126-(96) CHALDEAN CEEATION-ACCCTmT. - 



emerged, was "good," then we are mistaken in believing 

 that all the carbon now stored in the earth's crust as 

 coal or lignite, or imprisoned in bodies of plants and 

 animals, existed once as free carbonic acid gas. 



Time forbids going through the chapter, but the success- 

 ful denial of these few statements would result in wide 

 spread disaster to what we now call science. 



The Chaldean account is as opposite as possible. Most 

 that it says is palpably false. So far as modern science 

 is concerned, the only harm its statements could do, would 

 result not from their denial, but from admitting them to 

 be true. The only statements which it would not do to 

 deny, are in the fifth and seventh tablets. In the former, 

 we are told that the moon at the beginning of the month 

 shows itself in a faint circle, grows larger and then 

 smaller as the weeks go on. All of which is true, if not 

 very profound. In the seventh tablet we are told that 

 at a certain time, cattle, beasts and creeping things were 

 made to come, implying, of course, that once there were 

 none. This also is true. Perhaps I ought also to add, 

 "Thou didst make the foundations of the caverns of 

 rock. " This is all of any possible value to science. 



As to other myths, it is a suggestive fact that when they 

 speak of matters — e. g., the deluge — of which the writer 

 would be likely to know something by tradition, 

 many real parallelisms occur, although mingled with 

 much that is absurd and contradictory, while as to all 

 matters before man' s creation, there is either flat contra- 

 diction, or utter silence. 



1 have spoken of the Chaldean myth as if it was intend- 

 ed to be an account of creation, a cosmogony — but I very 

 much doubt whether it was intended to be so regarded, 

 or at least whether that was its chief purpose. The more 

 I study it, the more I am impressed with the belief that 

 it was written to set forth the origin and genealogy of 

 the Chaldean gods, together with their attributes and 

 deeds — a theogony rather than a cosmogony. Read in 

 this light, the myth becomes more intelligible. 



The first tablet opens with a statement of the condition 

 of things before there were any gods. Nothing had been 

 named, neither the heavens nor the earth. The deep was 

 their father, the sea their mother. Destiny was not fixed, 

 order did not exist. Then were made the great gods. 



