THE CHALDEAN ACCOUNT OF GENESIS.* THE performance of this volume

falls short of the promise of its title-page, which leads the reader to expect "the description of the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel.% the times of the Patriarchs and Nimrod, Babylonian fables and

legends of the Gods ; from the Cuneiform inscriptions." Mr. Smith, indeed, in the first page warns us that,—

"The present condition of the legends and their recent discovery alike forbid me to call this anything more than a provisional work, but there was so general a desire to see the translations, that I have published them, hoping my readers will take them with the same reserve with which I have given them."

And at the conclusion of the volume he' expresses himself with the like modesty, but we do not the less think that the modesty and the reserve should have prevented a man of such real know- ledge of his subject as Mr. Smith is from giving so sensational a

title to what are, for the most part, a scanty and unsatisfactory

• The Chaldean Account of Gesesk .te,„ By George Smith. With Illustrations. London: Sampson Low and Co. 1876.

collection of fragments, often little more than unintelligible half-sentences, though occasionally interesting and suggestive. No doubt there has been "a general desire to see the transla- tions" of inscriptions which, it was rumoured, would prove to be the counterparts and originals of the Book of Genesis, and a hope that they might have, for the purposes of comparative mythology and tradition, some such value as the inscriptions in the times of Isaiah and Jeremiah undoubtedly have for the history of those periods. And it is natural that Mr. Smith should do what he can to gratify this desire, from that generous sympathy which makes the possessor of knowledge feel that,—

" What no one with us shares, seems scarce our own ; " and perhaps from that dread which all discoverers—and the

.Assyriologists not least—seem to have of the sentence, " Tulit alter honoree," which only political secretaries and permanent officials learn to bear with unflinching magnanimity. Still, it would have been better not to have promised se much.

In a review of a former volume of Mr. Smith's researches, we stated that he had made two expeditions to the ruined citierof Assyria (as be is now making a third), to obtain more of that enormous collection of clay tablets which are believed to have formed the libraries or record-houses of Sennacherib and Sarda- napalus, and which—partly consisting of the collections of their predecessors, and partly of new copies made by their orders of all existing records—go back to a date of about 2000 B.C. Thou- sands of the fragments into which these clay tablets have been broken lie in the British Museum, and tens of thousands remain where they fell when Nineveh was destroyed. Mr. Smith gives an engraving of one of these tablets, with the account of the Deluge, of which he has recovered and put together sixteen frag- ments, but which have gaps of about as much more. And from fragments such as these Mr. Smith endeavours—with an industry and an ability which cannot be too much respected and admired —to learn the true meaning of what is written on them. The historical annals of the kings, written on stone tablets, cylinders, or bulls, offer no such difficulties and obstacles as these.

The most important results afforded by these Babylonian legends of the Creation, so far as Mr. Smith has been able to put the broken fragments of tablets together, and excluding so much of his translations as represent only unintelligible half-sentences, are these :—

" When above were not raised the heavens : and below on the earth a plant had not grown up : the abyss also had not broken open their boundaries. The Chaos (or water) Tiamut (the sea) was the producing mother of the whole of them. Those waters at the beginning were ordained ; but a tree had not grown, a flower had not unfolded. When the gods had not sprung up, any ens of them ; a plant had not grown, and order did not exist; were made also the great gods, the gods

Lahmu and Lahamu they caused to come and they grew the gods Sar and Kisar were made A course of days and a long time passed When the foundations of the ground of rock [thou didst make], the foundation of the ground thou didst call. Thou didst beautify the heaven to the face of the

heaven thou didst give It was delightful, all that was fixed by the great gods. Stars, their appearance [in figures] of animals he arranged. To fix the year through the observation of their constel- lations, twelve months (or signs) of stars in three rows he arranged, from the day when the year commences unto the close. He marked the position of the wandering stars (planets) to shine in their courses, that they may do no injury, and may not trouble any one; the positions of the gods Bel and Hea he fixed with him. And he opened the great gates in the darkness shrouded, the fastenings were strong on the left and right. In its mass (i.e., the lower chaos) he made a boiling, the god Urn (the moon) be caused to rise out, the night he overshadowed, to fix it also for the light of the night, until the shining of the day, that the month might not be broken, and in its amount be regular. At the beginning of the month, at the rising of the night, his horns are break- ing through to shine on the heaven. On the seventh day, to a circle he begins to swell, and stretches to the dawn farther. When the god

Shamas (the sun) in the horizon of heaven, in the east formed beautifully and to the orbit Shamas was perfected the dawn Shamas should change going on its path When the gods in their assembly had created were delight- ful the strong monsters they caused to be living creatures . . . . . . cattle of the field, beasts of the field, and creeping things of the field they fixed for the living creatures cattle and creeping thing. of the city they fixed."

Then follow fragments which appear to recount the creation of man by the good gods—or God, for there is an Assyrian glow to the several' divine names here, explaining that they all apply to the same being—in opposition to the evil gods and the dragon • Tiamut ; then, instructions to the men and women in their duties to their Creator :—" Sacrifice, prayer of the mouth supplication, humility, and bowing of the face Thou shalt bring tribute, and in the fear also of God thou shalt be holy."

Then "the dragon Tiamut" appears to have corrupted man, and brought on him the curse of the god Hes, pronounced in "the language of the fifty great gods"

:-

"May he be conquered, and at once cut off • wisdom and knowledge hostilely may they injure him ; may they put at enmity also father and

son, and may they plunder His land, may it bring forth, but he not touch it ; his desire shall be cut off, and his will be unanswered ; the opening of his month no god shall take notice of ; his back shall be broken and not healed ; at his urgent trouble no god shall receive him ; his heart shall be poured out, and his mind shall be troubled ; to sin and wrong his face shall come."

Of the building of the Tower of Babel we have, omitting the less intelligible pages,— "His heart was evil against the father of all the gods was

wicked of him his heart was evil Babylon brought to subjection [small] and great he confounded their speech. Their strong place (tower) all the day they founded ; to their strong place in the night entirely he made an end. In his anger also word thus he poured out : [to] scatter abroad he set his face : he gave this command, their counsel was confused the course he broke."

The legend of the Flood we gave an account of in our notice of Mr. Smith's last book of Assyrian Discoveries. He adds the legends of lzdubar, whom he ingeniously conjectures to be Nim- rod, and of lahtar, the Babylonian Venus, a translation of which last has been already published by Mr. Smith, as well as by Mr. Fox Talbot and others, and which is not without some poetic features.

These Chaldean legends, or fragments of legends, of the Crea- tion, Fall of Man, Deluge, and Tower of Babel, indicate a real relation to those of the Hebrews, and suggest the question, interesting to the student of prehistoric times, whether the one series was derived from the other, or both from a common source.. The German and Dutch commentators, who decide all these things with "vigour and rigour," may see in these Chaldean legends confirmation of their confident assertion that the materials of the Hebrew Book of Genesis were obtained in Babylon daring the Captivity. We neither " vigorously " assert, nor attempt " rigor- ously " to prove, that our own suppositions have the objective reality and certainty of contemporary history, but we doubt whether the author or authors of Genesis, however

"passionate for ancient truths, And honouring with religious love the groat Of elder times,"

would not have

"hated to excess, With an unquiet and intolerant scorn,"

the cosmogonies of Be! and Nebo, and all the gods of lust and hate enthroned in Babylon. There appears to be evidence from the- Cuneiform inscriptions themselves that the Chaldean legends go back at least to the date of 2000 B.C., with which the migration represented by the departure of Abrahaua from Ur of the Chaldees corresponds ; and if so, it seems more probable that the Hebrew offshoot of the Semitic stock then brought with them the traditions of their fathers' attempts to conceive and embody in historic forms the causes and origins of things, and that these grew with their growth, and expanded with the rest of their reli- gious faith into that representation which, however closely corre- sponding with the mythology of other nations, yet rises far above them all in moral and in poetic grandeur. This, we say, seems a

more probable process than the converse one of a learned Jew or Jews sitting down by the waters of Babylon, and euhemerising the theogony and cosmogony which were hateful for their OW11,

sake, and for that of the oppressors whose faith they set forth.