THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S., ON THE 



150 



10. . . . " [the boat] which thou 

 shalt make," 



11. . . . [bring therein everjy 

 " beast of the field, bird of 

 the heavens.""^ 



13. . . . thy (?) . . . "and thy 

 family." 



19. "And from every living 

 thing, from all flesh, two 

 from everything shalt thou 

 bring into the ark, to keep 

 them alive with thee ; they 

 shall be male and female." 

 vii. 3. "of the fowl also of the 

 air." 



vi. 18b. " and thou shalt come 

 into the ark, thou, and thy 

 sons, and thy wife, and thy 

 sons' wives with thee." 



There is no doubt that this text of the Flood contains a 

 goodly number of parallels with the version in Genesis, and 

 the learned Professor may be congratulated on the discovery 

 which he has made. Though only an isolated and imperfect 

 fragment, it is not only exceedingly important in itself, but it 

 also gives promise of more material of the same character. 

 From this we see, moreover, how rich Assyro-Babylonian 

 literature was in Flood stories, as it seems certainly to have 

 possessed three, and may even have had four. But this is not 

 to be w^ondered at — the Assyro-Babylonians certainly had at 

 least three Creation stories, all of them of considerable interest, 

 though their differences are much greater than are to be found 

 in the versions of the Flood which form the subject of this 

 paper. 



Discussion. 



The Chairman : Our thanks are due to the lecturer for his 

 most interesting account of a very curious fragment. Particularly 

 interesting because it was a further evidence of the existence of 

 traditions which were freely floating about in Babylon a very long 

 while ago, all variants of a still older story. This does not imply 

 that they were not true. On the contrary, they bore evidence to 

 the undoubted antiquity of the Genesis account of the flood. It is 

 impossible to imagine anyone centuries later writing such descrip- 



This is to all appearance the only Assyro-Babylonian version of the 

 Flood mentioning birds. 



Note. — The verbal form lukin in line 5 may be translated either " I " or 

 "he will bring" (lit. "set "). 



