September 20, 1894] 



NA TURE 



509 



much greater w.ive than this to ilrown out all Mesopolamla up 

 10 the Nizir llilh. How much greater, !•; a quesiion we are 

 (otiunalely able lo answer positively, thanks to the accurate 

 inea^uremenls made by the engineer Czernik during a survey 

 for a projected railway. The Tigris rises very slowly from 

 lis mouth inland, but at Bagdad it is already 154 feet above the 

 sealevel. and at Mansurijah, the lowest point where its tribu- 

 tary Dijla Tscliai emerges from the Hamrin Mountains, the 

 heiijht is given as 2S5 feet ; but the land of Nizir lies even 

 still more to ihe norili than this, and the Lower Zab, which cuts 

 through it, cannot have a less elevation than 600 or 700 feet. 

 No storm wave of which we have any record, no recorded 

 earthquake wave, nor any combination of the two, approaches 

 even remotely 1 he lieight that would be required to carry the 

 sea even 10 Bagdad ; while as for the Nizir Mountains, the 

 Valiant I'liersor, who "nearly spoilt the flood," might have 

 drank up all the sea-water which came there without any 

 assistance from (ikniivat. I( wc admit that the Tigris valley 

 was ever submerged up to this point and lestored to iis original 

 condition in the course of fourteen days, we are confronted with 

 a catastrophe not only stupendous in degree, but of a nature 

 beyond our present powers of explanation. 



But are we compelled to admit anything of the sort, and 

 would it not be well before doing so tj inquire a little 

 more closely into the credentials and character of the 

 Chaldean story ? We have seen that the tablets on which it 

 occurs were found in King Assurbanipal's library, and it is fairly 

 certain that they were copied Irom others much older preserved 

 in the ancient city of Erech, the city of books. It is indeed 

 probable that the tablets in Erech may date from the time of 

 King Khamm.irubi, or from about 2350 ii.c. The tablets present 

 ihemselves therefore with good recommendations, and we pro- 

 ceed to Ihe character of the story itself. It does not occur alone, 

 but as one chapter out of twelve in a long poem of about 3000 

 lines, concerning the adventures of a mythical hero named 

 Izdubar orGizdubar, perhaps the same as Nimrod, that "mighty 

 hunter before the Lord" of biblical story, and plainly the pro- 

 totype of ihe Greek Heracles. 



The I'list tablet, containing the first chapter, is incomplete. 

 So far as can be made out, it sets forth the miifortunes of the 

 city of Lrecli, probably under the oppression of its Elamite 

 enemies, who were so terrible in battle that poor Ishtar, its pro- 

 tecting goddess, "could not lilt up her head against the foe." 



The second and ihird introduce Gizdubar, already (amous as 

 a hunter, as the hero, who was looked for to deliver Ihe 

 cily. His rivals induce Ururu, the mother of the gods, to 

 fashion a sirange being, Eabani, half man and half hull, to 

 fight with Gizdubar. This monster comes to Erech, bringing 

 wih him a po«erful lion, desert-bred, 10 light Gizdubar; but 

 the hero succeeds in sla)ing ihe lion, and so wins the 

 Iriendship and esteem of Eabani. In the fourth and fifth 

 • ablets the fi lends encounter and overcome the terrible tyrant 

 Humbaba, whose voice was as " the roaring of the storm, his 

 mouth wickedness, and his breath poison." The sixth tablet, 

 which is well preserved, tells how the hero was beloved of 

 Ithiar. " Be my husband," she says, " and I will be thy wife. 

 X will make thee to ride in a chariot of gold and precious stones, 

 with golden wheels and diamond horns. When iliou enterest 

 our house under ihe pIea^ant fragrance of the cedar, men shall 

 kiss ihy feel. Kings, princes, and lords shall bow down before 

 ihee, and bring tiibuie." Gizdubar, however, is not to be 

 seduced ; he repels ihe advances of the goddess, who then pre- 

 sents hersell as a naturally angry woman before her father Anu, 

 and persuades him to frame a divine bull which is to destroy 

 Gizdubar. He and Eabani together slay this bull, however, 

 and the goddtis, r.oiv terribly incensed, pronounces a terrible 

 curse upon Gizdubar. The seventh tablet is unfortunately miss- 

 ing. The eighth, ninth, and tenth narrate how Gizdubar, suffer- 

 ing under thedivine anger, loses his friend Eabani, and is smitten 

 with a giievous illness. He journeys to the river's mouth to 

 consult his divine ancestor Sitnapistim. On his way he crosses 

 a desert where " scorpion men " guard the dark path 

 10 the " waters of the de.ad," which separate him 

 from his quest. On the shore of this sea he finds a park of ihe 

 gods, wiin wonderful trees bearing precious stones for fruit. 

 After waiiii g here a long time a ferryman lakes him over lo 

 the fields of the blessed, where he meets Sitnapistim. He tells 

 his soriowful lale, and the heart of Sitnapis im is filled wiih 

 pity; but, alas ' neither gods nor men can give hiui help. In 

 the eleventh tablet Gizdubar inquires of Siinapijiim how he 



NO. 1299, VOL. 50] 



became immortal, and receives in answer ihestory of the deluge. 

 After its recital Sitnapistim heals Gizdubar of his disease, and 

 gives him the plant of life, its name being *' Altho'-agrey- 

 beard-the-man becomes-young-again." Unlortunately an evil 

 demon robs him of this on the way home. In the twelfth and 

 hist tablet Gizdubar returns to Erech, and utters a lament over 

 his lost friend Eabani, whose ghost subsequently appears and 

 reounts the doings of the dead in Hades. 



Thus the deluge story is a myth within a myth, containing 

 statements plainly unveracious ; and how we are 10 distinguish 

 in this mass of fiction the true from the false p.asses the wit of 

 man to conceive. If we say of ihe deluge-part of it that it 

 is a gross exaggeration, the judgment 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 ihe s.ime order as the 

 signs of the zodiac. A fancilul 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 slajres in the life of 

 man fiiiJ, 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 Ihe 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, ihe divine 

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

 of the Hesperides, the lion slain bv Gizdubar lo the lion of 

 Nemea which Hercules slew, and finally, just as Gizlubar is 

 ferried across the waters of the dead, so Hercules is taken by 

 Helios in the golde-i boat of the sun across ihe ocean. 



As the Greeks have borrowed so much of the leiend it would 

 be surprising if they had not Lakeii the rest, including the story 

 of the deluge, and accordingly we find the Greeks provided with 

 a legend of the flood, or with more than one, as they appear to 

 have had more than one Heracles : but that which most closely 

 accords with the Chaldean, is the flood of Deukalion. 



On the other hand the Egyptians, who had sun-slories of their 

 own, did not borrow the legend of Gizdubar, and are silent as 

 to a deluge ; a fact cf extreme importance whtn we consiiler 

 that the Egyptian civilisation was contemporaneous with the 

 Chaldean, it not indeed older. The Nile is gentler in its over- 

 flowing than the Tigris, so that Egypt did not suffer under the 

 scourge of unexpected floods. 



If, finally, we turn lo China, also possessed of very ancient 

 historic records, and liable lo the destructive deluges of the 

 Yellow River, which have earned for it the designation " The 

 Curseof China, ' we discover a deluge story of great importance, 

 to which Suess ha? already called attention. In the third Schii 

 of the Canon of Yao, a monarch who reigned, it is supposed, 

 some where about 2357 ii.c, and therefore contemporaneous with 

 Khammurabi, we read :— The Ti said, " Prince of the Four 

 Mountains, destructive in their overflowings are the waters 

 of the flood. In their wide extension they inclose the 

 mountains and cover the great heights, threatening the heaven 

 with their floods, so that ihe lower people is unruly and 

 murmur. Where is a capable man whom I on employ this 

 evil to overcome?" Khwan was engaged, but for nine yeas 

 he laboured in vain; a fresh engineer, named Yii, was there- 

 fore called in ; within eight years he compIete<l great works : 

 he thinned the woods, regulated the streams, dammed them, 

 and opened their mouths, provided the people with food, and 

 acted as a great benefactor to the Slate. 



It is relreshing thus lo pass from the orn.ate deceptions of 

 legend to the sober truth of history ; and if ihe facts on which 

 the Gizdubar legend of the deluge is founded could be expressed 

 in the same simple language, we should probably find it narrat- 

 ing similar events, or events as liltle calculated to surprise us 

 as those of the straightforward Chinese Schii. 



History then fails to furnish evidence of any phenomenon 

 which can be called catastrophic in the geolrgic sense of the 

 word, and geology has no need to return 10 the catastrophism 

 of its youth ; in becoming evolutional it does not cease to remain 

 eisentially uniformiiarian. 



.\nd tlie careful foster-mother ? She too, as it appears to me, 



