The Cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament; - The Search For ...

54 THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS AND THE 0. T.
dyenian mountains i. e. theKardu range (Eusebius Chronic.
I. 23 foil.). Haupt's and Delitzsch's conjecture that the
name Nisir itself simply means ''deliverance", root "lyj, is in-
directly confirmed by the statement of Berossus (ibid.) that
there were legends still existing in his day, that there were
preserved on the Gordyenian mountains remnants of the
vessel of the Flood, to which healing properties were ascribed.
Last of all, we observe the manifest difference between
the concrete and mythological conclusion of the Chaldaean
story and the vast universality expressed in the Biblical
record (VIII. 21 foil.*).
Respecting the time when the Chaldaean legend came to
54 the Hebrews, we can only affirm with certainty that the
date cannot fall later than the age of the prophetic-Jahvistic
narrator (about 800 B. C), since he had already codified
the legend **. The date is placed much earlier by those
* Comp. however respecting the combination "day and night" v. 22
Assyrian flmu u musu; immu u musu; urru ("Tix) u mflsu
(see Talbot, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society II, 1870, p. 54
Norris, Assyr. Diet. I, 225; M^nant, Syllab. Assyr. II, 359 foil.); in the
Akkadian with the transposition: MI .
UD
=masu u iiru (Haupt).
Likewise on the other combination "summer and winter", compare the
distinction which meets us among the Assyrians of two seasons of the
year, of "summer" sihirtu, root "in!ij ^^"^ ^^ "winter" harpu, root
n"nn
(II Rawl. 47, 25 foil. e. f.). See Jahrbiicher fiir Protestantische
Theologie 1875 p. 341.
** When I have stated the terminus ad quem, when the Baby-
lonian Flood-legend may be presumed to have come to the Hebrews,
to be the age of the prophetic narrator of early Biblical history, I am
also led to the obvious conclusion that the Hebrews were acquainted
with this legend at a much earlier period, and that it is far from
impossible that they acquired a knowledge of these and the other
primitive myths now under investigation as far back as in the time of
their earlier settlements in Babylonia, and that they carried these
stories with them from Ur of the Chaldees. The time when these
;