58 BY THE RIVERS OP BABYLON 



Here one is reminded at once of the Hebrews of 

 the Old Testament, and it is now well known that 

 the Hebrew culture was mainly derived from Babylon, 

 as we shall see later. In Babylon, however, the 

 legends which appear in Genesis were not part of a 

 sacred book. The story of the flood, for instance, 

 was part of a very old romance, of which some copies 

 go back to 2,000 B.C. It is quite plainly the source 

 of the Hebrew story. Ut-Napishtim was warned by 

 the gods that men were to be destroyed for their sins, 

 and he built a boat in which he and his family and 

 the animals escaped. The story tells how he sent 

 out in succession a dove, a swallow, and a raven ; 

 and how at last the boat rested on the top of a 

 mountain, and he came out and offered sacrifice. 

 Other tablets describe the stages of creation as in 

 Genesis (modified, as we shall see), the garden of 

 immortality ("Eden" is merely the old Sumerian 

 word for "the plain"), the command not to eat 

 certain fruit, the transgression and fall, and so on. 

 Sacred trees are very common on Babylonian seals, 

 and a man and woman and serpent often stand 

 beside the tree. 



But it would take a large volume to tell all that we 

 now know about the religion, morality, and folk-lore 

 of Babylon. Side by side with these popular tales 

 the learned Babylonians — mainly the priests, no 

 doubt — were developing a very promising science. 

 They had elementary mathematics (square and cube 

 roots and fractions) and a remarkably good astronomy, 

 as far as naked-eye observation will go. Some of 

 the great temples ran to a height of 300 feet. They 

 were built in seven stages — a black (lowest) stage in 

 honour of Saturn, an orange stage in honour of 



