The Birth of the - 1 ssyrian Monuments and Records. 93 
in W.A.L, II, 37, 1. 37 ; but Mr. Pinches, with his usual good 
nature, has given me the correct reading from the tablet itself: 
the name of this bird appears as JgzJ J£iJ *ff- 
dudurranu ; now we find the word J^J -^pfY given (in 
W.A.L, II, 33, 1. 25) as the equivalent of the word 
E^IT }K t^"Ef=' ra -kha-tsu sa a-sa-bi, an "inundation" or 
"flood of a seat." 1 The ending of the bird-name in the 
Accadian column looks very like this dudurru, with the usual 
adjective Semitic ending of dnu. Is it not therefore possible, 
or perhaps probable, that the "royal variegated bird" is also 
the " inundation bird " ? and that we thus have a corrobora- 
tion of a story, which, even though it be doubtless destitute 
of actual fact, is evidently current to this day among the 
natives of North Syria ? We know how persistently old 
beliefs maintain their ground, and how traditional stories 
about animals are handed down from one generation to 
another; so that this story about the flamingo appears to 
exist in its old Accadian name of " the inundation bird," 
while the old Assyrian name of " the royal bird " appears 
with the very similar title of " the magnificent bird " in the 
vernacular Arabic of the people of modern Syria. 2 
(37.) We are indebted to Dr. Delitzsch for the very satis- 
factory explanation of the Assyrian names of the pelican. It 
is a great thing to get hold of some particular feature in a 
bird's form, voice, or habits — something which at once arrests 
the attention, and stamps some definite idea upon the mind 
of the observer — some peculiarity which the possessor of a 
certain attribute and structural formation exhibits different 
from other creatures of the same class. It is natural to 
suspect that what strikes us now-a-days as remarkable, also 
' Of. also W.A.I., II, 21, L 58 JET Jgf 3D = -tfcj HIT < V T~ *fi 
calu-sa-me, "damming of the water" ; 24, 1. 45 = ra-kha-tsu sa a-sa-bi, "inunda- 
tion of the seat." 
2 Another explanation of this bird-name may, however, be given : JEJ dur 
= marcas'u, a "diadem," or "girdle" (W.A.L, 11,31, 1. 10); and JgJ ^£EH 
dvr-maTch— JfZi^^l ^-tf d(h)ur ma-khu (1. 13), so that the whole bird- 
name would read as the " royal-banded bird," which 1 am unable to identify. 
