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 proceeds 'an egg.' More striking is the expression of the idea in Mochos. Here the union of 🇬🇷 and 🇬🇷 produces 🇬🇷, from which proceed 🇬🇷, 'the first opener,' and then 'an egg.' It is afterwards explained that the egg is the heaven, and that when it is split in two (? by 🇬🇷) the one half forms the heaven and the other the earth. It may introduce consistency into these representations if we suppose that in the process of evolution the primæval chaos (which is coextensive with the future heaven and earth) assumes the shape of an egg, and that this is afterwards divided into two parts, corresponding to the heaven and the earth. The function of 🇬🇷 is thus analogous to the act of Marduk in cleaving the body of Tiamat in two. But obviously all this throws remarkably little light on Gn. 1$2$.—Another supposed point of contact is the resemblance between the name 🇬🇷 and the Heb. . In Sanchuniathon 🇬🇷 is explained as night, and is said to be the wife of the Kolpia-wind, and mother of 🇬🇷 and 🇬🇷, the first pair of mortals. It is evident that there is much confusion in this part of the extract; and it is not unreasonably conjectured that 🇬🇷 and 🇬🇷 were really the first pair of emanations, and Kolpia and Baau the chaotic principles from which they spring; so that they may be the cosmological equivalents of Tōhû and Bōhû in Gn. There is a strong probability that the name 🇬🇷 is connected with Bau, a Babylonian mother-goddess (see ATLO$2$, 161); but the evidence is too slight to enable us to say that specifically Phœnician influences are traceable in Gn. 1$2$.

5. A division of creation into six stages, in an order similar to that of Gn. 1, appears in the late book of the Bundehesh (the Parsee Genesis), where the periods are connected with the six annual festivals called Gahanbars, so as to form a creative year, parallel to the week of Gn. 1. The order is: 1. Heaven; 2. Water; 3. Earth; 4. Plants; 5. Animals; 6. Men. We miss from the enumeration: Light, which in Zoroastrianism is an uncreated element; and the Heavenly bodies, which are said to belong to an earlier creation (Tiele, Gesch. d. Rel. im Altert., ii. 296). The late date of the Bundehesh leaves room, of course, for the suspicion of biblical influence; but it is thought by some that the same order can be traced in a passage of the younger Avesta, and that it may belong to ancient Iranian tradition (Tiele, l.c., and ARW, vi. 244 ff.; Caland, ThT, xxiii. 179 ff.).—The most remarkable of all known parallels to the six days' scheme of Gn. is found in a cosmogony attributed to the ancient Etruscans by Suidas (Lexicon, s.v. 🇬🇷). Here the creation is said to have been accomplished in six periods of 1000 years, in the following order: 1. Heaven and Earth; 2. the Firmament; 3. Sea and Water; 4. Sun and Moon; 5. Souls of Animals; 6. Man (see K. O. Müller, Die Etrusker, ii. 38; ATLO$2$, 154 f.). Suidas, however, lived not earlier than the 10th cent. , and though his information may have been derived from ancient sources, we cannot be sure that his account is not coloured by knowledge of the Hebrew cosmogony.