Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/343

 There is another curious illustration of the legends of Izdubar in the tablet printed, p. 46 of "Cuneiform Inscriptions," vol. ii. Our copy of this tablet is dated in the seventh century ; but the geographical notices on it show that the original must have been written during the supremacy of the city of Ur, between 2000 and 1850. In this tablet Surippak is called the ark city, and mention is made of the ship of Izdubar, showing a knowledge of the story of his voyage to find Hasisadra.

After 1500, the literature of Babylonia is unknown, and we lose sight of all evidence of these legends for some centuries. In the meantime Egypt supplies a few notices bearing on the subject, which serve to show that knowledge of them was still kept up. Nearly thirteen hundred years before the Christian era one of the Egyptian poems likens a hero to the Assyrian chief, Kazartu, a great hunter. Kazartu probably means a "strong," "powerful," one, and it has already been suggested that the reference here is to the fame of Nimrod. A little later, in the period 1100 to 800, we have in Egypt many persons named after Nimrod, showing a knowledge of the mighty hunter there.

On the revival of the Assyrian empire, about 990, we come again to numerous references to the Genesis legends, and these continue through almost every reign down to the close of the empire. The Assyrians carved the sacred tree and cherubims on their walls, they depicted in the temples the struggle