vii HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 263 



age in which the flood began, the Pentateuchal 

 story adds the month and the day of the month. 

 It is the Deity himself who " shuts in " Noah. 

 The modest week assigned to the full deluge 

 in Hasisadra's story becomes forty days, in one 

 of the Pentateuchal accounts, and a hundred and 

 fifty in the other. The flood, which, in the 

 version of Berosus, has grown so high as to cast 

 the ship among the mountains of Armenia, is 

 improved upon in the Hebrew account until it 

 covers "all the high hills that were under the 

 whole heaven " ; and, when it begins to subside, 

 the ark is left stranded on the summit of the 

 highest peak, commonly identified with Ararat 

 itself. 



While the details of Hasisadra's adventure are, 

 at least, compatible with the physical conditions 

 of the Euphrates valley, and, as we have seen, 

 involve no catastrophe greater than such as might 

 be brought under those conditions, many of the 

 very precisely stated details of Noah's flood 

 contradict some of the best established results of 

 scientific inquiry. 



If it is certain that the alluvium of the Meso- 

 potamian plain has been brought down by the 

 Tigris arid the Euphrates, then it is no less 

 certain that the physical structure of the whole 

 valley has persisted, without material modifica- 

 tion, for many thousand years before the date 

 assigned to the flood. If the summits, even of 



