Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/289

 6. Whenever reviling within the mouth

7. the face that bowed before Shamas

8. from of old was not

9. Spoiling and death together exist

10. of death the image has not been seen.

11. The man or servant on approaching death,

12. the spirit of the great gods takes his hand.

13. The goddess Mamitu maker of fate, to them their fate brings,

14. she has fixed death and life;

15. of death the day is not known.

This statement of Hasisadra closes the tenth tablet and leads to the next question of Izdubar and its answer, which included the story of the Flood.

The present division of the legends has its own peculiar difficulties; in the first place it does not appear how Heabani was killed. My original idea, that he was killed by the poisonous insect tambukku, I find to be incorrect, and it now appears most likely either that he was killed in a quarrel with Izdubar, as seems suggested by the fragment in p. 246, or that he fell in an attempt to slay a lion, which is implied in the passage p. 259.

In the ninth tablet I am able to make a correction to my former translation; I find the monsters seen by Izdubar were composite beings, half scorpions, half men. The word for scorpion has been some time ago discovered by Professor Oppert, and I find it occurs in the description of these beings; also on a fragment of a tablet which I found at Kouyunjik the star of