Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/38

16 legends presented to me soon after I discovered them.

On comparing this account with the translations and notes I have given in this book, it will be evident that my first notice was inaccurate in several points, both as to the order and translation of the legends; but I had not expected it to be otherwise, for there had not been time to collect and translate the fragments, and, until that was done, no satisfactory account of them could be given, the inaccuracies in the account being due to the broken state of the tablets and my recent knowledge of them. It is a notable fact that the discovery of these legends was one of the fruits of the expedition organized by the proprietors of the "Daily Telegraph," and these legends and the Deluge fragments form the most valuable results of that expedition.

After I had published this notice in the "Daily Telegraph" I set to work to look over the fragments in the collection, in search of other minor fragments, and found several, but these added little to my knowledge, only enabling me to correct my notice. A little later I discovered a new fragment of the tenth tablet of the Deluge series, and last of all a further portion of the sixth tablet of these legends. This closed my discoveries so far as the fragments of the tablets were concerned, and I had then to copy and translate the tablets as far as their mutilated condition would allow.

The Genesis legends which I had collected from