For just at this time the traditional view of the Deluge
received its death-blow, and in a manner entirely unexpected. By
the investigations of George Smith among the Assyrian tablets of
the British Museum, in 1872, and by his discoveries just
afterward in Assyria, it was put beyond a reasonable doubt that
a great mass of accounts in Genesis are simply adaptations of
earlier and especially of Chaldean myths and legends. While this
proved to be the fact as regards the accounts of Creation and
the fall of man, it was seen to be most strikingly so as regards
the Deluge. The eleventh of the twelve tablets, on which the
most important of these inscriptions was found, was almost
wholly preserved, and it revealed in this legend, dating from
a time far earlier than that of Moses, such features peculiar to
the childhood of the world as the building of the great ship or
ark to escape the flood, the careful caulking of its seams, the
saving of a man beloved of Heaven, his selecting and taking with
him into the vessel animals of all sorts in couples, the
impressive final closing of the door, the sending forth
different birds as the flood abated, the offering of sacrifices
when the flood had subsided, the joy of the Divine Being who had
caused the flood as the odour of the sacrifice reached his
nostrils; while throughout all was shown that partiality for the
Chaldean sacred number seven which appears so constantly in the
Genesis legends and throughout the Hebrew sacred books.
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