320 GEOLOGIES AND DELUGES 



of Sitnapistim how he became immortal, and receives in 

 answer the story of the deluge. After its recital Sitnapis- 

 tim heals Gizdubar of his disease, and gives him the 

 plant of life, its name being " Altho'-a-grey-beard-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 subse- 

 quently appears and recounts the doings of the dead in 

 Hades. 



Thus the deluge story is a myth within a myth, con- 

 taining 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 judg- 

 ment will sound mild, but this is all that is requisite to 

 reduce the catastrophe to commonplace proportions. 



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 fanciful 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 significance 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 

 centaur Cheiron, the tyrant Humbaba to the tyrant Geryon, 

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



