It is well known that Enos, like Adam, signifies “man;” hence some writers have supposed that the list of Noah’s ancestors was originally counted from Enos, so that Lamech, Noah’s father, would have been the seventh in descent. There is, moreover, a curious resemblance between the names of the descendants of Seth and those of the descendants of Cain, Methuselah, indeed, being apparently more correctly written Methusael (Gen. iv. 18), which is the Assyrian Mutu-sa-ili, “Man of God.” Now Lamech, the descendant of Cain, is the seventh from Adam. It may be noticed that Irad or Jared is the same word as the Assyrian Arad, “servant,” and Arad or Ardutu is the Assyrian rendering of the Accadian Ubara, the first part of the name of the father of Xisuthrus, who is actually called Ardates by Abydenus.

Mr. George Smith believed that the real connection between the traditions of Babylonia and Palestine would never be cleared up until the literature of the Syrian population which intervened is recovered. It is very possible that light may be thrown upon the question by the excavations now being made at Jerablus, the site of Carchemish, the capital of the ancient Hittites. Terah may be the same word as Tarkhu, who seems to have been worshipped as a god by the Hittites; and Lucian has preserved a legend of the Flood and the patriarch Sisythes, who is evidently the Xisuthrus of the Babylonians, which was current at Hierapolis or Mabug, a little to the south of Jerablus. In this legend the ark has become a coffer, Sisythes and his family are alone preserved, and the Flood was sent to punish the wickedness of mankind.

There is one point which still deserves notice: these traditions are not fixed to any localities in or near Palestine, but even on the showing of the Jews themselves, belong to the neighbourhood of the Euphrates valley, and Babylonia in particular; this of course is clearly stated in the Babylonian inscriptions and traditions.

Eden, according even to the Jews, was by the Euphrates and Tigris; the cities of Babylon, Larancha, and Sippara were supposed by the Babylonians to have been founded before the Flood. Surippak was the city of the ark, the mountains east of the Tigris were the resting-place of the ark, Babylon was the site of the tower, and Ur of the Chaldees the birthplace of Abraham. These facts and the further statement that Abraham, the father and first leader of the Hebrew race, migrated from Ur to Harran in Syria, and from thence to Palestine, are all so much evidence in favour of the hypothesis that Chaldea was the original home of these stories, and that the Jews received them originally from the Babylonians; but on the other hand there are such striking differences in some parts of the legends, particularly in the names of the patriarchs before the Flood, that it is evident further information is required before we can determine how or when they were received by the Jews.

To pass, now, to the twelfth tablet of the Izdubar Epic, a curious fragment has been provisionally placed by Mr. Smith in the fourth column, in which Izdubar appears to call on his cities to mourn with him for his friend. This tablet is remarkable for the number of cities mentioned as already existing in the time of Izdubar. Combining this notice with other early inscriptions, the statements of Berosus and the notice of the cities of Nimrod in Genesis, we get the following list of the oldest known cities in the Euphrates valley:—

• 1. Babylon and its suburb
• 2. Borsippa.
• 3. Cutha.
• 4. Larsa.
• 5. Surippak, called Larancha by Berosus.
• 6. Eridu.
• 7. Nipur.
• 8. Erech.
• 9. Calneh.
• 10. Sippara. (Sepharvaim.)
• 11. Kisu (or Kis).
• 12. Ganganna.
• 13. Amarda or Marad.
• 14. Ur
• 15. Nisin or Karrak.
• 16. Agané.
• 17. Duban or Duran.
• 18. Abnunna or Mullias.
• 19. Zirghul.

To these we may also add the great cities of Assyria:—

• 20. Assur, the primitive capital.
• 21. Ninua or Nineveh.
• 22. Calah.
• 23. Resen (Assyrian Res-eni, “the head of the spring.”)

So far as the various statements go, all these cities and probably many others were in existence in the time of Nimrod, and some of them even before the Flood; the fact that the Babylonians four thousand years ago believed their cities to be of such antiquity, shows that they were not recent foundations, and the attainments of the people at that time in the arts and sciences prove that their civilization had already known ages of progress. The legendary epoch of Izdubar must be considered at present as the commencement of the united monarchy in Babylonia, and as marking the first of the series of great conquests in Western Asia; but how far back we have to go from our earliest known monuments to reach this era we cannot now tell.

Every nation has its hero, and it was only natural that when the Accadian kings of Ur at last succeeded in establishing an united empire throughout Babylonia, the legends of the national hero should be coloured by the new conception of imperial unity.