PREFACE. XI 



paramount importance. M. Benan's essay 

 is contemporary with the latter, and ap- 

 peared in the Memoir es de P Academic des 

 Inscriptions, et Belles-Lettres, Tome XXIV., 

 in 1860. The third review is a notice of 

 this memoir, which appeared in the Times 

 on the last day of January in the present 

 year, under the heading of "Pre- Adamite 

 Literature,'- 1 which gives a masterly analysis 

 of the whole subject. 1 



Husbandry was the first and earliest of 

 the sciences to which man turned his atten- 

 tion, and our common father, when ho 



1 The translator of the Strange Surprising Adventures of tin 

 Venerable Gooro Simple, published in 1860, in reference to the 

 antiquity of Eastern legends, says : " Dr. Chwolson has recently 

 issued a very curious and interesting volume on the remains of 

 ancient Babylonian literature. According to it, a person named 

 Kuthami compiled a well-planned and ably executed work on 

 general literature fourteen centuries before the Christian era, 

 giving us glimpses of a previous civilization of some three thou- 

 sand years. We are promised the Arabic text accompanied by :i 

 translation. When these appear we shall have more certain data 

 than mere conjectural criticism for fixing dates. Kuthumi, it 

 seems, speaks of ' the ancients,' the writers of periods then long 

 passed away, as we do of the authors of classical antiquity." 



