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excesses of the supply of water, the annual floods of the Euphrates, and especially of the Tigris, must always be attended with risk, and often prove harmful.

There are other peculiarities of the Euphrates valley which may occasionally tend to exacerbate the evils attendant on the inundations. It is very subject to seismic disturbances; and the ordinary consequences of a sharp earthquake shock might be seriously complicated by its effects on a broad sheet of water. More over, the Indian Ocean lies within the region of typhoons; and if, at the height of an inundation, a hurricane from the southeast swept up the Persian Gulf, driving its shallow waters upon the delta and damming back the outflow, perhaps for hundreds of miles up-stream, a diluvial catastrophe, fairly up to the mark of Hasisadra's, might easily result.*

Thus there seems to be no valid reason for rejecting Hasisadra's story on physical grounds. I do not gather from the narrative that the "mountains of Nizir" were supposed to be submerged, but merely that they came into view above the distant horizon of the waters, as the vessel drove in their direction. Certainly the ship is not supposed to ground on any of their higher summits, for Hasisadra has to ascend a peak in order to offer his sacrifice. The country of Nizir lay on the northeastern side of the Euphrates valley, about the courses of the two rivers Zab, which enter the Tigris where it traverses the plain of Assyria some eight or nine hundred feet above the sea; and, so far as I can judge from mapst and other sources of information, it is possible, under the circumstances supposed, th t such a ship as Hasisadra's might drive before a southerly gale, over a continuously flooded country, until it grounded on some of the low hills between which both the lower and the upper Zab enter upon the Assyrian plain.

The tablet which contains the story

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under consideration is the eleventh of a. series of twelve. Each of these answers to a month, and to the corresponding sign of the Zodiac. The Assyrian year began with the spring equinox; consequently, the eleventh month, called "the rainy, answers to our January-February, and to the sign which corresponds with our Aquarius. The aquatic adventure of Hasisadra, therefore, is not inappropriately placed. It is curious, however, that the season thus indirectly assigned to the flood is not that of the present highest level of the rivers. It is too late for the winter rise and too early for the spring floods.

I think it must be admitted that, so far, the physical cross-examination to which Hasisadra has been subjected does not break down his story. On the contrary, he proves to have kept it in all essential respects within the bounds of probability or possibility. However, we have not yet done with him. For the conditions which obtained in the Euphrates valley, four or five thousand years ago, may have differed to such an extent from those which now exist that we should be able to convict him of having made up his tale. But here again everything is in favor of his credibility. Indeed, he may claim very powerful support, for it does not lie in the mouths of those who accept the authority of the Pentateuch to deny that the Euphrates valley was what it is, even six thousand years back. According to the book of Genesis, Phrat and Hiddekel-the Euphrates and the Tigris-are coeval with Paradise. An edition of the Scriptures, recently published under high authority, with an elaborate apparatus of "Helps" for the use of students-and therefore, as I am bound to suppose, purged of all statements that could by any possibility mislead the young-assigns the year B. C. 4004 as the date of Adam's too brief residence in that locality.

But I am far from depending on this authority for the age of the Mesopotamian plain. On the contrary, I venture to rely, with much more confidence, on another kind of evidence, which tends to show that the age of the great rivers must be carried back to a date far earlier than that

I have not cited the dimensions given to the ship in most translations of the story, because there appears to be a doubt about them. Haupt (Keilinschriftliche SindfluthBericht, p. 13) says that the figures are illegible.

at which our ingenuous youth is instructed that the earth came into existence. For, the alluvial deposit having been brought down by the rivers, they must needs be older than the plain it forins, as navvies must needs antecede the embankment painfully built up by the contents of their wheelbarrows. For thousands of years, heat and cold, rain, snow, and frost, the scrubbing of glaciers, and the scouring of torrents laden with sand and gravel, have been wearing down the rocks of the upper basins of the rivers, over an area of many thousand square miles; and these materials, ground to fine powder in the course of their long journey, have slowly subsided, as the water which carried them spread out and lost its velocity in the sea. It is because this process is still going on that the shore of the delta constantly encroaches on the head of the gulf into which the two rivers are constantly throwing the waste of Armenia and of Kurdistan. Hence, as might be expected, fluviatile and marine shells are common in the alluvial deposit; and Loftus found strata containing subfossil marine shells of species now living in the Persian gulf, at Warka, two hundred miles in a straight line from the shore of the delta. It follows that, if a trustworthy estimate of the average rate of growth of the alluvial deposit can be formed, the lowest limit (by no means the highest limit) of age of the rivers can be determined. All such estimates are beset with sources of error of very various kinds; and the best of them can only be regarded as approximations to the truth. But I think it will be quite safe to assume a maximum rate of growth of four miles in a century for the lower half of the alluvial plain.

Now, the cycle of narratives of which Hasisadra's adventure forms a part contains allusions not only to Surippak, the exact position of which is doubtful, but to other cities, such as Erech. The vast ruins at the present village of Warka have been

* It is probable that a slow movement of elevation of the land at one time contributed to the result-perhaps does so still.

At a comparatively recent period, the littoral margin of the Persian Gulf extended certainly 250 miles further to the northwest than the present embouchure of the Shatt-el Arab. (Loftus, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 1853, p. 251.) The actual extent of the marine deposit inland cannot be defined, as it is covered by later fluviatile deposits.

carefully explored and determined to be all that remains of that once great and flourishing city, "Erech the lofty." Supposing that the two hundred miles of alluvial country, which separates them from the head of the Persian Gulf at present, have been deposited at the very high rate of four miles in a century, it will follow that 4000 years ago, or about the year 2100 B. C., the city of Erech still lay forty miles inland. Indeed, the city might have been built nearly a thousand years earlier. Moreover, there is plenty of independent archæological and other evidence that in the whole thousand years, 2000 to 3000 B.C., the alluvial plain was inhabited by a numerous people, among whom industry, art, and literature had attained a very considerable development. And it can be shown that the physical conditions and the climate of the Euphrates valley, at that time, must have been extremely similar to what they are now.

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Thus, once more, we reach the conclusion that, as a question of physical probability, there is no ground for objecting to the reality of Hasisadra's adventure. It would be unreasonable to doubt that such a flood might have happened, and that such a person might have escaped in the way described, any time during the last 5000 years. And if the postulate of loose thinkers in search of scientific confirmations" of questionable narratives— proof that an event may have happened is evidence that it did happen-is to be accepted, surely Hasisadra's story is "confirmed by modern scientific investigation" beyond all cavil. However, it may be well to pause before adopting this conclusion, because the original story, of which I have set forth only the broad outlines, contains a great many statements which rest upon just the same foundation as those cited, and yet are hardly likely to meet with general acceptance. The account of the circumstances which led up to the flood, of those under which Hasisadra's adventure was made known to his descendant, of certain remarkable incidents before and after the flood, are inseparably bound up with the details already given. And I am un- · able to discover any justification for arbitrarily picking out some of these and dubbing them historical verities, while reas legendary fictions. jecting the rest They stand or fall together. Before proceeding to the consideration

of these less satisfactory details, it is needful to remark that Hasisadra's adventure is a mere episode in a cycle of stories of which a personage, whose name is provisionally read "Izdubar," is the centre. The nature of Izdubar hovers vaguely between the heroic and the divine; sometimes he seems a mere man, sometimes approaches so closely to the divinities of fire and of the sun as to be hardly distinguishable from them. As I have already mentioned, the tablet which sets forth Hasisadra's perils is one of twelve; and, since each of these represents a month and bears a story appropriate to the corresponding sign of the Zodiac, great weight must be attached to Sir Henry Rawlinson's sugges tion that the epos of Izdubar is a poetical embodiment of solar mythology.

In the earlier books of the epos, the hero, not content with rejecting the proffered love of the Chaldæan Aphrodite, Istar, freely expresses his very low estimate of her character; and it is interesting to observe that, even in this early stage of human experience, men had reached a conception of that law of nature which expresses the inevitable consequences of an imperfect appreciation of feminine charms. The injured goddess makes Izdubar's life a burden to him, until at last, sick in body and sorry in mind, he is driven to seek aid and comfort from his forbears in the world of spirits. So this antitype of Odysseus journeys to the shore of the waters of death, and there takes ship with a Chaldæan Charon, who carries him within hail of his ancestor Hasisadra. That venerable personage not only gives Izdubar instructions how to regain his health, but tells him, somewhat à propos des bottes (after the manner of venerable personages), the long story of his perilous adventure; and how it befell that he, his wife, and his steersman came to dwell among the blessed gods, without passing through the portals of death like ordinary mortals.

According to the full story, the sins of mankind had become grievous; and, at a council of the gods, it was resolved to extirpate the whole race by a great flood. And, once more, let us note the uniformity of human experience. It would appear that, four thousand years ago, the obligations of confidential intercourse about matters of state were sometimes violated-of course from the best of motives. Ea, one of the three chiefs of the Chaldæan

Pantheon, the god of justice and of practical wisdom, was also the god of the sea; and, yielding to the temptation to do a friend a good turn, irresistible to kindly seafaring folk of all ranks, he warned. Hasisadra of what was coming. When Bel subsequently reproached him for this breach of confidence, Ea defended himself by declaring that he did not tell Hasisadra anything; he only sent him a dream. This was undoubtedly sailing very near the wind; but the attribution of a little benevolent obliquity of conduct to one of the highest of the gods is a trifle compared with the truly Homeric anthropomorphism which characterizes other parts of the epos.

The Chaldæan deities are, in truth, extremely human; and, occasionally, the narrator does not scruple to represent them in a manner which is not only inconsistent with our idea of reverence, but is sometimes distinctly humorous.* When the storm is at its height, he exhibits them flying in a state of panic to Anu, the god of heaven, and crouching before his portal like frightened dogs. As the smoke of Hasisadra's sacrifice arises, the gods, attracted by the sweet savor, are compared to swarms of flies. I have already remarked that the lady Istar's reputation is torn to shreds; while she and Ea scold Bel handsomely for his ferocity and injus tice in destroying the innocent along with the guilty. One is reminded of Here hung up with weighted heels; of misleading dreams sent by Zeus; of Ares howling as he flies from the Trojan battlefield; and of the very questionable dealings of Aphrodite with Helen and Paris.

But to return to the story. Bel was, at first, excluded from the sacrifice as the author of all the mischief, which really was somewhat hard upon him, since the other gods agreed to his proposal. But eventually a reconciliation takes place; the great bow of Anu is displayed in the heavens; Bel agrees that he will be satisfied with what war, pestilence, famine, and wild beasts can do in the way of destroying men; and that, henceforward, he will not have recourse to extraordinary measures. Finally, it is Bel himself who, by way of making amends, transports Hasisadra, his wife, and the faithful NesHea to the abode of the gods.

*Tiele (Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte, pp. 572-73) has some very just remarks on this aspect of the epos.

It is as indubitable as it is incomprehensible to most of us, that, for thousands of years, a great people, quite as intelligent as we are, and living in as high a state of civilization as that which had been attained in the greater part of Europe a few centuries ago, entertained not the slightest doubt that Anu, Bel, Ea, Istar, and the rest, were real personages, possessed of boundless powers for good and evil. The sincerity of the monarchs whose inscriptions gratefully attribute their victories to Merodach, or to Assur, is as little to be questioned as that of the authors of the hymns and penitential psalms which give full expression to the heights and depths of religious devotion. An infidel" bold enough to deny the existence, or to doubt the influence, of these deities probably did not exist in all Mesopotamia; and even constructive rebellion against their authority was apt to end in the deprivation, not merely of the good name, but of the skin of the offender. The adherents of modern theological systems dismiss these objects of the love and fear of a hundred generations of their equals, offhand, as gods of the heathen," mere creations of a wicked and idolatrous imagination; and, along with them, they disown, as senseless, the crude theology, with its gross anthropomorphism and its low ethical conception of the divinity, which satisfied the pious souls of Chaldæa.

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I imagine, though I do not presume to be sure, that any endeavor to save the intellectual and moral credit of Chaldæan religion, by suggesting the application to it of that universal solvent of absurdities, the allegorical method, would be scouted; I will not even suggest that any ingenuity can be equal to discovery of the antitypes of the personifications effected by the religious imagination of later ages, in the triad Anu, Ea, and Bel, still less in Istar. Therefore, unless some plausible reconciliatory scheme should be propounded by a Neo-Chaldæan devotee (and, with Neo-Buddhists to the fore, this supposition is not so wild as it looks), I suppose the moderns will continue to smile, in a superior way, at the grievous absurdity of the polytheistic idolatry of these ancient people.

It is probably a congenital absence of some faculty which I ought to possess which withholds me from adopting this summary procedure. But I am

not

ashamed to share David Hume's want of ability to discover that polytheism is, in itself, altogether absurd. If we are bound, or permitted, to judge the government of the world by human standards, it appears to me that directorates are proved by familiar experience to conduct the largest and the most complicated concerns quite as well as solitary despots. I have never been able to see why the hypothesis of a divine syndicate should be found guilty of innate absurdity. Those Assyrians, in particular, who held Assur to be the one supreme and creative deity, to whom all the other supernal powers were subordinate, might fairly ask that the essential difference between their system and that which obtains among the great majority of their modern theological critics should be demonstrated. In my apprehension, it is not the quantity, but the quality, of the persons, among whom the attributes of divinity are distributed, which is the serious matter. If the divine might is associated with no higher ethical attributes than those which obtain among ordinary men; if the divine intelligence is supposed to be so imperfect that it cannot foresee the consequences of its own contrivances; if the supernal powers can become furiously angry with the creatures of their omnipotence, and in their senseless wrath destroy the innocent along with the guilty; or if they can show themselves to be as easily placated by presents and gross flattery as any oriental or occidental despot; if, in short, they are only stronger than mortal men and no better, as it must be admitted Hasisadra's deities proved themselves to be; then, surely, it is time for us to look somewhat closely into their credentials, and to accept none but conclusive evidence of their existence.

To the majority of my respected contemporaries this reasoning will doubtless appear feeble, if not worse. However, to my mind, such are the only arguments by which the Chaldæan theology can be satisfactorily upset. So far from there being any ground for the belief that Ea, Anu, and Bel are, or ever were, real entities, it seems to me quite infinitely more probable that they are products of the religious imagination, such as are to be found everywhere and in all ages, so long as that imagination riots uncontrolled by scientific criticism.

It is on these grounds that I venture, at

the risk of being called an atheist by the ghosts of all the principals of all the colleges of Babylonia, or by their living successors among the Neo-Chaldæans, if that sect should arise, to express my utter disbelief in the gods of Hasisadra. Hence, it follows, that I find Hasisadra's account of their share in his adventure incredible; and, as the physical details of the flood are inseparable from its theophanic accompaniments, and are guaranteed by the same authority, I must let them go with the rest. The consistency of such details with probability counts for nothing. The inhabitants of Chaldæa must always have been familiar with inundations; probably no generation failed to witness an inundation which rose unusually high, or was rendered serious by coincident atmospheric, or other, disturbances. And the memory of the general features of any exceptionally severe and devastating flood, would be preserved by popular tradition for long ages. What, then, could be more natural than that a Chaldæan poet should seek for the incidents of a great catastrophe among such phenomena ? In what other way than by such an appeal to their experience could he so surely awaken in his audience the tragic pity and terror? What possible ground is there for insisting that he must have had some individual flood in view, and that his story is historical, in the sense that the account of the effects of a hurricane in the Bay of Bengal, in the year 1875, is historical?

More than three centuries after the time of Assurbanipal, Berosus of Babylon, born in the reign of Alexander the Great, wrote an account of the history of his country in Greek. The work of Berosus has vanished; but extracts from it-how far faithful is uncertain-have been preserved by later writers. Among these occurs the well-known story of the Deluge of Xisuthros, which is evidently built upon the same foundation as that of Hasisadra. The incidents of the divine warning, the building of the ship, the sending out of birds, the ascension of the hero, betray their common origin. But stories, like Madeira, acquire a heightened flavor with time and travel; and the version of Berosus is characterized by those circumstantial improbabilities which habitually gather round the legend of a legend. The later narrator knows the exact day of the

month on which the flood began. The dimensions of the ship are stated with Munchausenian precision at five stadia by two-say, half by one-fifth of an English mile. The ship runs aground among the "Gordæan mountains" to the south of Lake Van, in Armenia, beyond the limits of any imaginable real inundation of the Euphrates valley; and, by way of climax, we have the assertion, worthy of the sailor who said that he had brought up one of Pharaoh's chariot wheels on the fluke of his anchor in the Red Sea, that pilgrims visited the locality and made amulets of the bitumen which they scraped off from the still extant remains of the mighty ship of Xisuthros.

Suppose that some later polyhistor, as devoid of critical faculty as most of his tribe, had found the version of Berosus, as well as another much nearer the original story; that, having too much respect for his authorities to make up a tertium quid of his own, out of the materials offered, he followed a practice, common enough among ancient and, particularly, among Semitic historians, of dividing both into fragments and piecing them together, without troubling himself very much about the resulting repetitions and inconsistencies; the product of such a primitive editorial operation would be a narrative analogous to that which treats of the Noachian deluge in the book of Genesis. For the Pentateuchal story is indubitably a patchwork, composed of fragments of at least two, different and partly discrepant, narratives, quilted together in such an inartistic fashion that the seams remain conspicuous. And, in the matter of circumstantial exaggeration, it in some respects excels even the second-hand legend of Berosus.

There is a certain practicality about the notion of taking refuge from floods and storms in a ship provided with a steersman; but, surely, no one who had ever scen more water than he could wade through would dream of facing even a moderate breeze, in a huge three-storied coffer, or box, three hundred cubits long, fifty wide and thirty high, left to drift without rudder or pilot.* Not content

In the second volume of the History of the Euphrates Expedition, p. 637, Col. Chesney gives a very interesting account of the simple and rapid manner in which the people about Tekrit and in the marshes of Lemlum con

struct large barges, and make them watertight

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