IIASISADKA'S AD\ KNTI KK \u 



uiiusiuilly high, or was rendered serious by coin- 

 cident atmospheric or other disturbances. And 

 tlic memory of the general features of any 

 exceptionally severe and devastating flood, would 

 be preserved by popular tradition for long ages. 

 What, then, could be more natural than that 

 Chaldaean poet should seek for the incidents 

 a great catastrophe among such phenomena ? 

 what other way than by such an appeal to theii 

 experience could he so surely awaken in 

 audience the tragic pity and terror? "What 

 possible ground is there for insisting that he 

 must have had some individual flood in view, 

 and that his history is historical, in the sense 

 that the account of the effects of a hurrk.m<- in 

 the Bay of Bengal, in the year ]875, is 

 historical ? 



More than three centuries after the tinu- 

 Assurbanipal, Berosus of Babylon, born in tl 

 reign of Alexander the Great, wrote an accoui 

 of the history of his country in Greek, 

 work of Berosus has vanished ; but extracts from 

 it how far faithful is uncertain have 

 preserved by later writers. Anmn^ these occui 

 the well-known story of tin- Prince >f Xisutln 

 which is evidently built upon the same foundatioi 

 as that of H;isis;i<lr;i. Tin- incidents of t lie divil 

 warning, the building of the ship, the sendii 

 out of birds, the ascension of the hero, betraj 



