Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/317

 general term for any hilly country, and I think it quite possible that when Genesis was written the land of Armenia was not intended by this term. My own view is that the more southern part of the mountains east of Assyria was the region of the original tradition, and that the other sites are subsequent identifications due to changes in geographical names and other causes.

In the account of sending forth the birds there is a difference in detail between the Bible and the Inscriptions which cannot be explained away; this and other similar differences will serve to show that neither of the two documents is copied directly from the other.

Some of the other differences are evidently due to the opposite religious systems of the two countries, but there is again a curious point in connection with the close of the Chaldean legend, this is the translation of the hero of the Flood.

In the Book of Genesis it is not Noah but the seventh patriarch Enoch who is translated, three generations before the Flood.

There appears to have been some connection or confusion between Enoch and Noah in ancient tradition; both are holy men, and Enoch is said, like Noah, to have predicted the Flood.

It is a curious fact that the dynasty of gods, with which Egyptian mythical history commences, shows some similar points.

This dynasty has sometimes seven, sometimes ten