Septembek 11, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



339 



town, Alexandria- Antiochia, which, in the 

 third century B. C, was about 1,600 m. from 

 the sea, and had its own harbor, and 300 

 years later was 33 kilometers inland. Other 

 historical documents make it probable that 

 the streams were separate 150 years B. C. 

 Rawlinson says that the delta advanced 3.2 

 kilometers in 60 years. All the attendant 

 circumstances accord with this location of 

 the story. Here, among a maritime peo- 

 ple, as connoisseurs, they ridicule the build- 

 ing of a ship on the land. Ea is the god- 

 dess of the sea. And it is marvellous that 

 this trait of the original is preserved in the 

 Koran, where the story is told at length: 

 " And he made the ark, and as often as the 

 elders of his people came by him they ridi- 

 culed him, and he said, ' If you rail at us, 

 be sure that we shall also rail at you as you 

 rail at us.' "* 



From the time of Moses and the Tower of 

 Babel, pitch or bitumen had been much 

 used in the Euphrates valley, where the Ter- 

 itary marls produced it abundantly. In 

 Genesis xi. 3, it says of the Tower of Babel, 

 " slime had they for mortor," and a primi- 

 tive folk still pitches its boats inside and 

 out on the waters of the Euphrates. 



Thus the starting-point of the ark is well 

 ascertained, and its landing-place can also 

 be quite clearly located. It was in the land 

 of Mzir, says the recor(i. The Mesopota- 

 mian lowland is a narrow, northward ex- 

 tension of the Persian Gulf, between the 

 Arabian plateau on the west and the Za- 

 gros Mountains, the scarp of the Persian 

 highlands, on the east. An inscription of 

 Asurnacir-pal, from the same library, reads: 

 " Left Kalzu (by Arbela) and entered the 

 region of the town of Babite, and ap- 

 proached the land Nizir." This is the ac- 

 count of a military expedition, and it fol- 

 lowed up the great war road, by which, 500 

 years later, Darius Codomanus fled from 

 the armies of Alexander. The region of 



* Koran, XI., 40, 41. 



Nizir was east of the Tigris, at the foot of 

 the Zagros chain, 300 feet above the sea, 

 and the craft of Hasisadra must have been 

 swept 160 miles northeast, and stranded in 

 the foothills on the valley border. 



Early accounts placed this landing on 

 Mount Judi, in southern Armenia, where a 

 temple in its honor was built in 776 A. D. 

 Berosus places it in the Cordyaiean Moun- 

 tains of Armenia, Genesis in Mt. Ararat 

 (Araxes). It is remarkable how the tradi- 

 tion had clung to this grand volcano. The 

 people still tell of the wood and pitch being 

 carried from the ark as amulets, and dare 

 not attempt to ascend the sacred mountain, 

 and disbelieve the accounts of those few 

 foreigners who have reached the summit. 

 Indeed, a Constantinople newspaper ac- 

 count of a scientific commission sent out by 

 the Turkish government in 1887, to study 

 the avalanches in the mountain, tells of the 

 finding of the ark, encased in the ice of a 

 glacier on the mountain. 



We may contrast the Chaldsean and 

 Biblical accounts in several matters. The 

 sending out of the birds and the bow in the 

 heavens join with many other points to 

 prove the identity of the stories. 



In many ways the Biblical account is 

 modified to suit the comprehension of an 

 inland folk. While the Gilgamos epic de- 

 scribes a violent hurricane and inundation, 

 which expended its force in six days, the 

 Biblical account describes a long-continued 

 rain of forty days, or, in the Elohistic docu- 

 ment, of one hundred and fifty days. " And 

 the waters were dried up from ofi" the earth , 

 and the face of the ground was dry." In 

 the epic the forests were destroyed, and the 

 face of the earth reduced to slime. 



Waters rising from great rains would 

 have swept the ship down the valley, while 

 the epic makes it go from the gulf north- 

 east *to the region of Mzir. And, indeed, 

 what seems the better translation of the 

 IS'oachian account agrees with this. Gen. 



