228 REV. JOHN TUCKWELL, M.R.A.S.^ ON ARCHAEOLOGY AND 



is the story of Ishtar's Descent into Hades for the recovery of 

 her youthful spouse, which the Babylonians commemorated by 

 an annual festival. This festival was among the " abominations " 

 denounced by the prophet Ezekiel (ch. viii, 14). The first part 

 of it was kept by bitter wailing and lamentation over the tragic 

 death of Tammuz, then on tlie last day his return to the land 

 of the living, anointed with oil and clad in a new garment, was 

 celebrated by unbounded expressions of joy when all moral 

 restraints were loosened and unbridled licentiousness prevailed. 

 Ishtar was also the pre-Israelite Astarte of the Cauaanites, whose 

 worship was celebrated by the sacrifice of infants, as excavations 

 by Professor Macalister at Gezer have disclosed, and by the 

 obscene rites of the grove, or Asherah, denounced so often in 

 the Old Testament. 



Once more then it must be said that known truth must 

 precede the possibility of any legendary embodiment of it, and 

 if the story of Cain and Abel be the basis of these legends 

 then we have in it another proof of the great antiquity of the 

 practice of literature which modern Biblical scholarship has 

 been so slow to recognize. 



(iv) But what I venture to think is the most conclusive proof 

 afforded by all these old Biblical records of their priority aver 

 all other records in whatever language preserved, is that 

 furnished by the parallel accounts of the Hebrews and I Baby- 

 lonians of the story of the Deluge. It is no longer possible to 

 deny it as an historical fact, nor to treat it as an astronomical or 

 meteorological myth. Mr. Maunder, in the volume already 

 referred to, has also given us good reason for believing that it 

 must have been known to the astronomers who pictured for 

 themselves upon the midnight sky the figures of the con- 

 stellations, 2700 B.C. or earlier. These figures are not suggested 

 by the natural arrangement of the stars, as Volney and many 

 other advocates of solar-myth theories have supposed, but are 

 arbitrarily assigned to the stellar universe. But whoever did 

 this extraordinary work so long ago, the Babylonians accepted 

 it. There are the ship, the water-snake, the raven, the 

 mountains, the altar, the sacrifice and the man. I have by my 

 side a cutting from The Daily Telegraph of December 4th, 1872, 

 containing the report of Mr. George Smith reading before the 

 Society of Biblical Archaeology the first translation of the 

 Deluge Tablet ever given to the world. Sir Henry Eawlinson 

 was in the Chair, and Mr. W. E. Gladstone, who was present, 

 uttered these memorable words, " I do not know whether it is 

 supposed that the enquiries of archaeological or other sciences are 



