Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/207

 Rawlinson's "Ancient Monarchies," vol. i. p. 117.) The names of this deity are really Enu, Elu, Kaptu, and Bel, and he was evidently worshipped at the dawn of Babylonian history, in fact he is represented as one of the creators of the world; beside which, time has shown that the cuneiform characters on which the identification was grounded do not bear the phonetic values then supposed.

Sir Henry Rawlinson also suggested ("Ancient Monarchies," p. 136) that the god Nergal was a deification of Nimrod. Sir Henry rightly explains Her-gal as meaning " great man," and his character as a warrior and hunter-god is similar to that of Nimrod, but even if Nimrod was deified under the name of Nergal this does not explain his position or epoch.

Canon Rawlinson, brother of Sir Henry, in the first volume of his "Ancient Monarchies," p. 153, and following, makes some judicious remarks on the chronological position of Nimrod, and suggests that he may have reigned a century or two before B.C. 2286; he also recognizes the historical character of his reign, and supposes him to have founded the Babylonian monarchy, but he does not himself identify him with any king known from the inscriptions. At the time when this was written (1871), the conclusions of Canon Rawlinson were the most satisfactory that had been advanced since the discovery of the cuneiform inscriptions. Since this time, however, some new theories have been started, with the idea of identifying Nimrod; one of these, brought forward