Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/236

 appear to refer rather to the quality and appearance of the trees than to the exact species. Erini is used for a tall fine tree: it is used for the pine, cedar, and ash. I have here translated the word "pine," and survan I have translated "cedar." In one inscription Lebanon is said to be the country of survan in allusion to its cedar trees.

This section of the Izdubar legends was undoubtedly of great importance, for, although it was disfigured by the poetical adornments deemed necessary to give interest to the narrative, yet of itself, as it described the overthrow of a dynasty and the accession of Izdubar to the throne, it has interest for us in spite of its mutilated condition. When I published my "Assyrian Discoveries" none of these fragments were in condition for publication, but I have since joined and restored some of them, and the new fragments have given sufficient aid to enable me now to present them in some sort, but it is quite possible that any further accession of new fragments would alter the arrangement I have here given.

I at first placed in this division a fragment of the story made up from three parts of a tablet, and containing a discourse of Heabani to some trees, but subsequent investigation has caused me to withdraw this fragment and place it in the space of the eighth tablet.

In the case of the fourth tablet I think I have fragments of all six columns, but some of these fragments are useless until we have further fragments to complete them.