Chapter I

_Chaldean and Biblical Narratives._--Of the traditions relating to the great cataclysm the most curious, no doubt, is that of the Chaldeans. Its influence has stamped itself in an unmistakable manner on the tradition of India; and, of all the accounts of the Deluge, it comes nearest to that in Genesis. To whoever compares the two it becomes evident that they must have been one and the same up to the time when Terah and his family left Ur of the Chaldees to go into Palestine.

We have two versions of the Chaldean story--unequally developed indeed, but exhibiting a remarkable agreement. The one most anciently known, and also the shorter, is that which Berosus took from the sacred books of Babylon and introduced into the history that he wrote for the use of the Greeks.[32] After speaking of the last nine antediluvian kings, the Chaldean priest continues thus:--

"Obartes Elbaratutu being dead, his son Xisuthros (Khasisatra)
reigned eighteen sares (64,800 years). It was under him that the
Great Deluge took place, the history of which is told in the sacred
documents as follows:--Cronos (Ea) appeared to him in his sleep, and
announced that on the fifteenth of the month of Daisios (the
Assyrian month Sivan--a little before the summer solstice), all men
should perish by a flood. He therefore commanded him to take the
beginning, the middle, and the end of whatever was consigned to
writing,[33] and to bury it in the City of the Sun, at Sippara; then
to build a vessel, and to enter into it with his family and dearest
friends; to place in this vessel provisions to eat and drink, and to
cause animals, birds, and quadrupeds to enter it; lastly, to prepare
everything for navigation. And when Xisuthros inquired in what
direction he should steer his bark, he was answered, 'towards the
gods,' and enjoined to pray that good might come of it for men.

"Xisuthros obeyed, and constructed a vessel five stadia long and
five broad; he collected all that had been prescribed to him, and
embarked his wife, his children, and his intimate friends.

"The Deluge having come, and soon going down, Xisuthros loosed some
of the birds. These finding no food nor place to alight on returned
to the ship. A few days later Xisuthros again let them free, but
they returned again to the vessel, their feet full of mud. Finally,
loosed the third time the birds came no more back. Then Xisuthros
understood that the earth was bare. He made an opening in the roof
of the ship, and saw that it had grounded on the top of a mountain.
He then descended with his wife, his daughter, and his pilot,
worshipped the earth, raised an altar, and there sacrificed to the
gods; at the same moment he vanished with those who accompanied him.

"Meanwhile those who had remained in the vessel not seeing Xisuthros
return, descended too and began to seek him, calling him by his
name. They saw Xisuthros no more; but a voice from heaven was heard
commanding them piety towards the gods; that he, indeed, was
receiving the reward of his piety in being carried away to dwell
thenceforth in the midst of the gods, and that his wife, his
daughter, and the pilot of the ship shared the same honour. The
voice further said that they were to return to Babylon, and
conformably to the decrees of fate, disinter the writings buried at
Sippara in order to transmit them to men. It added that the country
in which they found themselves was Armenia. These, then, having
heard the voice, sacrificed to the gods and returned on foot to
Babylon. Of the vessel of Xisuthros, which had finally landed in
Armenia, a portion is still to be found in the Gordyan Mountains in
Armenia, and pilgrims bring thence asphalte that they have scraped
from its fragments. It is used to keep off the influence of
witchcraft. As to the companions of Xisuthros, they came to Babylon,
disinterred the writings left at Sippara, founded numerous cities,
built temples, and restored Babylon."

By the side of this version, which, interesting though it be, is, after all, second hand, we are now able to place an original Chaldeo-Babylonian edition, which the lamented George Smith was the first to decipher on the cuneiform tablets exhumed at Nineveh and now in the British Museum. Here the narrative of the Deluge appears as an episode in the eleventh tablet, or eleventh chaunt of the great epic of the town of Uruk. The hero of this poem, a kind of Hercules, whose name has not as yet been made out with certainty,[34] being attacked by disease (a kind of leprosy), goes, with a view to its cure, to consult the patriarch saved from the Deluge, Khasisatra, in the distant land to which the gods have transported him, there to enjoy eternal felicity. He asks Khasisatra to reveal the secret of the events which led to his obtaining the privilege of immortality, and thus the patriarch is induced to relate the cataclysm.

By a comparison of the three copies of the poem that the library of the palace of Nineveh contained, it has been possible to restore the narrative with hardly any breaks.[35] These three copies were, by order of the King of Assyria, Asshurbanabal, made in the eighth century B.C., from a very ancient specimen in the sacerdotal library of the town of Uruk, founded by the monarchs of the first Chaldean empire. It is difficult precisely to fix the date of the original, copied by Assyrian scribes, but it certainly goes back to the ancient empire, seventeen centuries, at least, before our era, and even probably beyond; it was therefore much anterior to Moses, and nearly contemporaneous with Abraham. The variations presented by the three existing copies prove that the original was in the primitive mode of writing called the _hieratic_, a character which must have already become difficult to decipher in the eighth century B.C., as the copyists have differed as to the interpretation to be given to certain signs, and in other cases have simply reproduced exactly the forms of such as they did not understand. Finally, it results from a comparison of these variations, that the original, transcribed by order of Asshurbanabal, must itself have been a copy of some still more ancient manuscript, in which the original text had already received interlinear comments. Some of the copyists have introduced these into their text, others have omitted them. With these preliminary observations I proceed to give integrally the narrative ascribed in the poem to Khasisatra:--

"I will reveal to thee, O Izdhubar, the history of my
preservation--and tell to thee the decision of the gods.

"The town of Shurippak, a town which thou knowest, is situated on
the Euphrates--it was ancient and in it [men did not honour] the
gods. [I alone, I was] their servant, to the great gods--[The gods
took counsel on the appeal of] Anu--[a deluge was proposed by]
Bel--[and approved by Nabon, Nergal and] Adar.

"And the god [Ea] the immutable lord,--repeated this command in a
dream.--I listened to the decree of fate that he announced, and he
said to me:--'Man of Shiruppak, son of Ubaratutu--thou, build a
vessel and finish it [quickly].--[By a deluge] I will destroy
substance and life.--Cause thou to go up into the vessel the
substance of all that has life.--The vessel thou shall build--600
cubits shall be the measure of its length--and 60 cubits the amount
of its breadth and of its height.--[Launch it] thus on the ocean and
cover it with a roof.'--I understood, and I said to Ea, my
lord:--'[The vessel] that thou commandest me to build thus--[when] I
shall do it,--young and old [shall laugh at me.]'--[Ea opened his
mouth and] spoke.--He said to me, his servant:--'[If they laugh at
thee] thou shalt say to them: [shall be punished] he who has
insulted me, [for the protection of the gods] is over me.-- ... like
to caverns ... ---- ... I will exercise my judgment on that which is
on high and that which is below ... ---- ... Close the vessel ...
---- ... At a given moment that I shall cause thee to know,--enter
into it and draw the door of the ship towards thee.--Within it, thy
grains, thy furniture, thy provisions,--thy riches, thy
men-servants, and thy maid-servants, and thy young people--the
cattle of the field and the wild beasts of the plain that I will
assemble--and that I will send thee, shall be kept behind thy
door.'--Khasisatra opened his mouth and spoke;--he said to Ea, his
lord:--'No one has made [such a] ship.--On the prow I will
fix....--I shall see ... and the vessel ...--the vessel thou
commandest me to build [thus]--which in....[36]

"On the fifth day [the two sides of the bark] were raised.--In its
covering fourteen in all were its rafters--fourteen in all did it
count above.--I placed its roof and I covered it.--I embarked in it
on the sixth day; I divided its floors on the seventh;--I divided
the interior compartments on the eighth. I stopped up the chinks
through which the water entered in;--I visited the chinks and added
what was wanting.--I poured on the exterior three times 3,600
measures of asphalte,--and three times 3,600 measures of asphalte
within.--Three times 3,600 men, porters, brought on their heads the
chests of provisions.--I kept 3,600 chests for the nourishment of my
family,--and the mariners divided among themselves twice 3,600
chests.--For [provisioning] I had oxen slain;--I instituted
[rations] for each day.--In [anticipation of the need of] drinks, of
barrels and of wine--[I collected in quantity] like to the waters of
a river, [of provisions] in quantity like to the dust of the
earth.--[To arrange them in] the chests I set my hand to.-- ... of
the sun ... the vessel was completed.-- ... strong and--I had
carried above and below the furniture of the ship.--[This lading
filled the two-thirds.]

"All that I possessed I gathered together; all I possessed of silver
I gathered together; all that I possessed of gold I gathered--all
that I possessed of the substance of life of every kind I gathered
together.--I made all ascend into the vessel; my servants male and
female,--the cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the plains,
and the sons of the people, I made them all ascend."

"Shamash (the sun) made the moment determined and----he announced it
in these terms: 'In the evening I will cause it to rain abundantly
from heaven; enter into the vessel and close the door.'----The fixed
moment had arrived, which he announced in these terms: 'In the
evening I will cause it to rain abundantly from heaven.'----When the
evening of that day arrived, I was afraid,----I entered into the
vessel and shut my door.----In shutting the vessel, to
Buzur-shadi-rabi, the pilot----I confided this dwelling, with all
that it contained.

"Mu-sheri-ina-namari[37]--rose from the foundations of heaven in a
black cloud;--Ramman[38] thundered in the midst of the cloud--and
Nabon and Sharru marched before;--they marched, devastating the
mountain and the plain;--Nergal[39] the powerful, dragged
chastisements after him;--Adar[40] advanced, overthrowing before
him;--the Archangels of the abyss brought destruction--in their
terrors they agitated the earth.--The inundation of Ramman swelled
up to the sky--and [the earth] became without lustre, was changed
into a desert.

"They broke ... of the surface of the earth like ...;--[they
destroyed] the living beings of the surface of the earth.--The
terrible [Deluge] on men swelled up to [heaven].--The brother no
longer saw his brother; men no longer knew each other. In
heaven--the gods became afraid of the water-spout, and--sought a
refuge; they mounted up to the heaven of Anu.[41]--The gods were
stretched out motionless, pressing one against another like
dogs.--Ishtar wailed like a child,--the great goddess pronounced her
discourse:--'Here is humanity returned into mud, and--this is the
misfortune that I have announced in the presence of the gods.--So I
announced the misfortune in the presence of the gods,--for the evil
I announced the terrible [chastisement] of men who are mine.--I am
the mother who gave birth to men, and--like to the race of fishes,
there they are filling the sea;--and the gods by reason of
that--which the archangels of the abyss are doing, weep with
me.'--The gods on their seats were seated in tears--and they held
their lips closed, [revolving] future things.

"Six days and as many nights passed; the wind, the water-spout, and
the diluvian rain were in all their strength. At the approach of the
seventh day the diluvian rain grew weaker, the terrible
water-spout--which had assailed after the fashion of an
earthquake--grew calm, the sea inclined to dry up, and the wind and
the water-spout came to an end. I looked at the sea, attentively
observing--and the whole of humanity had returned to mud; like unto
seaweeds the corpses floated. I opened the window, and the light
smote on my face. I was seized with sadness; I sat down and I
wept;--and my tears came over my face.

"I looked at the regions bounding the sea; towards the twelve points
of the horizon; not any continent.--The vessel was borne above the
land of Nizir--the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did
not permit it to pass over.--A day and a second day the mountain of
Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over;--the
third and fourth day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and
did not permit it to pass over;--the fifth and sixth day the
mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass
over.--At the approach of the seventh day, I sent out and loosed a
dove. The dove went, turned, and--found no place to light on, and it
came back. I sent out and loosed a swallow; the swallow went,
turned, and--found no place to light on, and it came back. I sent
out and loosed a raven; the raven went and saw the corpses on the
waters; it ate, rested, turned and came not back.

"I then sent out (what was in the vessel) towards the four winds,
and I offered a sacrifice. I raised the pile of my burnt offering on
the peak of the mountain; seven by seven I disposed the measured
vases,[42]--and beneath I spread rushes, cedar, and juniper wood.
The gods were seized with the desire of it--the gods were seized
with a benevolent desire of it;--and the gods assembled like flies
above the master of the sacrifice. From afar, in approaching, the
great goddess raised the great zones that Anu has made for their
glory (the gods).[43] These gods, luminous crystal before me, I will
never leave them; in that day I prayed that I might never leave
them. 'Let the gods come to my sacrificial pile!--but never may Bel
come to my sacrificial pile! for he did not master himself, and he
has made the water-spout for the Deluge, and he has numbered my men
for the pit.'

"From far, in drawing near, Bel--saw the vessel, and Bel
stopped;--he was filled with anger against the gods and the
celestial archangels:--

"'No one shall come out alive! No man shall be preserved from the
abyss!'--Adar opened his mouth and said; he said to the warrior
Bel:--'What other than Ea should have formed this resolution?--for
Ea possesses knowledge and [he foresees] all.'--Ea opened his mouth
and spake; he said to the warrior Bel:--'O thou, herald of the gods,
warrior,--as thou didst not master thyself, thou hast made the
water-spout of the deluge.--Let the sinner carry the weight of his
sins, the blasphemer the weight of his blasphemy.--Please thyself
with this good pleasure and it shall never be infringed; faith in it
never [shall be violated.]--Instead of thy making a new deluge, let
lions appear and reduce the number of men; instead of thy making a
new deluge, let hyenas appear and reduce the number of men;--instead
of thy making a new deluge, let there be famine and let the earth be
[devastated];--instead of thy making a new deluge, let Dibbara[44]
appear, and let men be [mown down]. I have not revealed the decision
of the great gods;--it is Khasisatra who interpreted a dream and
comprehended what the gods had decided.'

"Then, when his resolve was arrested, Bel entered into the
vessel.--He took my hand and made me rise.--He made my wife rise and
made her place herself at my side.--He turned around us and stopped
short; he approached our group.--'Until now Khasisatra has made part
of perishable humanity;--but lo, now, Khasisatra and his wife are
going to be carried away to live like the gods,--and Khasisatra will
reside afar at the mouth of the rivers.'--They carried me away and
established me in a remote place at the mouth of the streams."

This narrative follows with great exactness the same course as that, or rather as those of Genesis, and the analogies are on both sides striking. It is well known, and has long been critically demonstrated, that chapters vi., vii., viii. and ix. of Genesis contain two different narratives of the Deluge, the one taken from the Elohist document, the other from the Jehovist, both being skilfully combined by the final editor. Reverencing their text, which he evidently considered sacred, he omitted no fact given by either, so that we have the whole story twice narrated in different terms; and, in spite of the way the verses are mixed up, it is easy so to disentangle the two versions as that each should form a continuous and unbroken narrative. Some critics have recently pretended that, with regard to the stories of the Creation and Deluge, both cuneiform documents disproved the distinction between the two sources of Genesis, and proved the primitive unity of its composition; that the same repetitions, in effect, were to be found there. This was a premature conclusion, drawn from translations very imperfect as yet, and requiring thorough revision; and, indeed, confining ourselves to the story of the Deluge, such revision, carried on according to strict philological principles, does away with the arguments that had been based on the version of George Smith. None of the repetitions of the final text of Genesis are observable in the Chaldean poem; which, on the contrary, decisively confirms the distinction made between the two narratives, the Elohist and Jehovist, interwoven by the last compiler of the Pentateuch. It is with each of these separately--when disentangled and compared--that the Chaldean narrative coincides in its order--it is not with the result of their combination. And nothing could be easier than to demonstrate this by a synoptic table, in which the three narratives were collated.

Such a table would at once show their agreement and their difference, what the three records have in common, and what each has added of its own to the primitive outline. They are certainly three versions of the same traditional history, and with the Chaldeo-Babylonians on the one hand, and the Hebrews on the other, we have two parallel streams proceeding from one source. Nevertheless, we must note on both sides divergences of certain importance which prove the bifurcation of the two traditions to have taken place at a very remote era, and the one of which the Bible affords us the expression to be not merely an edition of that preserved by the Chaldean priesthood, expurgated from a severely monotheistic point of view.

The Biblical narrative bears the impress of an inland people, ignorant of navigation. In Genesis, the name of the ark, _tebah_, signifies "coffer," and not "vessel." Nothing is said about the launching of the ark; there is no mention made of the sea, or of navigation; there is no pilot. In the Epic of Uruk, on the contrary, everything shows it to have been composed amidst a maritime population; every circumstance bears a reflex of the manners and customs of people living on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Khasisatra enters a vessel, properly so called; it is launched, undergoes a trial trip, all its seams are caulked with bitumen, it is entrusted to a pilot.

The Chaldeo-Babylonian narrative represents Khasisatra as a king, who goes up into the ship surrounded by a whole population of servants and companions; in the Bible, we have only Noah and his family who are saved; the new human race has no other source than the patriarch's three sons. Nor is there any trace in the Chaldean poem of the distinction (in the Bible peculiar indeed only to the Jehovist) between clean and unclean beasts, and of each kind of the former being numbered by sevens, although in Babylonia the number seven had a specially sacramental character.

As to the dimensions of the ark, we find a disagreement not only between the Bible and the tablet copied by order of Asshurbanabal, but between the latter and Berosus. Both Genesis and the cuneiform documents measure the ark's dimensions by cubits, Berosus by stadia. Genesis states its length and breadth to have been in the proportion of 6 to 1, Berosus of 5 to 2, the tablet in the British Museum of 10 to 1. On the other hand, the fragments of Berosus do not treat of the relative dimensions of height and breadth, and the tablet gives them as equal, while the Bible speaks of thirty cubits of height and fifty of breadth. But these differences as to figures have but a secondary importance; nothing so liable to alterations and variations in different editions of the same narrative. We may observe, however, that in Genesis it is only the Elohist--always much addicted to figures--who gives the dimensions of the ark. And, on the other hand, it is the Jehovist alone who tells of the sending forth of the birds, which occupies a considerable place in the Chaldean tradition. As to the variations here between the Biblical story and that in the poem of Uruk, the latter adding the swallow to the dove and the raven, and not attributing to the dove the part of a messenger of good tidings, I do not think they go for much. The agreement as to the main point is, in my eyes, of far more importance.

But what is, on the contrary, of very decided importance, is the absolute disagreement as to the duration of the Deluge between the Elohist and Jehovist, as well as between the two and the Chaldeo-Babylonian narrator. Here we have a manifest trace of different systems applying to the ancient tradition calendrical conceptions, dissimilar in each record, and yet all seeming to have proceeded from Chaldea.

By the Elohist the periods of the Deluge are indicated by the ordinal numbers of the months, but these ordinal numbers relate to a lunar year, beginning on the 1st of Tishri (September-October), at the autumnal equinox. This is admitted by Josephus, and by the Author of the Targum of the pseudo-Jonathan, as well as by Rashi and Kimchi, among the Jewish commentators of the Middle Ages; and proved, as I conceive, by Michaelis among the moderns. The rain begins to fall, and Noah enters into the ark the 17th day of the second month--_i.e._, Marcheshvan. The great force of the waters lasts 150 days, and the 17th of the seventh month--_i.e._, Nisan (March-April)--the ark grounds on Mount Ararat. The 1st day of the tenth month, or Tammuz (June-July), about the summer solstice, the mountains are laid bare. The 1st day of the first month of the following year--that is, of Tishri, at the autumnal equinox--the waters have completely retired, and Noah leaves the ark on the 27th of the second month. Thus the Deluge lasted a whole lunar year, plus eleven days--that is to say, as Ewald well remarks, a solar year of 365 days. Now, under the climatic conditions of Babylonia and Assyria, the rains of late autumn begin towards the end of November, and at once the level of the Euphrates and Tigris rises. The periodic overflow of the two rivers occurs in the middle of March, and culminates at the end of May, from which time the waters go down. At the end of June they have left the plains, and from August to November are at their lowest level. Now the dates of the Deluge, given by the Elohist, and re-stated as we have been doing according to Michaelis and Knobel, accord perfectly with these phases of the rising and falling of the two Mesopotamian rivers. They accord even better in the primitive system which served for starting-point to that of the Elohist, and which has been so ingeniously restored by M. Schraeder,[45] a system attributing to the Deluge 300 days in all, or a ten months' duration: 150 days for its greatest height and 150 for its decrease. According to this system, the leaving of the ark must have taken place on the first day of the 601st year of Noah's life--that is to say, on the 1st of Tishri, at the autumnal equinox. Thus the deliverance of the father of the new humanity, as well as the Covenant made by God with him and his race, were fixed on the very day to which an ancient opinion which has maintained itself among the Jews assigned the creation of the world. As to the beginning of the Deluge, it occurred, according to the same system, on the 1st day of the third month--that is to say, at the commencement of the lunation whose end coincided with the Sun's entry into Capricorn, when the conjunction of planets brought about periodic deluges according to an astrological conception of Chaldean origin, which does not indeed appear a very ancient one; but must have been based on data adopted by some of the sacerdotal schools of Babylonia as to the epoch of the cataclysm.

It is also with the winter rains, and not with the swelling of the Euphrates and Tigris in spring, that the calendrical construction, according to which the antediluvian kings or patriarchs have been placed in relation with solar mansions (a construction followed in Uruk's Epic poem), causes the commencement of the Deluge to coincide. It connects, in point of fact, the tradition of the cataclysm with the month of Shabut (January-February), and with the sign of Aquarius. Accordingly, I find great difficulty in admitting the exactness of the date, 15th of Daisios, given in the extract of Alexander Polybister, as that assigned by Berosus to the Deluge, for this would make the event occur in the middle of the Assyrian month Sivan, at the beginning of July, in a season of complete drought, when the rivers have reached their lowest level. I hold this to be an evident error, due not to the author of the Chaldean History himself, but to his transcriber. Berosus must have written =menos ogdou; pempte kai dekate= the 15th of the eighth month, translating into Greek the Assyrian name of the Arakh-Shanina. And by a readily explicable error Cornelius Alexander must have turned it into Daisios, which was the eighth month of the Syro-Macedonian Calendar, forgetting the difference between the initial point of its year and that of the Chaldeo-Assyrian. In reality, then, the date given by Berosus only differed by two days from that adopted by the Elohist compiler of Genesis. Besides, as Knobel rightly insists, in placing the commencement of the Deluge at the 15th or 17th of a month, we place it always at the full moon, for it is also with this phase of the light that lights the night that popular belief in Egypt and Mesopotamia links the periodic rise of Nile or Tigris.

The system of the Jehovist is quite a different one. According to him, Jahveh announces the Deluge to Noah only seven days beforehand. The waters are at their height for forty days, and decrease during forty more. After these eighty days Noah sends out the three birds at intervals of seven days, and thus it is on the 21st day after he has opened the window of the ark for the first time that he, too, goes out of the ark and offers his sacrifice to the Lord. Here the phases of the cataclysm are evidently calculated on those of the annual spring outflow of the Euphrates and Tigris, so that we need not hesitate to assign the origin of the very form of the tradition received by the Jehovist writer, to the cradle of the race of the Terahites in Chaldea. The overflow of the two rivers of Mesopotamia lasts, in fact, for an average of seventy-five days from the middle of March to the end of May; and twenty-six days later--that is, at the end of the 101 in all (80 + 21 = 75 + 26 = 101), when the Jehovist makes Noah leave the ark--the lands which have been inundated become once more practicable.

What, moreover, in the Jehovist narrative bears a very marked impress of Chaldean origin is the part played in it by septennial periods; seven days intervening between the announcement and the beginning of the Deluge, seven between each sending forth of the birds. That religious and mystic importance attached to the heptade which gave rise to the conception of the seven days of creation, and to the invention of the week, is an essentially Chaldean idea. It is among the Chaldeo-Babylonians that we discover its origin and find its most numerous applications. The story of Khasisatra, in the poem of Uruk, invariably proceeds hebdomadally. The violence of the Deluge lasts seven days, and so does the stay of the vessel on Mount Nizir when the waters begin to go down. It is true, indeed, that the building of the vessel occupies eight instead of seven days; but we must add the time necessary for the embarkation of provisions, animals, passengers, and this will enable us to calculate the whole duration of Khasisatra's preparations between the vision sent him by Ea and the moment when he closes the vessel at the approach of the rain, as consisting of fourteen days or two hebdomades. This being granted, if the poem does not state precisely the intervals at which the three birds were sent forth, we are justified in applying here the figures used by the Jehovist in Genesis, and counting seven days between the first and second sending forth, seven between the second and third, and seven, lastly, between the departure of the bird which does not return, and the leaving the vessel. The whole interval, then, between the warning of Ea and the sacrifice of Khasisatra, amounts to seven hebdomades--plainly a number intentionally assigned. And the whole duration of the Deluge is doubled by the sacred writer, who was the author of the Jehovist document, 7 × 2 × 7, instead of 7 × 7; that is, fourteen weeks with just three days over, owing to the writer having employed the round numbers 40 + 40 = 80 days, instead of the precise number seventy-seven days or eleven hebdomades (7 + 4 × 7), to indicate the interval between the beginning of the diluvian rain and the sending forth of the first bird. And now, if we keep count of the time between the announcing of the cataclysm by Jahveh and its commencement, the figures of the Jehovist are in all 7 × 2 × 7 + 7 days, and those of the system of the Chaldean poem 7 × 7. But they are on both sides combinations of seven.

Where the Chaldeo-Babylonian narrative and that of the Bible absolutely diverge, is in their statement of what, after the Deluge, befell the righteous man saved from it. According to the figures of the Elohist, Noah lives on among his descendants for 350 years, and dies at the age of 950. Khasisatra receives the privilege of immortality; is carried away "to live like the gods," and transported into "a distant place," where the hero of Uruk goes to visit him in order to learn the secrets of life and death. But in the Bible we have something of the same kind told us of Noah's great-grandfather Enoch, who "walked with God, and was not, because God took him." We see, then, that the Babylonian tradition united in the person of Khasisatra facts which the Bible distributes between Enoch and Noah, the two whom Holy Scripture equally characterizes as having "walked with God."

The author of the treatise "On the Syrian Goddess," erroneously attributed to Lucian, acquaints us with the diluvian tradition of the Arameans, directly derived from that of Chaldea, as it was narrated in the celebrated Sanctuary of Hierapolis or Bambyce.

"The generality of people, he says, tell us that the founder of the
temple was Deucalion Sisythes, that Deucalion in whose time the
great inundation occurred. I have also heard the account given by
the Greeks themselves of Deucalion; the myth runs thus:--The actual
race of men is not the first, for there was a previous one, all the
members of which perished. We belong to a second race, descended
from Deucalion, and multiplied in the course of time. As to the
former men, they are said to have been full of insolence and pride,
committing many crimes, disregarding their oath, neglecting the
rights of hospitality, unsparing to suppliants, accordingly they
were punished by an immense disaster. All on a sudden enormous
volumes of water issued from the earth, and rains of extraordinary
abundance began to fall; the rivers left their beds, and the sea
overflowed its shores; the whole earth was covered with water, and
all men perished. Deucalion alone, because of his virtue and piety,
was preserved alive to give birth to a new race. This is how he was
saved:--He placed himself, his children, and his wives in a great
coffer that he had, in which pigs, horses, lions, serpents, and all
other terrestrial animals came to seek refuge with him. He received
them all, and while they were in the coffer Zeus inspired them with
reciprocal amity which prevented their devouring one another. In
this manner, shut up within one single coffer, they floated as long
as the waters remained in force. Such is the account given by the
Greeks of Deucalion.

"But to this which they equally tell, the people of Hierapolis add a
marvellous narrative:--That in their country a great chasm opened,
into which all the waters of the deluge poured. Then Deucalion
raised an altar and dedicated a temple to Hera (Atargatis) close to
this very chasm. I have seen it; it is very narrow, and situated
under the temple. Whether it was once large and has now shrunk, I do
not know; but I have seen it, and it is quite small. In memory of
the event the following is the rite accomplished:--Twice a year sea
water is brought to the temple. This is not only done by the
priests, but numerous pilgrims come from the whole of Syria and
Arabia, and even from beyond the Euphrates, bringing water. It is
poured out in the temple and goes into the cleft which, narrow as it
is, swallows up a considerable quantity. This is said to be in
virtue of a religious law instituted by Deucalion to preserve the
memory of the catastrophe and of the benefits that he received from
the gods. Such is the ancient tradition of the temple."

It appears to me difficult not to recognize an echo of fables popular in all Semitic countries about this chasm of Hierapolis, and the part it played in the Deluge,--in the enigmatic expressions of the Koran respecting the oven _tannur_ which began to bubble and disgorge water all around at the commencement of the Deluge. We know that this _tannur_ has been the occasion of most grotesque imaginings of Mussulman commentators, who had lost the tradition of the story to which Mahomet made allusion. And, moreover, the Koran formally states that the waters of the Deluge were absorbed in the bosom of the earth.