Page:Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Vol 2 (1873).pdf/242

 Ishtar, who was the same as Venus, was queen of beauty, but some what inconstant, for she had already a husband, a deity, called the "Son of Life"; she however led her husband a poor life, and of this Izdubar reminds her in his answer to her offer.

One of the next exploits of Izdubar and Heabani his servant was the conquest of the winged bull, a monster supposed to have existed in those days; but I must pass over this and other matters, to approach the subject of the Flood.

In course of time Izdubar, the conqueror of kings and monsters, the ruler of peoples, fell into some illness and came to fear death, man's last great enemy. Now, the Babylonians believed in the existence of a patriarch named Sisit, the Xisuthrus of the Greeks, who was supposed to have been translated and to have attained to immortality without death. Izdubar, according to the notions of the time, resolved to seek Sisit, to ascertain how he became immortal, that he might attain to a similar honor. The passage reads as follows:—