1912).