Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/337

 Most of the other stories, so far as I can judge, are fixed to the great period before the Flood, when celestial visitors came backwards and forwards to the earth, and the inhabitants of the world were very clearly divided into the good and bad, but the stories are only fables with a moral attached, and have little connection with Babylonian history.

Two of these stories are very curious, and may hereafter turn out of great importance; one is the story of the sin committed by the god Zu, and the other the story of Atarpi.

Berosus in his history has given an account of ten Chaldean kings who reigned before the Flood, and the close of this period is well known from the descriptions of the Deluge in the Bible, the Deluge tablet, and the work of Berosus. According to Berosus several of the Babylonian cities were built before the Flood, and various arts were known, including writing. The enormous reigns given by Berosus to his ten kings, making a total of 432,000 years, force us to discard the idea that the details are historical, although there may be some foundation for his statement of a civilization before the Deluge. The details given in the inscriptions describing the Flood leave no doubt that both the Bible and the Babylonian story describe the same event, and the Flood becomes the starting point for the modern world in both histories. According to Berosus 86 kings reigned for 34,080 years after the Flood down to the Median conquest. If these kings are historical, it is doubtful if they formed a continuous line, and they could scarcely cover a longer