Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/344

 between Merodach and the dragon, the figure of Oannes and the eagle-headed man, they decorated their portals with figures of Nimrod strangling a lion, and carved the struggles of Nimrod and Heabani with the lion and the bull even on their stone vases.

Just as the sculptures of the Greek temples, the paintings on the vases and the carving on their gems were taken from their myths and legends, so the series of myths and legends belonging to the valley of the Euphrates furnished materials for the sculptor, the engraver, and the painter, among the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians.

In this way we have continued evidence of the existence of these legends down to the time of Assurbanipal, 673 to 626, who caused the present known copies to be made for his library at Nineveh.

Search in Babylonia would, no doubt, yield much earlier copies of all these works, but that search has not yet been instituted, and for the present we have to be contented with our Assyrian copies. Looking, however, at the world-wide interest of the subjects, and at the important evidence which perfect copies of these works would undoubtedly give, there can be no doubt that the subject of further search and discovery will not slumber, and that all I have here written will one day be superseded by newer texts and fuller and more perfect light.