e gods Tammuz and Gis-zida ("the firmly-fixed
post"), so that they pleaded for him before Anu. Food and water were
offered him, but he refused them for fear that they might be the food
and water of death. Oil only for anointing and clothing did he accept.
"Then Anu looked upon him and raised his voice in lamentation: 'O Adapa,
wherefore atest thou not, wherefore didst thou not drink? The gift of
life cannot now be thine.'" Though "a sinful man" had been permitted "to
behold the innermost parts of heaven and earth," he had rejected the
food and water of life, and death henceforth was the lot of mankind.

It is curious that the commencement of this legend, the latter portion
of which has been found at Tel el-Amarna, had been brought to the
British Museum from the ruins of the library of Nineveh many years ago.
But until the discovery of the conclusion, its meaning and character
were indecipherable. The copy made for the library of Nineveh was a late
edition of the text which had been carried from Babylonia to the banks
of the Nile eight hundred years before, and the fact emphasizes once
more the Babylonian character of the culture and literature possessed by
Palestine in the Patriarchal Age.

We need not wonder, therefore, if it is to Babylonia that the
cosmological legends and beliefs of Phoenicia plainly point. The watery
chaos out of which the world was created, the divine hierarchies, one
pair of deities proceeding from another and an older pair, or the
victory of Kronos over the dragon Ophioneus, are among the indications
of their Babylonian origin. But far more important than these echoes of
Babylonian mythology in the legendary lore of Phoenicia is the close
relationship that exists between the traditions of Babylonia and the
earlier chapters of Genesis. As is now well known, the Babylonian
account of the Deluge agrees even in details with that which we find in
the Bible, though the polytheism of Chaldaea is there replaced by an
uncompromising monotheism, and there are little touches, like the
substitution of an "ark" for the Babylonian "ship," which show that the
narrative has been transported to Palestine. Equally Babylonian in
origin is the history of the Tower of Babel, while two of the rivers of
Eden are the Tigris and Euphrates, and Eden itself is the Edin or
"Plain" of Babylonia.

Not so long ago it was the fashion to declare that such coincidences
between Babylonian and Hebrew literature could be due only