an life. An attempt was afterwards made to
harmonize them with probability: the number of kings was reduced to
six, and their combined reigns to 225 years. This attempt arose from
a misapprehension of their true character; names and deeds, everything
connected with them belongs to myth and fiction only, and is irreducible
to history proper. They supplied to priests and poets material for
scores of different stories, of which several have come down to us in
fragments. Some are short, and serve as preambles to prayers or magical
formulas; others are of some length, and may pass for real epics. The
gods intervene in them, and along with kings play an important part. It
is Nera, for instance, the lord of the plague, who declares war against
mankind in order to punish them for having despised the authority of
Anu. He makes Babylon to feel his wrath first: "The children of Babel,
they were as birds, and the bird-catcher, thou wert he! thou takest them
in the net, thou enclosest them, thou decimatest them--hero Nera!"
One after the other he attacks the mother cities of the Euphrates and
obliges them to render homage to him--even Uruk, "the dwelling of Anu
and Ishtar--the town of the priestesses, of the _almehs_, and the sacred
courtesans; "then he turns upon the foreign nations and carries his
ravages as far as Phoenicia. In other fragments, the hero Etana makes an
attempt to raise himself to heaven, and the eagle, his companion, flies
away with him, without, however, being able to bring the enterprise to
a successful issue. Nimrod and his exploits are known to us from the
Bible.* "He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said,
Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of
his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of
Shinar." Almost all the characteristics which are attributed by Hebrew
tradition to Nimrod we find in G-ilgames, King of Uruk and descendant of
the Shamashnapishtim who had witnessed the deluge.**

* Genesis x. 9, 10. Among the Jews and Mussulmans a complete
cycle of legends have developed around Nimrod. He built the
Tower of Babel; he threw Abraham into a fiery furnace, and
he tried to mount to heaven on the back of an eagle. Sayce
and Grivel saw in Nimrod an heroic form of Merodach, the god
of Babylonia: the majority of living Assyriologists prefer
to follow Smith's example, and identify him with the hero
G