hundred ninety and five years: and he died.

. . . and all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and
two years: and he died.

. . . and all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and
five years: and Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for
God took him.

. . . and all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty
and nine years: and he died.

. . . and all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy
and seven years: and he died.

And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem,
Ham, and Japheth.

Throughout these extracts from "the book of the generations of Adam",(1)
Galumum's nine hundred years(2) seem to run almost like a refrain; and
Methuselah's great age, the recognized symbol for longevity, is even
exceeded by two of the Sumerian patriarchs. The names in the two lists
are not the same,(3) but in both we are moving in the same atmosphere
and along similar lines of thought. Though each list adheres to its own
set formulae, it estimates the length of human life in the early ages
of the world on much the same gigantic scale as the other. Our Sumerian
records are not quite so formal in their structure as the Hebrew
narrative, but the short notes which here and there relieve their stiff
monotony may be paralleled in the Cainite genealogy of the preceding
chapter in Genesis.(4) There Cain's city-building, for example, may pair
with that of Enmerkar; and though our new records may afford no precise
equivalents to Jabal's patronage of nomad life, or to the invention of
music and metal-working ascribed to Jubal and Tubal-cain, these too
are quite in the spirit of Sumerian and Babylonian tradition, in their
attempt to picture the beginnings of civilization. Thus Enmeduranki,
the prototype of the seventh Antediluvian patriarch of Berossus, was
traditionally revered as the first exponent of divination.(5) It is in
the chronological and general setting, rather than in the Hebrew names
and details, that an echo seems here to reach us from Sumer through
Babylon.

(1) Gen. v. 1 ff. (P).

(2) The same length of reign is credited to Melamkish and to
one and perhaps two other rulers of that first Sumerian
"kingdom".

(3) The possibility of the Babylonian origin of some of the
Hebrew names in this geneaology and its Cainite parallel has
long been canvassed; and considerable ingenuity has been
expended in o