2 54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the Roman was coming into existence ; for, as Sir Walter Raleigh 

 puts it, " In Alexander's time learning and greatness had not trav- 

 eled so far west as Rome, Alexander esteeming of Italy but as a 

 barbarous country, and of Rome as but a village. But it was 

 Babylon that stood in his eyes, and the fame of the East pierced 

 his ears." 



The recovered literature covers a vast field of human interest, 

 in science, as in astronomy and mathematics, particularly in as- 

 tronomy, for the Chaldeans were famous star- watchers, and had 

 already named the stars and constellations, associating them with 

 the deeds and mighty works of their heroes and demigods, so that 

 the starlit sky became a pictured dome, and the zodiac a frieze to 

 the Assyrian, reminding him of history or fable, like the sculptures 

 and paintings which adorned the king's palaces; in religion and 

 poetry, and in commerce, many of the tablets recording business 

 contracts, and revealing a system of mortgage and banking, 

 money being frequently lent at from thirteen to twenty per cent, 

 which was moderate; for the advantages of cent per cent were 

 already known and appreciated by these simple Semitic folk. 



It was among the tablets from King Assurbanipal's library at 

 Nineveh that George Smith, now over twenty years ago, made a 

 famous discovery. He found a fragment of a tablet, bearing 

 words, which he deciphered as follows : " On the Mount Nizir 

 the ship stood still. Then I took a dove, and let her fly. The 

 dove flew hither and thither, but finding no resting place, re- 

 turned to the ship." Every Englishman who knows his Bible 

 would have guessed, as George Smith immediately did, that he 

 had before him a piece of a Chaldean account of the deluge. He 

 searched for more fragments, and found them. He went out to 

 Assyria, visited the king's palace, and found still more tablets 

 and pieces of tablets, some of them just those he required to fill 

 up missing gaps in the story. Since its first translation by its 

 discoverer it has been again translated and retranslated by some 

 of the acutest scholars in Europe, so that we now possess a fairly 

 complete knowledge of it ; a few missing words or even lines, and 

 occasional obscurities occur, but these are of no great importance. 

 In a town which has the privilege to number the distinguished 

 Assyriologist, Prof. Sayce, among its residents, there will be 

 no necessity to present the story more than briefly. It runs as 

 follows : Sitnapistim, the Chaldean Noah, is warned by Ea, the 

 god of wisdom and the sea, that the gods of Surippak, a city on 

 the Euphrates, even then extremely old, had decided in council 

 to destroy mankind by a flood. Sitnapistim is told to build a 

 ship in which to save himself, his family, household, and belong- 

 ings. Anticipating the curiosity of his neighbors, since he had 

 never before built a boat, he asks what answer he is to make 



