Lecture VIII. The Myths And Epics. 409
omitted. There is no third alternative.”
The Palestinian colouring of the Biblical version of itself
excludes the supposition that the story was borrowed by the
Jews in the age of the Babylonian exile. Such a supposition,
indeed, would be little in accordance with the feelings of hatred
felt by the captives towards their Babylonian conquerors and the
religious beliefs and traditions of the latter. But the discovery
of the Tel el-Amarna tablets has shown that the culture and
literature of Babylonia had made its way to Palestine and even
to Egypt long before the Mosaic age. The great literary works
of Chaldæa were already known and used as text-books in the
West, and, like the story of the first man Adapa, a portion of
which was found in Egypt, the story of the Deluge and the
second founder of the human race must also have been known
there. Gunkel has made it clear^340 that the conceptions and
beliefs which underlie the history of the Flood, and find their
expression in the statement that“the fountains of the great deep”
were broken up, are not only of Babylonian origin, but are also
met with in the earliest fragments of Old Testament literature.
Before the Israelites entered Canaan, the cosmological ideas of
Babylonia had already made their way to it, and been adapted to
the geographical conditions of“the land of the Amorites.”
The story of a deluge was known to Greece as well as to
Palestine. There, too, it had been sent by Zeus as a punishment
for the impiety of mankind; and Deukalion, the Greek Noah,
saved himself and his family in a ship.^341 The peak of Parnassos
played the same part in the Greek legend that the mountain [446]
of Nizir played in the Babylonian; and the stones thrown on
the ground by Deukalion which became men, remind us of the
images of clay moulded by the goddess Mami in the mutilated
(^340) Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit(1895).
(^341) It should be noticed that, as the voyage of Xisuthros lasted for a Babylonian
week of seven nights, so the voyage of Deukalion lasted for a Greek week of
nine days. Ogyges is but a local variant of Deukalion.