SECTION OF OKIEnIaL ANTIQUITIES. 99 



epic of early Chaldea, now generally known by the name of the Baby- 

 lonian Mmrod Epic, which celebrates in twelve cantos, corresponding 

 with the signs of the zodiac, the exploits of the ancient king of Erech. 



The Chaldean account of the Deluge is especially valuable in as much 

 as it proves that the Biblical story of the Flood is the echo of an his- 

 torical fact. The great geologist, Edward Suess, one of the leading 

 politicians of Vienna, has shown in a special monograph, prepared with 

 my co-operation some years since, that the catastrophe known by the 

 name of the Deluge happened on the Lower Euphrates, involving an 

 extensive and devastating inundation of the lower part of Mesopotamia, 

 the essential cause being a great earthquake in the region of the Per- 

 sian Gulf, or farther down south, preceded by several slight shocks. 

 And it is very probable that during the period of the heaviest shocks 

 a cyclone moved northward out of the Persian Gulf. Certainly the tra- 

 ditions of other peoples in no way justify the assumption that the Flood 

 extended beyond the regions of the Lower Euj^hrates and Tigris, let 

 alone that it was a universal inundation. 



Smith gave the first translation of the Flood tablet and an account 

 of the Nimrod Epic in a lecture delivered before the London Society of 

 Biblical Archaeology on the 3d of December, 1872. His find attracted 

 such widespread attention that the editor-in-chief of the London Daily 

 Telegraph, Mr. Edwin Arnold, came forward and offered George Smith 

 a thousand guineas for fresh researches at Mneveh, to recover more of 

 these invaluable tablets. Smith started at once, and his efforts were 

 crowned with success. The first day, immediately after his arrival, he 

 found a new fragment of the Flood tablet, containing the command to 

 build the ark, and not far from it, in the same trench, a piece of the 

 Babylonian account of the Creation. A whole cuneiform series of par- 

 allel legends to the early chapters of the first book of Moses was brought 

 to light and given to the world by George Smith in his admirable work, 

 " The Chaldean Account of Genesis." 



Twice again Smith went to Assyria. In 1875 he acquired a collection 

 of three thousand clay tablets which Arabs had found in large stone 

 jars near the ruins of Babylon. These stone jars represented the safe 

 of a great Jewish banking house, Egibi & Sons, i. e., Jacob, in Babylo- 

 nian pronunciation. The business transactions of the Babylonian court 

 had been intrusted to this firm for centuries, ever since the time of 

 Nebuchadnezzar. We see all the various classes, from the highest ofifl- 

 cer down to the lowest slave, thronging the courts of this great finan- 

 cial establishment, thus unrolling for us a vivid picture of ancient 

 Babylonian life. 



When George Smith sojourned in Mesopotamia for the third time he 

 was forced back by an outbreak of the oriental plague at Bagdad. He 

 never returned to his native laud. A ijremature death cut short his 

 brilliant career. On the 19th of August, 1876, he expired, at Aleppo. 



After this sad bereavement, keenly felt by all interested in Biblical 



