340 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 89. 



vi. 17, " I do bring a flood of waters " is bet- 

 ter translated " I do bring a flood from the 

 sea," and Gen. vii. 6, "JSToah. was six hun- 

 dred years old as the flood of waters" (or 

 better, 'from the sea') ''arose."* As 

 Amos says, writing ' two years after the 

 earthquake.' f " Seek him that maketh the 

 day dark with night, that calleth forth 

 waters of the sea, and poureth them out 

 upon the face of the earth. "| 



We may now try to strip the account of 

 its abundant personification, and see how 

 far it is susceptible of a possible or probable 

 translation into scientific language. 



There are, first, the warnings. Hasisatra, 

 the wise man, and, we may assume, wise in 

 in the ways of the sea, stands on the shore 

 of the ancient harbor-town, Surippak, and 

 receives the warnings of Ea, goddess of the 

 sea. These were the unusual swellings of 

 the sea from small premonitory earthquake 

 shocks beneath the waters. There is next 

 added a voice, or noise, a more unusual 

 warning, not personified. This may have 

 been the rumbling which may precede anj'- 

 severe earthquake. It is a region where 

 earthquakes are antecedently probable. 

 From the circle of fire that surrounds the 

 Pacific, a zone of seismic activity connects 

 the East and West Indies by way of the 

 Mediterranean, and passes this region. 

 The volcanic area of northern Mesopotamia 

 and Syria is in seismic activity much of the 

 time. Many towns have been several times 

 destroyed and hundreds of thousands of 

 people have been killed. And the recently 

 sunken areas of ' Lemuria ' to the south 

 indicate a region of profound faulting apt 

 for the production of earthquakes. 



In the ^Egean the sinking of the great 

 land blocks by which the sea was formed 

 is so recent that it is embalmed in the 



* J. D. Michaelis (Bunsen) ; majim = water, mijam 

 = from the sea. 

 t Amos, i., 1. 

 JAmos, v., 8. 



Greek mythology ; Poseidon, god of the 

 sea, ever warring victorious against the 

 gods of the land. And, though rarely 

 noted on the lower Euphrates, earthquakes 

 and seaquakes, as the Germans say, are 

 not rare across the northern parts of the 

 Indian Ocean ; the wise man accepts this 

 warning of impending danger and builds 

 a great craft for the safety of his home, and 

 with the increase of the threatenings em- 

 barks his family, regardless of the ridicule 

 of the townsfolk. 



" Then arose from the foundations of the 

 heavens a black cloud, in whose middle 

 Eamman (the god of storms) lets his 

 thunders roar, while Neba and Sarru rush 

 at each other in battle. The throne-bearers 

 stalk over mountain and plain." These 

 latter are the great slow-moving sand col- 

 umns (whirlwinds) which precede and 

 hang on the borders of the coming storm. 

 They still occur around Bagdad, change 

 day into night, and extend over the whole 

 valley of the Euphrates. " The mighty 

 god of pestilence lets loose his hurricanes." 

 So far it is the description of the oncoming 

 of a mighty storm. Then follow elements 

 which may be interpreted as earthquake phe- 

 nomena. The Biblical account says the 

 foundations of the great deep were broken 

 up, and at the end they were stopped. 

 This may be explained as the uprush of the 

 ground waters, so marked at Charleston 

 and New Madrid, on the Indus plain, at 

 Lake Baikal, where a lake ten by fifteen 

 miles was formed, and in the delta of the 

 river Selenga, when the fastenings of the 

 wells were blown into the air like the corks 

 of bottles. "The Annuniki raise their 

 torches; they make the land glow with their 

 radiant gleams." The Annuniki are the 

 gods of the underground, the gnomes or 

 kobolds of German saga, and their raising 

 their torches is the inflaming of the natural 

 gases, so common in these bituminous Ter- 

 tiary beds, in the fissures opened by the 



