Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/60

38 Babylonian priest, had the best means of knowing the Babylonian traditions.

The others are later writers, who copied in the main from Berosus, and whose notices may be taken as giving abridgments of his statements.

I have preferred as usual, the translations of Cory as being standard ones, and made without prejudice from recent discoveries.

Berosus, in the first book of his history of Babylonia, informs us that he lived in the age of Alexander, the son of Philip. And he mentions that there were written accounts, preserved at Babylon with the greatest care, comprehending a period of above fifteen myriads of years; and that these writings contained histories of the heaven and of the sea; of the birth of mankind; and of the kings, and of the memorable actions which they had achieved.

And in the first place he describes Babylonia as a country situated between the Tigris and the Eu-phrates; that it abounded with wheat, and barley, and ocrus, and sesame ; and that in the lakes were produced the roots called gongæ, which are fit for food, and in respect to nutriment similar to barley. That there were also palm-trees and apples, and a variety of fruits; fish also and birds, both those which are merely of flight, and those which frequent the lakes. He adds that those parts of the country