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passed through it, or very near it, both before and after the 
battle of Cunaxa. 
This Sippara has now been satisfactorily identified with the 
city of Sepharvaim, mentioned in the Old Testament in five 
different places. In the 17th chapter of the 2nd Book of 
Kings it is said : “ And the king of Assyria brought men from 
Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Iva, and from Hamath, 
and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria 
instead of the children of Israel.” Then in the 18th chapter 
of the same Book, when Rab-shakeh, in his boastful address 
to the Jews at Jerusalem about the victories gained by 
his master, Sennacherib, said : <{ Where are the gods of 
Sepharvaim, Hena, and Iva ? ” The city of Sepharvaim has 
also been famous among the ancients as being the oldest city 
known, and which the Chaldean and Grecian historians, many 
centuries before the Christian era, mentioned as being the 
place where the second father of mankind resided, and where 
he had buried the Antediluvian records. He was known by the 
Greek and Chaldean historians by the name of ^Xisuthrus,” and 
as there was no affinity in either sound or meaning of that word 
with that of Noah , some doubters considered the whole 
story of the Chaldean account of the Deluge a mere phantom; 
but now the buried records of the past’come to our assistance, 
and reveal the truth in explaining what was considered a great 
mystery and a delusion ! The cuneiform inscriptions tell us 
that God had destroyed all life by a great flood on account of 
the wickedness of the people, and had saved a good man, 
whom the Assyrians called “ Khasis-adra.” The meaning of 
this “ Khasis-adra,” is “ he who escaped the flood ” ; and it 
seems that when Abydenus, the Greek historian, chronicled 
the legend of the Deluge from Berosus, about 268 b.c., 
he corrupted the word into “ Xisuthrus ; ” and what makes 
it still very unlike the Semitic sound is the form of the 
Greek termination. The learned Dr. Friederich Delitzsch, 
Professor of Assyriology in the University of Leipzig, informs 
me that he has been able to decipher the cuneiform prototype 
of Xisuthrus or Xoah as Hisi-Sudda; but he has not yet 
determined to fix upon the exact meaning of the name, though 
he explains the latter part of the word, “ Sudda,” as “ life.” It 
is the same with the Hebrew words Elijah or Eliyah, and 
J oshua, which are rendered into Greek and English Elias and 
Jesus. Then as regards the meaning of the words “Kha- 
sis-adra,” or “ he who escaped the flood,” it was a very 
appropriate nickname or title given to Uoah by the Gentiles, 
the same as that given to Abraham by the Canaanites after 
he crossed from Mesopotamia. The first time he was called 
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