w
of mankind only, and to devote the chief space to "winged fowl and
four-footed beasts of the earth." They are aware of the tentative
sending out of birds from it, and of their returning twice, but when
sent out a third time returning no more. They know of the egress from
the ark by removal of some of its covering, and of the altar built and
the sacrifice offered immediately afterwards. They know that the ark
rested in Armenia; that those who escaped by means of it, or their
descendants, journeyed towards Babylon; that there a tower was begun,
but not, completed, the building being stopped by divine interposition
and a miraculous confusion of tongues. As before, they are not content
with the plain truth, but must amplify and embellish it. The size of
the ark is exaggerated to an absurdity, and its proportions are
misrepresented in such a way as to outrage all the principles of naval
architecture. The translation of Xisuthrus, his wife, his daughter, and
his pilot--a reminiscence possibly of the translation of Enoch--is
unfitly as well as falsely introduced just after they have been
miraculously saved from destruction. The story of the Tower is given
with less departure from the actual truth. The building is, however,
absurdly represented as an actual attempt to scale heaven; and a storm
of wind is somewhat unnecessarily introduced to destroy the Tower, which
from the Scripture narrative seems to have been left standing. It is
also especially to be noticed that in the Chaldaean legends the whole
interest is made narrow and local. The Flood appears as a circumstance
in the history of Babylonia; and the priestly traditionists, who have
put the legend into shape, are chiefly anxious to make the event redound
to the glory of their sacred books, which they boast to have been the
special objects of divine care, and represent as a legacy from the
antediluvian ages. The general interests of mankind are nothing to the
Chaldaean priests, who see in the story of the Tower simply a local
etymology, and in the Deluge an event which made the Babylonians the
sole possessors of primeval wisdom.

CHAPTER VIII.

HISTORY AND CHRONOLOGY.

"The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and
Calneh, in the land of Shinar."--GEN. X. 10.

The establishment of a Cushite kingdom in Lower Babylonia dates probably
from (at least) the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth century before our era.
Greek traditions' assign