168 



T. G. P1NCHES_, LL.D., M.R.A.S., ON 



incantation, or a series of incantations — though it is none the 

 less important on that account. In addition to this, a fragment, 

 apparently of a fourth version, was discovered by George Smith 

 when excavating for the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph. 

 The Babylonians were therefore rich in accounts of the first 

 beginnings of things, and the religious man had a choice of 

 beliefs without much danger of being regarded as heterodox. 



Further information concerning these legends, as also of those 

 deaUng with the Flood, have reached us from I'hiladelphia, in 

 America. In that city, at the University Museum, the opening 

 of the cases containing tlie inscriptions discovered at Mffer 

 (the Calneh of Genesis x) has been resumed, with exceedingly 

 gratifying results. One of these documents, inscribed in three 

 columns on each side, has, in the first (to use the words of the 

 translator, Dr. Poebel), " instructions concerning the building of 

 cities, which, it seems, were given by the gods to the first men, 

 whose creation must have been related in the now missing- 

 preceding lines." The end of the first column, however, 

 supplies sometliing of the missing portion, where, referring to 

 the acts of tlie gods, we read, according to Poebel : " After 

 Enlil, Enki, and Nin-hursagga had created the black-headed 

 ones (the Babylonian designation of mankind), they called into 

 beino- in a fine fashion the animals, the four-legged (beasts) of 

 the field.*" 



Now . in the legends hitherto known, or at least tlie two 

 principal ones, it is Merodach who is credited with the creation 

 of living things. To all appearance, then, this new version was 

 composed l)efore the worship of Merodach assumed the 

 importance which it ultimately had, for his name seems not to 

 be mentioned, tlip.^ creators being Enlil, the older Bel ; Enki, 

 generally called Ea ; and Nin-hursagga, "the Lady of the 

 mountain," one of the names of the Lady of the gods," who, in 

 the bilingual story of the Creation, was associated with 

 Merodach in the creation of mankind. This face, with the 

 identification of all the deities with Merodach, shows that, in 

 the chanues to which Bal)_y Ionian belief was, in the course of 

 centuries, sul)jected, every efi'ort was made to disturb the 

 current Iji'liets of the ])eo])ln as little as possible. 



, There is no doubt that this was one of the older forms of the 

 Babylonian Creaiion-story — at least with regard to the 

 f'oiiiiation of mankind and the beasts of the field, in which, 

 unlike the Bible-account, the more perfect, niankind, seems to 



A comiiion Bal)ylonian way of referring to animal life. 



