The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

410 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

Babylonian myth of Atarpi, which similarly become men and
women.
But it is not so much with the episode of the Deluge as
with the whole story of Gilgames and his adventures that Greek
mythology claims connection. The desire of finding the biblical
Nimrod in the cuneiform tablets long seduced Assyriologists into
the impossible attempt to identify him with Gilgames; it is not,
however, to the Biblical Nimrod, but to the Greek Hêraklês, that
the Babylonian hero is related. The curious parallelism between
the twelve labours of Hêraklês and the twelve adventures of
Gilgames may be an accident; but it is no accident that Gilgames
and Hêraklês should alike be heroes who are not kings, and that
both alike should be tormented with a deadly distemper which
destroyed the flesh. Khumbaba is the tyrant Geryon, the bull
slain by Gilgames is the Kretan bull slain by Hêraklês, and
the Nemæan lion reappears in the lion which Gilgames is so
often represented on the seals as strangling to death. As Hêra
persecuted Hêraklês, so Istar persecuted Gilgames; the journey
of the Greek hero into Hades is paralleled by the journey of
Gilgames beyond the waters of death; and the tree which he
found on the shores of the sea with its fruit of precious stones is
the magical tree of the Hesperides with its golden apples which
grew in the midst of the western ocean.
It is true that there are many elements in the legend of Hêraklês
which are not derived from Babylonia. But it is also true that,
like the cosmogonies of Hesiod or the cosmological philosophy
of Thales, there are also elements in it for which we must claim
[447] a Babylonian origin. Probably they made their way to Greek
lands at the same time as the Cyprian cult of Aphroditê or the
myth of Adônis, whose name indicates the road along which
the culture of Babylonia had travelled. Recent archæological
discoveries have revealed the fact that in the days when Canaan
was a Babylonian province, a civilisation already existed in the
Ægean, and that an active intercourse was carried on between