ch, on page
12, an engraving of the Sargon cylinder is given; also, on the general
subject, especially pp. 116 et seq., 309 et seq.; also Meyer,
Geschichte des Alterthums, pp. 161-163; also Maspero and Sayce, Dawn of
Civilization, p. 555 and note.

For the earlier Chaldean forms of the Hebrew Creation accounts, Tree
of Life in Eden, Hebrew Sabbath, both the institution and the name, and
various other points of similar interest, see George Smith, Chaldean
Account of Genesis, throughout the work, especially p. 308 and chaps.
xvi, xvii; also Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Babylonier; also Schrader,
The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament; also Lenormant,
Origines de l'Histoire; also Sayce, The Assyrian Story of Creation, in
Records of the Past, new series, vol. i. For a general statement as to
earlier sources of much in the Hebrew sacred origins, see Huxley, Essays
on Controverted Questions, English edition, p. 525.

The more general conclusions which were thus given to biblical criticism
were all the more impressive from the fact that they had been revealed
by various groups of earnest Christian scholars working on different
lines, by different methods, and in various parts of the world. Very
honourable was the full and frank testimony to these results given
in 1885 by the Rev. Francis Brown, a professor in the Presbyterian
Theological Seminary at New York. In his admirable though brief book on
Assyriology, starting with the declaration that "it is a great pity to
be afraid of facts," he showed how Assyrian research testifies in many
ways to the historical value of the Bible record; but at the same time
he freely allowed to Chaldean history an antiquity fatal to the sacred
chronology of the Hebrews. He also cast aside a mass of doubtful
apologetics, and dealt frankly with the fact that very many of the early
narratives in Genesis belong to the common stock of ancient tradition,
and, mentioning as an example the cuneiform inscriptions which record
a story of the Accadian king Sargon--how "he was born in retirement,
placed by his mother in a basket of rushes, launched on a river, rescued
and brought up by a stranger, after which he became king"--he did not
hesitate to remind his readers that Sargon lived a thousand years and
more before Moses; that this story was told of him several hundred years
before Moses was born; and that it was told of various other important
personages of antiquity. The professor dealt just