Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/235



DESTRUCTION OF THE TYRANT HUMBABA.

HAVE had considerable difficulty in writing this chapter; in fact I have arranged the matter now three times, and such is the wretched broken condition of the fragments that I am even now quite uncertain if I have the correct order. The various detached fragments belong to the fourth and fifth tablets in the series, and relate the contest between Izdubar and Humbaba.

I have already stated my opinion that Humbaba was an Elamite, and that he was the last of the dynasty which, according to Berosus, conquered and held Babylonia for about two centuries, between B.C. 2450 and 2250. Humbaba held his court in the midst of a region of erini trees, where there were also trees of the specie called Survan; these two words are very vaguely used in the inscriptions, and