36 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 



by Kuthami, but by one of the authors 

 whom he quotes, Masi the Suranian. Ac- 

 cording to Dr. Chwolson' s theory, Masi 

 cannot have lived later than two thousand 

 years before Christ. 1 One is naturally curi- 

 ous to know at what day the Greeks could 

 have shewn themselves to the eyes of a 

 Babylonian at so remote a period. Here is 

 the passage : "What I say to thee, Tamithri, 2 

 I say also to thy neighbours, the Ionians 

 (Yundnis), whom, except for the great aver- 

 sion that I have to abuse, I should not 

 hesitate to call mere brutes, although ex- 

 cellent men have appeared among them ; 

 they outbid one another in vaunting up 

 themselves as to be preferred to the natives 

 of Babylon." 3 "Twenty years ago," says 



1 Page 92. Besides, p. 173, Dr. Chwolson speaks of 2,500 

 years. 



2 The treatise of Masi, from which this passage is extracted, was, 

 according to Dr. Chwolson, addressed to Tamithri, the Canaanite, 

 and turns upon the literary precedence of the Canaanites and Chal- 

 daeans. I cannot pass hy the improbability which a belief in the 

 high antiquity of such writings calls forth. 



3 Page 91, note. CS*\j£*s Jyl ±Jj+*^o b lLSo !y J~*. 



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