NEWLY-DISCOVERED VERSION OF THE STORY OF THE FLOOD. 147 



It cannot be said that the fragment is of any great extent, 

 but, as Professor Hilprecht has remarked, if we had wished to 

 choose the portion wliich we would have liked to be preserved, 

 it is just this part ; though all scholars would naturally add, that 

 whilst desiring these very lines we should have preferred them 

 to be complete. The photograph sent me has enabled me to 

 examine the text of the reverse very carefully, and when doing 

 so, I have thought that certain doubtful characters might be read 

 differently — whether my suggestions are improvements upon 

 his readings time — and a duplicate — alone will show. 



In the first line the characters certainly look to me like 

 %]^f Ty ^T"" Hi ^Tt a-si-ri-ia. The meaning of asiru here 

 is doulDtfal. I have regarded the word as coming from the root 

 dsdrio, " to descend," but as there are about three roots which 

 resemble this, the meaning, in the absence of a clear context, is 

 doubtful. Moreover, I am not satisfied with the form, which is 

 that of a participle. 



In line 2 the completion is that of Professor Hilprecht. He 

 gives the probable Assyrian words of " the bonds of heaven and 

 earth " as being usurdt samS 2i ersitim or kippat same u ersitim. 



In the third line he restores dbuba asakan-ma, " a flood I will 

 make, and." 



Professor Hilprecht's suggested restoration of line 4 is 

 u atta-ma se'e (or hullit) napisti, " and thou then, seek thou (or 

 save thou) life." The -ti of napisti occurs after the break. 



In line 5 the first traces look to me like the aspirate ^>-*-,\ and 

 if this be the case, the completion of the line is more difficult 

 than seemed at first glance. Professor Hilprecht speaks on 

 page 52 of his book of the word gab'dni, heights," and this 

 may be the word to restore here. In that case some such 

 completion as " over all the high places, as many as exist, will I 

 bring overthrow, annihilation, destruction," might be suggested. 

 The difficulty in this, however, would be, that there are no high 

 places (i.e., natural hills) on the Babylonian plain, the " high 

 places " of the Babylonians being the artificially-constructed 

 ziqqurdti or temple-towers — indeed, Ut-napistim, the Baby- 

 lonian Noah in the Legend of Gilgames, calls the Armenian 

 mountain-peak, on which he made sacrifice on coming out of the 

 ark, a ziqqurat sadi, " high place of the mountain," as we may 

 here translate it. It remains to be seen whether any other 

 word was ever used for these heights which the Babylonians 

 constructed in connection with the worship of their gods. 

 Gah'dni would be a masculine plural, and correspond nearly in 

 meaning with the Hebrew nj^l?, gibeah, the name of several 



