Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/150

 The passages I have given in my "History of Assurbanipal" and in "Assyrian Discoveries," pp. 339, 340, 343, serve to show that this deity was the god of pestilence, or the personification of the plague, and the passage in the Deluge table ("Assyrian Discoveries," p. 192, l. 20), shows this name with the same meaning.

My reading Lubara is taken from the passage, "Cuneiform Inscriptions," vol. ii. p. 25, l. 13.

Lubara has a companion deity named Itak who marches before him, and seven gods who follow him in his destructive course.

The point of the story in these tablets appears to be, that the people of the world had offended Anu god of heaven, and that deity ordered Lubara to go forth and strike the people with the pest. It is evident here that exactly the same views prevailed in Babylonia as those among the Jews, visitations from pestilence or famine being always supposed to be sent by the deity in punishment for some sin.

The whole of this series of tablets may be described as a poetical picture of the destruction caused by a plague, sweeping over district after district, and destroying everything before it.

The fragment which appears to me to come first in the series is a very mutilated portion of a tablet, containing parts of three columns of writing. Only a fragment of the first column is perfect enough to translate, and the characters on this are so worn that the translation cannot be other than doubtful. It appears to eadrread [sic]