Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/164

 by the poets, and repudiated as fabulous by the learned. In the "Fables" or stories in which animals play prominent parts, each creature is endowed with the power of speech, and this idea was common even in that day in the whole of Western Asia and Egypt, it is found in various Egyptian stories, it occurs in Genesis, where we have a speaking serpent, in Numbers where Balaam's ass reproves his master, and in the stories of Jotham and Joash, where the trees are made to speak; again in the Izdubar legends, where the trees answer Heabani.

These legends so far as I have discovered are four in number.

The first contained at least four tablets each having four columns of writing. Two of the acting animals in it are the eagle and the serpent.

The second is similar in character, the leading animal being the fox or jackal, there are only four fragments, and I have no evidence as to the number of tablets; this may belong to the same series as the fable of the eagle.

The third is a single tablet with two columns of writing, it is a discussion between the horse and ox.

The fourth is a single fragment in which a calf speaks, but there is nothing to show the nature of the story.

This story appears to be the longest and most curious of these legends, but the very mutilated condition of the various fragments gives as usual