(ft) The legends of the god Zfl (Siimer. Im-dugud, the 'storm-bird god'). Ace. to one form of the story, Zfi steals the tablets of destiny from Bel- Merodach, and Ramnian and various other gods decline, from fear, to take them back from him. Ace. to another text, the god Lugal-banda (the moon-god) sets out for the distant mountain of >Sal)u (in Central Arabia) to overreach Za by cunning. In the heavens the god ZiT is represented by the constellation Pegasus, and Taurus (Mero- dach) is his .son.
(»■) The legend of the god Girra (Nergal as god of war). A devastating inroad of the Sut«i (the Semitic nomad tribes of Mesopotamia) directed agaiii.st Babel, Sippar, and Erech, is in dramatic fashion connected with the conflict of Xergal and his herald, the fire-god (or Nebo), with Merodach, the tutelary god of Babylon. The mention of the Assyrians and the Kassites plainly indicates that this poem did not originate prior to the so-called Kassite period.
Special mention is due also to the .second tablet (written entirely in Semit. ) of the exorcism-series shiirpHy in which the priest in the form of a long litany inquires what may have been the trans- gressions that have brought the punisliment of the gods on the man who is possessed or sick. ' Has he perchance set his parents or relations at variance, sinned against God, despi.sed father or mother, lied, cheated, dishonoured his neighbonr's wife, shed his neighbour's blood?' etc. The coincidences with the Heb. Decalogue, and with the Egyp. Ptah- hotep sentences, or the Trial of the Dead before the 42 judges of the dead, are unmi;;takable.
That the Babylonians, as well as the ancient Egyptians, possessed also historical narratives in romance-form, is proved by the stories of Sargon of Ag.ade and Kudur-Duffmal. The former of these has also come down to us in Greek from the pen of vElian, imly thai the Gr. writer has con- founded the name of Sargon with that of Gilgames. Sargon is the illegitimate son of a princess, who gives birth to him in secret and exposes him to perish. The child, however, is brought up by a gardener, and in the end comes to the throne. The only new element .Elian introduces into the story is tliiit the boy was rescued by an eagle. (This is prob. due to a mistaken combination with the Etana-legend). The legend (in metrical form)
« In Berosus' list of the patii.irclis. .\ilapa (Alapsros is « con- fusion wltli llnpnit, the name of the ine«.Hcn)jer of .\nii> fs the son of Aloros (i.e. the f^ojdess Aruru, the wife of Ea) and fotber of Amelon (amelu=man).
of the invasion of Babylonia by the Elamite king Kudur-Dugmal (a later form of Kudur-Lagamar) furnislies at the .same time the best proof of the historicity of Gu 14. Eor the Heb. narrative is in accord with the original inscriiitions dating from the time of Khammurabi (Amraphel), and not with the later Bab. legend. Yet the latter is what W(^ should have expected if the Hebrews had first made acquaintance with the matter of Gn 14 during the Exile. The history knows of only the father of Iriaku (Arioch) of Larsa, who was king of lamutbal, and resided at Dur-ilu on the Elain.-Bab. frontier ; the legend, on the other hand, makes of the city Dur-ilu a son of Iriaku. viz. Drn-makh-ili, of whom neither the Bible nor the inscriptions contain any notice.
Of great variety, although not belonging in tlie stricter sense to literature, are the other com- ponents of Bab. writing. 'I'ables of paradigms and lexical-lists served to facilitate the learning and practice of the Humer. speech. But along witli these there were also lists containing oidy Semitic words (the so-called synonym-lists) and forms {e.if. the word-table, ]VAI v. pi. 45). As an intro- duction to the complicated toriting, there wen- syllabaries and collections of signs. Very numerous also are the commentaries which the Babylonians have left to us. These deal partly with the poetical literature, especially with the rare words that occur in it, and partly with the explana- tion of legal and agricultural terms in the old Bab. contract-tablets (the so-called ana-iui-xu .series). In such instances whole laws are some- times quoted verbatim, so that we thus get a glimpse of the most ancient codes of the Baby- lonians. "The contract-tablets themselves, which have come down to us in great abundance from all epochs of Bab. history, do not indeed belong to literature, but deserve special mention here because they supply ns with the most interesting informa- tion not only about business but about all the possible details of private life.
A sort of counterpart to the lexical-lists is pre- sented by the lists of names of places, countries, temples, officials, and stars, as well as the numerous lists of gods. We must mention also the numerous omen-texts, medical prescriptions, astronomical and mathematical tables, and finally some lists connected with the history of literature (<>.;/. a list of epic poems with the names of the authors or collectors). The historical literature will be dealt witli below, when we come to speak of the sources of Bab. history. How the most important of the latter, namely, the inscriptions, were brcutght to light, we learn from the intensely interesting
History of Excavations. As early as 1802 the first considerable Bab. in.scription, on the so-called Caillou de .^/irhatix. a boundary-stone of the 12th cent, is.c, was brought to Europe, and soon after- wards, through the efforts of the Ivtst India Company, a whole collection of Bab. antiquities (among them considerable inscriptions of Nebuch- adrezzar) was brought from liassorah to the British Museum and the East India llnise. But it was not till 1811 that Mr. C. J. Kirh. the re- discoverer of Nineveh, was able to explore more thoroughly Hillah, the ruins of ancient Babylon. In the fifties archieologlcal research was resumed in Babylonia by the Englishmen, W. K. Loft us, J. E. Taylor, and A. H. Layard, who discovered the ruined sites of Nil'fer (Nippur), Warka (Uruk I'r Erech), Senkereh(Larsa), .Mukayyar (I'r), and Abu Sliahrein (Eridu) ; and by the Frenchmen, Eresiu'l and Oppert, who instituted further excavations at Hillah (Babel and Horsippa). In these ruins just named, in S. Habylonia, the inscriptions discovered were all brief, but on acc(mnt of their antiquity they were proportionately important. These con-