BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 73 



Can one see in it anything but a plagiarism 

 from the atomist theories of the Greeks? 

 Or, must it be admitted that the materialist 

 cosmogonies of the East and of Greece had 

 their rise in Babylon? Surely here, we 

 are permitted to hesitate. But I do not 

 think, that any enlightened reader would 

 entertain any doubts as to the age and 

 character of the scholars referred to, after 

 perusing pages 265 to 268 of Dr. Chwol- 

 son's memoir. In seeing them boldly give 

 rules for the formation at will of plants and 

 animals, affirm manifest impossibilities ; in 

 following the relation of one of them, An- 

 kebutha, of the manner by which he had 

 succeeded in forming a man, and kept him 

 alive for a year; in reading the story of 

 another who maintains that he, too, had 

 succeeded in the same experiment, but that 

 the king, for political reasons, had forbid- 

 den him to repeat it ; — one is tempted, I 

 imagine, to class them, not among the 

 ancient founders of real science, but among 

 those more modern charlatans, who under 



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