both. Meskingasher is entered in the list as "son of the
Sun-god",(2) and no divine parentage is recorded on the mother's side.
On the other hand, the human father of Gilgamesh is described as the
high priest of Kullab, and we know from other sources that his mother
was the goddess Ninsun.(3) That this is not a fanciful interpretation is
proved by a passage in the Gilgamesh Epic itself,(4) in which its
hero is described as two-thirds god and one-third man. We again find
ourselves back in the same stratum of tradition with which the Hebrew
narratives have made us so familiar.

(1) Gen. vi. 1-4 (J).

(2) The phrase recalls the familiar Egyptian royal
designation "son of the Sun," and it is possible that we may
connect with this same idea the Palermo Stele's inclusion of
the mother's and omission of the father's name in its record
of the early dynastic Pharaohs. This suggestion does not
exclude the possibility of the prevalence of matrilineal
(and perhaps originally also of matrilocal and
matripotestal) conditions among the earliest inhabitants of
Egypt. Indeed the early existence of some form of mother-
right may have originated, and would certainly have
encouraged, the growth of a tradition of solar parentage for
the head of the state.

(3) Poebel, _Hist. Inscr._, p. 124 f.

(4) Tablet I, Col. ii, l. 1; and cf. Tablet IX, Col. ii. l.
16.

What light then does our new material throw upon traditional origins of
civilization? We have seen that in Egypt a new fragment of the Palermo
Stele has confirmed in a remarkable way the tradition of the predynastic
period which was incorporated in his history by Manetho. It has long
been recognized that in Babylonia the sources of Berossus must have
been refracted by the political atmosphere of that country during
the preceding nineteen hundred years. This inference our new material
supports; but when due allowance has been made for a resulting
disturbance of vision, the Sumerian origin of the remainder of his
evidence is notably confirmed. Two of his ten Antediluvian kings rejoin
their Sumerian prototypes, and we shall see that two of his three
Antediluvian cities find their place among the five of primitive
Sumerian belief. It is clear that in Babylonia, as in Egypt, the local
traditions of the dawn of history, current in the Hellenistic period,
were modelled on very early lines. Both countries we