26o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



bar. He and Eabani together slay this bull, however, and the 

 goddess, now terribly incensed, pronounces a terrible curse upon 

 Gizdubar. The seventh tablet is unfortunately missing. The 

 eighth, ninth, and tenth narrate how Gizdubar, suffering under 

 the divine anger, loses his friend Eabani and is smitten with a 

 grievous illness. He journeys to the river's mouth to consult his 

 divine ancestor Sitnapistim. On his way he crosses a desert where 

 " scorpion men " guard the dark path to the " waters of the dead," 

 which separate him from his quest. On the shore of this sea he 

 finds a park of the gods, with wonderful trees bearing precious 

 stones for fruit. After waiting here a long time a ferryman takes 

 him over to the fields of the blessed, where he meets Sitnapistim. 

 He tells his sorrowful tale, and the heart of Sitnapistim is filled 

 with pity; but, alas ! neither gods nor men can give him help. 

 In the eleventh tablet Gizdubar inquires of Sitnapistim how he 

 became immortal, and receives in answer the story of the deluge. 

 After its recital Sitnapistim heals Gizdubar of his disease, and 

 gives him the plant of life, its name being " Altho'-a-graybeard- 

 the-man-becomes-young-again." Unfortunately, an evil demon 

 robs him of this on the way home. In the twelfth and last tablet 

 Gizdubar returns to Erech and utters a lament over his lost friend 

 Eabani, whose ghost subsequently appears and recounts the do- 

 ings of the dead in Hades. 



Thus the deluge story is a myth within a myth, containing 

 statements plainly unveracious ; and how we are to distinguish 

 in this mass of fiction the true from the false passes the wit of 

 man to conceive. If we say of the deluge part of it that it is a 

 gross exaggeration, the judgment will sound mild, but this is all 

 that is requisite to reduce the catastrophe to commonplace pro- 

 portions. 



Whether Gizdubar ever existed in the flesh or not has been 

 doubted ; it is certainly remarkable that each of the chapters of 

 the poem corresponds to one of the signs of the zodiac, and they 

 are arranged in the same order as the signs of the zodiac. A fan- 

 ciful correspondence is thus drawn between the succession of 

 events in the life of Gizdubar and the yearly course of the sun 

 through the heavens, and it has consequently been maintained 

 that Gizdubar is no other than the sun himself personified. The 

 stages in the life of man find, however, so ready an analogy in 

 the course of the sun, that this conclusion is by no means forced 

 upon us, and we may turn to another identification of more sig- 

 nificance in our inquiry. It is that of the Greek story of Heracles 

 with the legend of Gizdubar. Heracles himself is no other than 

 a Greek Gizdubar, the Chaldean Eabani corresponds to the cen- 

 taur Cheiron, the tyrant Humbaba to the tyrant Geryon, the 

 divine bull to the bull of Crete, the park of the gods to the garden 



