ish Academy.

L. W. KING.

LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT

IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION

LECTURE I--EGYPT, BABYLON, AND PALESTINE, AND SOME TRADITIONAL ORIGINS
OF CIVILIZATION

At the present moment most of us have little time or thought to spare
for subjects not connected directly or indirectly with the war. We have
put aside our own interests and studies; and after the war we shall all
have a certain amount of leeway to make up in acquainting ourselves
with what has been going on in countries not yet involved in the great
struggle. Meanwhile the most we can do is to glance for a moment at any
discovery of exceptional interest that may come to light.

The main object of these lectures will be to examine certain Hebrew
traditions in the light of new evidence which has been published in
America since the outbreak of the war. The evidence is furnished by some
literary texts, inscribed on tablets from Nippur, one of the oldest
and most sacred cities of Babylonia. They are written in Sumerian, the
language spoken by the non-Semitic people whom the Semitic Babylonians
conquered and displaced; and they include a very primitive version of
the Deluge story and Creation myth, and some texts which throw new light
on the age of Babylonian civilization and on the area within which it
had its rise. In them we have recovered some of the material from which
Berossus derived his dynasty of Antediluvian kings, and we are thus
enabled to test the accuracy of the Greek tradition by that of the
Sumerians themselves. So far then as Babylonia is concerned, these
documents will necessitate a re-examination of more than one problem.

The myths and legends of ancient Egypt are also to some extent involved.
The trend of much recent anthropological research has been in the
direction of seeking a single place of origin for similar beliefs and
practices, at least among races which were bound to one another by
political or commercial ties. And we shall have occasion to test, by
means of our new data, a recent theory of Egyptian influence. The Nile
Valley was, of course, one the great centres from which civilization
radiated throughout the ancient East; and, even when direct contact
is unproved, Egyptian literature may furnish instructive parallels and
contrasts in any study of Western Asiatic mythology. Moreover, by a
strange coincidence, there has also been published in Egypt since the
beginning of the war a record referring