THE DELUGE TABLET.
THE event, not to say the sensation of the week, has un- doubtedly been Mr. Smith's decypherment of certain Cunei- form fragments. In presenting our readers with a resume", as brief as it must necessarily be imperfect, of the inscription thus made out, we must warn them at the outset that, at present, we have to limit ourselves absolutely to what Mr. Smith, supported by Sir Henry Rawlinson, has both read and translated. The further bearings of the matter it will be time to consider when the other cuneiform scholars, both here and on the Continent—in all, about five or six only—shall have pro- nounced upon Mr. Smith's published text and interpreta- tion. As it is, Sir Henry Rawlinson, in a communiqué in Thursday's Times, has already expressed his doubts as to the correct readings of some of the proper names,—a matter of some import in a document of this kind. What M. Oppert in Paris or Professor Schrader in Giessen will say remains to be seen ;—also, whether this last exploit will cause the scholars of Germany to give up the attitude of indifference they have hitherto, almost to a man, assumed towards " Assyriology," though it was a German, Grotefend, who decyphered the (Persian) Cuneiform Alphabet. Nearly a whole volume of the German Oriental Society's Transac- tions of this very year has been devoted by Schrader to a " critical investigation into the Assyrian Cuneiforms :" for the avowed purpose of causing the opponents and doubters of the whole system of the present decypherers (and they consist of nearly everybody except the professor himself) to come forward and state the reasons of their scepticism. He had to write a volume, he says, as the half-volume he had produced two years ago for the same purpose had not answered. And as far as we know, no one has, as yet, taken up the challenge ; while the hardest of words are flung at the bead of decypherera by men like Hitzig on the one and Ntildeke on the other hand. Will they be con- vinced now ? Time will show. In the meanwhile, we would, just for the credit of England, beg those whom it may concern not to lose their heads entirely. Indeed, we would fain protest against the absolutely sensational manner with which the subject has been launched and discussed in some quarters. It does not look well to be too enthusiastic all at once,—inastnuch as it discloses a wondrous amount of ignorance. Surely we have all heard of the fact that Deluge legends were as plentiful as blackberries all the world over ; so much so that they had to be divided and sub- divided by the learned—orthodox and otherwise—into quite a series of cycles ; and further, that even old Josephus gives an account of a Chaldmin story to that effect, reported by Berosus, with which, by the way, the present one does nol seem to be identical. Why all this excitement '? The reading of the Tiglath-Pileser Cylinder by three independent men, in a nearly identical manner, —all but the names—ten years ago, when these studies were in their infancy, was surely a greater feat in its way. Wherefore, whether it does or does not 'corroborate' Scripture, we would at all events beg the clerical world not to " improve " too quickly upon it, lest another disenchantment might befall them in due time. Nor is a document which speaks of "the gods putting their tails between their legs"—which to us seems monstrous, nay, impossible for Eastern parlance—quite of a nature to be used indiscriminately for theological purposes. The monument is interesting, and curious, and important ; but before we make use of it in any way whatsoever, we must know more of it, and it must have passed
from the region of foot-lights and Ministerial speeches to that of scientific analysis, sign for sign, word for word.
Among the section of mythological tablets in the Museum, Mr. Smith says he found one which contained the history of the Flood in three different copies, which he picked out of thousands of fragments. These copies were discovered at Nineveh, in the palace of Ashurbanipal, being translations, made in the seventh century B.C., of a text originally deposited at Erech or Warka. This text is said to be, at the very lowest esti- mate, a thousand, possibly untold thousands of years older, and belongs to the times of a legendary King, whose name Mr. Smith gave, in default of a phonetic value, as Izdubar. This King may be, according to him, Nimrod or Zoroaster, and is to be placed
somewhere about 30,000 years B.C.,—according to Berosus. " Izdubar," who lived soon after the Flood, conquered Baal, and having married Esther, or rather Ishtar, the already married Queen of Beauty, he fell ill, whereupon he proceeded to consult Sisit, whom he found asleep on the other side of a stream. After some conversation across the waters, which is too mutilated, Mr. Smith says, to make rhyme or reason, Sisit tells the story of the Deluge, in consequence of which be was taken up to the Gods alive, as a reward for his goodness. The tablet in question seems to consist of nearly three hundred lines, of which those not designated as too mutilated or too unimportant to be made out, average from one decyphered syllable to a whole sentence. The gist of the whole, as far as it may roughly be stated, about as follows :—Some God or Gods (Ann, Bel, Ninip) reveal the coming of a great flood for the destruction of the sinners to " Surrippakite," who is to build a ship, to save in it himself and the seed of all life. Vague, indeed, are the orders preserved regarding its architecture ; so much only seems clear, that it was to be as long as it was broad, while the Noahide Ark, as has been urged since Augustine, was fashioned in imitation of the pro- portions of the human body, its breadth one-sixth of its length, &c. Having entered it, he, the beasts, the animals, and all the army, Shams (? the Sun) caused it to rain heavily. Destruction ensues ; even the Gods are frightened, "putting their tails between their legs," and seek refuge ; and from all the earth was swept whatever had life, while the God-saved, with his Pilot, calmly rides the waves. Ishtar then makes a not very intelligible speech and weeps. So do the Gods. Seven days lasted the storm. After this the sea dried, and human corpses floated like reeds, while the ship comes to a standstill at Nizir. A dove, a swallow, and a raven are sent out, one after the other ; the two first return, the last does not. He feeds upon the carrion. Sisit then goes out of the ship and builds an altar, inviting all the Gods to his sacrifice—except Bel, the causer of the Deluge, to whom Ilea is also reported as giving very unpleasant bits of advice by way of future substitutes for Deluges. It is this same Bel, however, who opens the ship and.takes Sisit out, brings him his wife, establishes a covenant with him, and "took the people in the presence of Sisit and the people." He is then translated, and lives at the mouth of the rivers. Having said thus much, he tells Izdubar that a storm shall be laid on him, which seems to cause Izdubar to cry. Alarmed at this, Sisit's wife begs her husband to send the stranger away to whence he came. Sisit, on the other hand, advises her to place his scarlet cloth on his head, which she does. Here come many obscure lines, and when we emerge again into a fuller translation, we find Sisit talking to the Pilot regarding a skin-disease of Izdubar, and how he is to get rid of it. Finally, Izdubar piles up many stones in memory of these events.
So far the document, which at the bottom bears a "colo- phon," with the catchwords or table of contents of the following tablet, and further describes itself as a copy of an ancient in- scription.
When we—possibly—return to the document of which we have thus given the roughest of outlines, we may, perhaps, enter some- what more closely into the comparison between Genesis and Berosu.s instituted by Mr. Smith, and further discuss some of the reasons for and against the assumption that the Arabic Judi is the real Ararat, an assumption which Sir Henry Rawlinson (who also places Izdubar at 6400, B.C., and Sisit at a much earlier period still), thinks established beyond doubt. Meanwhile we await the further development of the reading and translation at the hands of Mr. Smith himself, who, having gone so far, will surely not allow him- self to consider his task regarding this document at an end. Its chief value seems to us to lie not in a theological or even histori- cal, but mainly in a philological direction, and, inasmuch as it attracts the attention of the world at large to these obscure but
useful studies, it does a work of good ipso facto. E.
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