2GO HASISADBA'S ADVENTURE vn 



unusually high, or was rendered serious by coin- 

 cident atmospheric or other disturbances. And 

 the memory of the general features of any 

 exceptionally severe and devastating flood, would 

 be preserved by popular tradition for long ages. 

 What, then, could be more natural than that a 

 Chaldsean poet should seek for the incidents of 

 a great catastrophe among such phenomena ? In 

 what other way than by such an appeal to their 

 experience could he so surely awaken in his 

 audience the tragic pity and terror ? What 

 possible ground is there for insisting that he 

 must have had some individual flood in view, 

 and that his history is historical, in the sense 

 that the account of the effects of a hurricane in 

 the Bay of Bengal, in the year 1875, is 

 historical ? 



More than three centuries after the time of 

 Assurbanipal, Berosus of Babylon, born in the 

 reign of Alexander the Great, wrote an account 

 of the history of his country in Greek. The 

 work of Berosus has vanished ; but extracts from 

 it how far faithful is uncertain have been 

 preserved by later writers. Among these occurs 

 the well-known story of the Deluge of Xisuthros, 

 which is evidently built upon the same foundation 

 as that of Hasisadra. The incidents of the divine 

 warning, the building of the ship, the sending 

 out of birds, the ascension of the hero, betray 



