Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/271

Rh flood," might have drank up all the sea water which came there without any assistance from Glenlivat. If we admit that the Tigris valley was ever submerged up to this point and restored to its original condition in the course of fourteen days, we are confronted with a catastrophe not only stupendous in degree, but of a nature beyond our present powers of explanation.

But are we compelled to admit anything of the sort, and would it not be well before doing so to inquire a little more closely into the credentials and character of the Chaldean story? We have seen that the tablets on which it occurs were found in King Assurbanipal's library, and it is fairly certain that they were copied from others much older preserved in the ancient city of Erech, the city of books. It is indeed probable that the tablets in Erech may date from the time of King Khammarubi, or from about 2350 Tlie tablets present themselves therefore with good recommendations, and we proceed to the character of the story itself. It does not occur alone, but as one chapter out of twelve in a long poem of about three thousand lines, concerning the adventures of a mythical hero named Izdubar or Gizdubar, perhaps the same as Nimrod, that "mighty hunter before the Lord" of biblical story, and plainly the prototype of the Greek Hercules.

The first tablet, containing the first chapter, is incomplete. So far as can be made out, it sets forth the misfortunes of the city of Erech, probably under the oppression of its Elamite enemies, who were so terrible in battle that poor Ishtar, its protecting goddess, "could not lift up her head against the foe."

The second and third introduce Gizdubar, already famous as a hunter, as the hero, who was looked for to deliver the city. His rivals induce Ururu, the mother of the gods, to fashion a strange being, Eabani, half man and half bull, to fight with Gizdubar. This monster comes to Erech, bringing with him a powerful lion, desert-bred, to fight Gizdubar; but the hero succeeds in slaying the lion, and so wins the friendship and esteem of Eabani. In the fourth and fifth tablets the friends encounter and overcome the terrible tyrant Humbaba, whose voice was as "the roaring of the storm, his mouth wickedness, and his breath poison." The sixth tablet, which is well preserved, tells how the hero was beloved of Ishtar. "Be my husband," she says, "and I will be thy wife. I will make thee to ride in a chariot of gold and precious stones, with golden wheels and diamond horns. When thou enterest our house under the pleasant fragrance of the cedar, men shall kiss thy feet. Kings, princes, and lords shall bow down before thee, and bring tribute." Gizdubar, however, is not to be seduced; he repels the advances of the goddess, who then presents herself as a naturally angry woman before her father Ann, and persuades him to frame a divine bull which is to destroy