and it seems probable, therefore, that it represents "the mountain of
Nizir." The whole country had been included by the Accadians in the vast
territory of Guti, or Gutium, which roughly corresponds with the modern
Kurdistan. It is accordingly worth notice that a wide-spread eastern
tradition makes Gebel Gudi, or Mount Gudi, the mountain on which the ark
rested, and that in early Jewish legend this mountain is called Lubar or
Baris, the boundary between Armenia and Kurdistan, in the land of the
Minni. Ararat, or Urardhu, as it is written in the cuneiform inscriptions,
denoted Armenia, and more particularly the district about Lake Van; so
that "the mountains of Ararat," of which Genesis speaks, might easily have
been the Kurdish ranges of Southern Armenia. It was not until a very late
period that the name of Ararat was first applied and then confined to the
lofty mountains in the north.

Rowandiz seems also to have been regarded in Accadian mythology as the
Olympos on which the gods dwelt. In this case it was usually called "the
mountain of the east;" but the east was here the north-east, since other
legends identified it with Aralu, or Hades, the mountain of gold which was
fabled to be in the far north. It is to this Accadian Olympos that
reference is made in Isa. xiv. 13, where the King of Babylon is described
as boasting that he would "ascend into heaven, and exalt his throne above
the stars of the gods," that he would "sit on the mountain of the assembly
of the gods in the extremities of the north." The mountain was sometimes
known as the "mountain of the world," since the firmament was supposed to
revolve on its peak as on a pivot. We must not imagine, however, that the
Accadians, any more than the Greeks, actually believed the gods to live
above the clouds on the terrestrial Rowandiz, except at a very early
period in their history. Just as we do not think of the sky when we use
the word heaven in a spiritual sense, so by "the mountain of the assembly
of the gods" they meant a spiritual mountain, of which Rowandiz was the
earthly type. It is in this way that we must explain the position assigned
to Sisuthros after his translation. He does not live along with the gods
in the north, but has his station fixed "at the mouth of the rivers"
Euphrates and Tigris, which in ancient times flowed into the Persian Gulf
through separate channels. At an epoch when the geographical knowledge of
the Accadians did not extend very far,