eadful is the tempest that the gods in affright
ascend for protection to the heaven of Anu. Six days the storm lasts. On
the seventh conies calm. Hasisadra opens a window and sees the mountain
of Nizir, sends forth a dove, which returns; then a swallow, which
returns; then a raven, which does not return; then, knowing that the
flood has passed, sends out the animals, builds an altar, and offers
sacrifice, over which the gods gather like flies. Ea remonstrates with
Bel, and urges that hereafter, when he is angry with men, instead of
sending a deluge, he shall send wild beasts, who shall destroy them.
Thereupon Bel makes a compact with Hasisadra, and the gods take him and
his wife and people and place them in a remote spot at the mouth of the
rivers. It is now generally agreed that the Hebrew story of the Flood is
taken from the Babylonian, either mediately through the Canaanites (for
the Babylonians had occupied Canaan before the sixteenth century B.C.),
or immediately during the exile in the sixth century. The Babylonian
account is more picturesque, the Hebrew more restrained and solemn. The
early polytheistic features have been excluded by the Jewish editors.

In addition to these longer stories there are a number of legends of no
little poetical and mythical interest. In the cycle devoted to the eagle
there is a story of the struggle between the eagle and the serpent. The
latter complains to the sun-god that the eagle has eaten his young. The
god suggests a plan whereby the hostile bird may be caught: the body of
a wild ox is to be set as a snare. Out of this plot, however, the eagle
extricates himself by his sagacity. In the second story the eagle comes
to the help of a woman who is struggling to bring a man-child
(apparently Etana) into the world. In the third is portrayed the
ambition of the hero Etana to ascend to heaven. The eagle promises to
aid him in accomplishing his design. Clinging to the bird, he rises with
him higher and higher toward the heavenly space, reaching the abode of
Anu, and then the abode of Ishtar. As they rise to height after height
the eagle describes the appearance of the world lying stretched out
beneath: at first it rises like a huge mountain out of the sea; then the
ocean appears as a girdle encircling the land, and finally but as a
ditch a gardener digs to irrigate his land. When they have risen so high
that the earth is scarcely visible, Etana cries to the eagle to stop; so
he does, but