he universe. That which I
have tried to set forth above is very ancient, if, as is said to be the
case, it was in existence two or even three thousand years before our
era; but the versions of it which we possess were drawn up much later,
perhaps not till about the VIIth century B.C.* It had been accepted by
the inhabitants of Babylon because it flattered their religious vanity
by attributing the credit of having evolved order out of chaos to
Merodach, the protector of their city.** He it was whom the Assyrian
scribes had raised to a position of honour at the court of the last
kings of Nineveh:*** it was Merodach's name which Berossus inscribed at
the beginning of his book, when he set about relating to the Greeks
the origin of the world according to the Chaldeans, and the dawn of
Babylonian civilization.

* The question as to whether the text was originally written
in Sumerian or in the Semitic tongue has frequently been
discussed; the form in which we have it at present is not
very old, and does not date much further back than the reign
of Assurbanipal, if it is not even contemporary with that
monarch. According to Sayce, the first version would date
back beyond the XXth century, to the reign of Khammurabi;
according to Jensen, beyond the XXXth century before our
era.

** Sayce thinks that the myth originated at Eridu, on the
shores of the Persian Gulf, and afterwards received its
present form at Babylon, where the local schools of theology
adapted it to the god Merodach.

*** The tablets in which it is preserved for us come partly
from the library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh, partly from
that of the temple of Nebo at Borsippa; these latter are
more recent than the others, and seem to have been written
during the period of the Persian supremacy.

Like the Egyptian civilization, it had had its birth between the sea and
the dry land on a low, marshy, alluvial soil, flooded annually by the
rivers which traverse it, devastated at long intervals by tidal waves of
extraordinary violence. The Euphrates and the Tigris cannot be regarded
as mysterious streams like the Nile, whose source so long defied
exploration that people were tempted to place it beyond the regions
inhabited by man. The former rise in Armenia, on the slopes of the
Niphates, one of the chains of mountains which lie between the Black Sea
and Mesopotamia, and the onl