230 
heavy downpour .... I went down to the midst of the ship 
and shut my door. 
“ Mu-seri-ina-namari arose, a dark mist from the horizon of 
heaven .... everything bright turned to darkness .... 
brother saw not brother .... I star spoke like a mother, the 
supreme goddess called out with a loud voice : f Everything is 
turned to corruption 9 .... Six days and nights the wind 
blew .... the storm destroyed. On the seventh day the 
storm .... quieted. I opened my window .... I sent 
forth a dove .... a resting place it did not find, and it 
returned. I sent forth a swallow ; a resting place it found 
not, and it returned. I sent forth a raven, and it left .... 
it did not return. I sent forth the animals,” &c. 
According to the account given by Berosus the Chaldean 
priest of Bel, who lived in the time of Alexander the Great, 
when that monarch possessed Babylon, about four hundred 
years before the Christian era, it is said that “Xisuthrus, warned 
by Kronos of a coming flood, wrote a history of the beginning, 
course, and end of all things, and buried it in the City of the 
Sun, Sippara ; built a vessel five stadia long and two broad, 
and put on board food, birds, and quadrupeds, wife, children, 
and friends. After the flood abated Xisuthrus sent out birds 
which, not finding food or rest, returned. Again he sent and 
they returned with mud on their feet — the third time they 
returned no more. The vessel being stranded on a mountain, 
Nizir, east of the Tigris, he quitted it, built an altar, and 
sacrificed to the Gods, and disappeared ; the rest went to 
Babylon from Armenia. When part of the vessel remains in 
the Corey rian (or Kurdistan) mountains, they dug up the 
writing at Sippara and built temples and cities, and Babylon 
became inhabited again.” * 
While the excavations were being carried on at Aboo-habba, 
I had some workmen trying the mound at Tel-Ibraheem, or 
what the Arabs commonly call Habl-Ibraheem, which means 
the rope of Abraham, from the shape of the great canal which 
runs to it from Aboo-habba, a distance of about thirty-five 
miles. This ruin is supposed to be the site of ancient Cuthah; 
and although report said that some excavations had been 
carried on in it before I went there, I could find no traces 
whatever of such explorations anywhere. I had been trying 
for two years to go and examine this mound, but the difficulties 
were the want of water and finding workmen to venture so 
far away from any inhabited place. I at last managed to in- 
* Cory’s Ancient Fragments , 26-29. 
