2 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PALAEONTOLOGY. 



traditions of the Babylonians are recorded in the cuneiform 

 inscriptions found in the ruins of Nineveh. Creation begins 

 with Chaos. The gods arose before heaven and earth had 

 taken shape, while the tumultuous floods of oceans were still 

 intermingled in the universal chaos. The gods chose Marduk 

 to be their champion against Tiamat, the disturbing, chaotic 

 ocean-flood. Marduk armed himself with lightning flash and 

 thunderbolt, and called the winds to his assistance. Marduk 

 vanquished Tiamat, and divided his corpse into two parts; 

 from the one part he created the heavens, and from the other 

 'trie earth and the sea. Marduk peopled the heavens with stars, 

 the dwellings of the great gods. Then followed the creation 

 'of 'plants and animals, and finally the creation of the two first 

 human beings out of clay. The evident agreement of the 

 Babylonian and Jewish conceptions becomes even more ap- 

 parent in the account of the Deluge, which was at first only 

 known to us from the epic of Berosus, but has now also been 

 discovered in cuneiform inscriptions. 



The Mosaic account of the Creation far excels the Baby- 

 lonian in its noble simplicity and in the strength and beauty of 

 the language. In it the origin of the world, of the earth and 

 its inhabitants, is represented as the work of a personal 

 Almighty God. The Jews were alone among the great nations 

 of antiquity in realising the godhead as a unity all-powerful, 

 all-embracing. The Mosaic account was incorporated in the 

 Bible of the Christian Church, and, unfortunately, became 

 invested with a scientific value by the Church. This retarded 

 the development of geology for many centuries, inasmuch as 

 theologians regarded the Mosaic account as a divine revelation, 

 an essential dogma of the Christian Church, and sought to sup- 

 press any investigations and writings of scientific interest which 

 did not harmonise with it. 



While certain natural events, such as earthquakes, floods, 

 and sometimes volcanic eruptions, recur in the primitive tradi- 

 tions of the different nations, these cannot be regarded as 

 affording a basis of geological facts; their interest is rather 

 mythological and religious than scientific. 



The Greeks were less inclined than the Oriental nations to 

 interweave the ideas of mythology, religion, and science; they 

 viewed natural events from a more critical standpoint, and 

 treated them as subjects of philosophical speculation. Various 

 hypotheses were formed to explain the beginning of the earth. 



