cities situated on hills. Other completions are possible-pir'āni, "seeds"="offspring"; ma'ani, "mighty ones," from ma'u, etc. Ubbuku is the Pu'ul of ábāku, "to overthrow"; and luputtu (from lapātu) is practically a synonym of that word. Hurušu is possibly for hurrušu, from ḥarāšu, “ to grind,” “crush."

The different expressions for "ship" in lines 8 and 9 are noteworthy. The usual word is élippu, "boat," and in the eleventh tablet of the Gilgameš series it is also called ékallu, "palace"-literally "great house," and bitu, "house," simply. In Professor Hilprecht's new fragment, however, it is called a "ship," literally a "great boat" (élippu rabétu). What kind of vessel the ma-gurgurrum was, and wherein it differed from other ships, is doubtful. The root gur is Sumerian, and means "to enclose," or the like, and Hilprecht's explanation of the word as meaning "houseboat" seems very probable—indeed, a gigantic structure which was to be a ship and a dwelling-place is just what would be expected. It is not improbably connected with the non-reduplicate form ma-gur, Semiticised as makurru, "shrine" or ark" of a god. In any case, these two words would seem to be the equivalents of the Hebrew "ark," "shrine," "coffin," borrowed from the Egyptian.

tebah,

Gabe gabbi in line 7 the translator of this fragment renders as "total height "-"total height shall be its structure." In this case it may be supposed that a numeral preceded—“ (so many) cubits in total height," or the like. This is naturally a possible rendering, and I have nothing to say against it. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that an alternative might be suggested, especially as gabé may be for qabe, whose singular is rendered "stable," " fold," "pen"-a good meaning for such a passage as this. But I am not satisfied that the rendering is the right one, notwithstanding the excellent sense which "all pens let its construction be" would make.

Professor Hilprecht has some interesting remarks upon the nature of the "strong deck" (zulula danna) in line 9, with which the craft was covered in. He quotes a similar line in the Gilgameš version: kima apsî šáši șullil-ši, "like the abyss, as for that (boat), cover it in"; and also the second Nineveh version: [şulul-ša] kima kippati samé lú dan eliš, "let its covering be strong above like the vault of heaven." All this suggests a structure like a domed roof, possibly circular, even though the boat itself may not have had the same form; though it is noteworthy that circular boats have been used on the Euphrates and Tigris from time immemorial.

Though I agree with Professor Hilprecht with regard to the

rendering of the two words kum mini remaining in the twelfth line, I am inclined, on reflection, to regard the phrase of which they formed part as differing somewhat from his conception of it. His rendering is " two of everything instead of a number," and here again, with the instinct which has carried him through many a difficult passage, he may be right. Nevertheless, it is best to be cautious, and complete the phrase as though it referred to a change in the intention of the deity-the preservation of every living thing instead of a selection only.

I see traces of, ka, as the fifth character of the last line, making "thy family," instead of "the family."

In conclusion, I give the comparisons with the version in Genesis which, with one exception, Professor Hilprecht has suggested:

"[the boat] which thou shalt make,"

11. [bring therein everly "beast of the field, bird of the heavens."*

19. "And from every living thing, from all flesh, two from everything shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female." vii. 3. "of the fowl also of the air."

thy (?) "and thy vi. 18b. "and thou shalt come

13. . . family.'

into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee."

There is no doubt that this text of the Flood contains a goodly number of parallels with the version in Genesis, and the learned Professor may be congratulated on the discovery which he has made. Though only an isolated and imperfect fragment, it is not only exceedingly important in itself, but it also gives promise of more material of the same character. From this we see, moreover, how rich Assyro-Babylonian literature was in Flood stories, as it seems certainly to have possessed three, and may even have had four. But this is not to be wondered at the Assyro-Babylonians certainly had at least three Creation stories, all of them of considerable interest, though their differences are much greater than are to be found in the versions of the Flood which form the subject of this paper.

DISCUSSION.

The CHAIRMAN: Our thanks are due to the lecturer for his most interesting account of a very curious fragment. Particularly interesting because it was a further evidence of the existence of traditions which were freely floating about in Babylon a very long while ago, all variants of a still older story. This does not imply that they were not true. On the contrary, they bore evidence to the undoubted antiquity of the Genesis account of the flood. It is impossible to imagine anyone centuries later writing such descrip

This is to all appearance the only Assyro-Babylonian version of the Flood mentioning birds.

Note. The verbal form lûkîn in line 5 may be translated either “I” or "he will bring" (lit. "set").

tions and giving them the curious local terms which show alike their antiquity and source.

Mr. MARTIN ROUSE, B.A., said: I have been away from this country for three years, and am very glad to be once more at a meeting of the Victoria Institute. I am particularly glad to be present on this occasion, and to hear Dr. Pinches' views concerning this fragment of a fourth and most ancient version of the Assyrian story of the Deluge, and his comments upon it and reviews of the other versions.

In comparing the much later but more complete version discovered by Mr. George Smith with the Bible narrative, I would first point out that whereas, according to Sayce's rendering, Ut-napishtim brought into his ship his family and his concubines, at the end the god Êa took his hand and that of his wife, and uttered a decree that thenceforth they two should be like gods and dwell in a heavenly abode. Thus the truth breaks through the corruptions with which Eastern voluptuousness has overlaid it, and Noah appears as in the Bible "perfect in his generations."

Again, when the Flood had made havoc of all mankind outside the ship, the goddess Ishtar is said to have raised this bitter lamentation, "I have begotten man, but where is he? Like the sons of the fishes he fills the sea." It has been suggested, and this episode bears out the inference, that the Egyptian Isis, first queen of Egypt and the world, is identical with the Babylonian Ishtar, and that both names are modified forms of Isha, the earlier name of our first mother, of whom Adam said, She shall be called Isha (woman) because she was taken out of Ish (man).

The Assyrian story notably displays its inferiority to the Biblical in the undignified flight of the gods to remote corners of the universe where they "kennelled like dogs," and in the dissension of the gods during the catastrophe Ishtar disapproving of a Deluge because it wrought a too wholesale destruction, whereas Bel, or Enlil, could not endure that even one family should escape. On the other hand, certain unique details show the two stories to be of one event-the smearing of the ship inside as well as outside with pitch, the sending out of the raven and the dove to test the redrying of the ground, the offering of a "sweet savour" to Heaven by the good man just after his exit from the ship, and the appearing of some beautiful phenomenon in the sky in token of Heaven's acceptance.

L

This obviously means the rainbow (but is called signets, or seals, as though displayed to ratify a covenant-that covenant which God made with Noah and his sons that He would never again destroy the earth with a flood).

But again it is clear that if the good man was prudent enough to send out the dove once and it came back to him because it could find no dry ground to rest on, he would, as the Bible story tells and as the Assyrian story does not, have sent the bird out a second time, ere he ventured forth himself with his family and his great living cargo. And then, too, whereas the "seven days' rain" of the Assyrian poem were wholly inadequate to flood the whole earth or even the whole habitats of man, the Bible first says that "the fountains of the great deep were broken up," and then that rain fell during "forty days." (The thought that Êa or Aê may be a form of the divine name Jah is strengthened by the title that Ea elsewhere receives of "the wise and open of ear.")*

The Babylonian story is approached in clearness and detail by the traditions of the first doings of mankind recited by the Masai of East Africa at their annual convention in the hearing of the German Resident. And, as it had been previously stated, that this worldwide tradition was unknown to the negroes, I might add that a Mr. Hewitt, who had worked among the raw heathen, of the Upper Congo, told me that the Ballolo recount that Khangi (God) and his wife made man and his wife and put them into a beautiful garden, and that they disobeyed some command of his and were turned out, while Khangi sailed down the river and was never more seen by men; and that a great while afterwards, when men had become very numerous and very wicked, Khangi destroyed all but a very few with a mighty flood. And, lastly, I would say that among the North American Indians, legends of the flood are so abundant that the late Mr. Owen D. Orsey, whom as Vice-President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I had heard lecture upon a group of six Indian languages, told me that every Indian tribe that he came across possessed the tradition.

* Pinches, O.T. in the Light, p. 18, cf. 21.

+ See an article in the Contemporary Review for 1901 by Professor Emil Reich.