Mr. Harold Peake, in an attractive little book on The
Flood (Kegan Paul, 5s.), recalls the flood legends preserved by various peoples, notes that the only real parallel to the story in Genesis is the Babylonian tale, and then examines the evidence yielded by the diggings at Ur and Kish for a great inundation somewhere about 4000 B.c. There seems no reason to doubt that the culture-remains below the clean sand layer left by this flood differ entirely from the culture- remains above it. Mr. Peake, in trying to correlate the results of the two sets of excavations, at Ur and Kish, finds a discrepancy which he would attribute to an error on a cuneiform tablet; His argument is interesting if it does not convince. In any case, the Biblical story of the Deluge is now seen in a new light. It is not myth, but history.
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