lusions in Babylonian literature it would seem that the Babylonians
also conceived man to have been moulded out of clay. (H. Zimmern, in E.
Schrader's "Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament" 3 (Berlin, 1902),
page 506.) According to Berosus, the Babylonian priest whose account of
creation has been preserved in a Greek version, the god Bel cut off his
own head, and the other gods caught the flowing blood, mixed it with
earth, and fashioned men out of the bloody paste; and that, they said,
is why men are so wise, because their mortal clay is tempered with
divine blood. (Eusebius, "Chronicon", ed. A. Schoene, Vol. I. (Berlin,
1875), col. 16.) In Egyptian mythology Khnoumou, the Father of the gods,
is said to have moulded men out of clay. (G. Maspero, "Histoire Ancienne
des Peuples de l'Orient Classique", I. (Paris, 1895), page 128.) We
cannot doubt that such crude conceptions of the origin of our race were
handed down to the civilised peoples of antiquity by their savage or
barbarous forefathers. Certainly stories of the same sort are known to
be current among savages and barbarians.

Thus the Australian blacks in the neighbourhood of Melbourne said that
Pund-jel, the creator, cut three large sheets of bark with his big
knife. On one of these he placed some clay and worked it up with his
knife into a proper consistence. He then laid a portion of the clay on
one of the other pieces of bark and shaped it into a human form; first
he made the feet, then the legs, then the trunk, the arms, and the head.
Thus he made a clay man on each of the two pieces of bark; and being
well pleased with them he danced round them for joy. Next he took
stringy bark from the Eucalyptus tree, made hair of it, and stuck it
on the heads of his clay men. Then he looked at them again, was pleased
with his work, and again danced round them for joy. He then lay down
on them, blew his breath hard into their mouths, their noses, and their
navels; and presently they stirred, spoke, and rose up as full-grown
men. (R. Brough Smyth, "The Aborigines of Victoria" (Melbourne, 1878),
I. 424. This and many of the following legends of creation have been
already cited by me in a note on Pausanias X. 4. 4 ("Pausanias's
Description of Greece, translated with a Commentary" (London, 1898),
Vol V. pages 220 sq.).) The Maoris of New Zealand say that Tiki made man
after his own image. He took red clay, kneaded it, like the Babylonian
Bel, with his own blood, fashioned