The Meeting-Place of Geology and History

ly take for granted that they were altogether mythical. This state of things has now passed away from the minds of the better informed, and it may be profitable befo

in its details. Besides this, the discovery of the similar though not identical Chaldean creation tablets throws a remarkable and interesting side-light on the whole question. The Chaldean tablets are unquestionably very ancient, and borrowed from still older documents from which they are alleged to have been copied. But they and

y be permitted to refer to my

Science in

e same event. Some principal points of this accordance are the following. The Chaldean account implies that the anger of the gods, or some of them, against an evil race of men was the cause of the catastrophe. It gives it a universal character, so far as the sphere of observation extended. It represents the survivors as saved in

n the narrative of his campaign to recover the captives taken from the cities of the plain, the extremely early use of the arrow-headed characters in Asia, of the hieroglyphic writing in Egypt, and of a proto-Ph?nician or early Hebrew alphabet among the Mineans of ancient Arabia, tend at once to vindicate the Bible

are of comparatively late composition. But Science will have her way in a matter of this kind, whatever literature or criticism may say, and she is beginning strongly to lift he

then they were reluctantly admitted, so far as they did not clash with the preconceived opinions of the "higher" critics. It was urged, unfortunately with too much justice, that the decipherers were not, as a rule, trained critics, and that in the enthusias

ossessed by the Egyptologist and Assyriologist would be surprising to those who are not specialists in these branches of study, while the discovery of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets has poured a flood of light upon the ancient world, whi

as helped us to the discovery of the truth. Egyptian or Assyrian research has not corroborated every historical statement which we find in the Old Testament, any more than classical arch?ology has corroborated every statement which we find in the Greek writers; what it has done has been to show

palanthropic and early neanthropic ages that its statements vindicate themselves as derived from original contemporary documents, which

detail into the general features

e with a great diluvial catastrophe. These are sufficient points of general agreement to make it probable that both originated in one fundamental history, or at least were based on attempts to describe the same events. Otherwise there are great differences. The Chaldean accounts have a prolix iteration, which makes it probable that they were prepared for popular and liturgic use, and may not fairly represent the

ogy, 1893), what has always been suspected, that the ten patriarch

y refers to the whole history of the making of the earth. The second chapter, on the other hand, begins at verse 4 the special history of man, and opens with a picture which is not, as some have rashly supposed, a repetition of the previous general account of c

refers wholly to man and the creatures contemporary with him in the palanthropic age. It is in accordance with this, and no doubt intended by the editor to mark this distinction, that the name Elohim is used in the general narrative, and Jehovah Elohim in the special one. The fai

l; for fragments of what has been called a second Chaldean Genesis have been fou

his second Chaldean or Akkadian Ge

ouse of the gods, in a glor

brought forth, a tree

been laid, a beam

en built, a city had

made, a foundation had

n built, ê-kura had

n built, ê-ana had

een made, ê-ridu had

se, the house of the gods,

e of the la

o correspond with the

the field was

the field had

ad not caused it to

a man to till (irr

from the earth, and watered

ory Times, D

of man. The Chaldean version refers to the same region, but is more elaborate and artificial, and brings in the historic cities of a

count agree in their locality for the advent of man, for Idinu was the ancient name of the plain of Babylonia. It has been objected to this locality that much of this region is low and swampy, and has only recently become land by the encroachment of the rivers on the head of the Persian Gulf. But if our Biblical authority really refers to palanthropic man, we must bear in mind that in the post-glacial period the continents were higher than now, and the Babylonian plain must have been a dry and elevated district, i

n of this, Modern Science in

irements of the case. In a genial climate and sheltered position, and supplied with abundance of food, th

edolach, and the shoham stone. I have elsewhere shown that this river must be the Karun, draining the Luristan mountains, and that the productions indicated must have been 'native gold and silver, wampum be

Science in

e, and a consequent separation of the primitive people into two tribes, one of which migrates to a distance from the other and adopts different modes of l

nesis v

GEOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE SIT

the Cro-magnon type, and that the latter evince an artistic skill which if it had any scope for development may have led to great results. The native metals must have been known to man from the first, though they must have been rare or only locally common; and many semi-barbarous nations of later times show us that it is only a short step from the knowledge of native metals to the art of metallurgy, in so far as it consists in treating those ores that in weight and metallic lustre most resemble the metals themselves. It is also deserving of notice that no other hypothesis than that of antediluvian ci

nd secondly, the testimony of history in favour of the arts of civilisation originating with great inventors, and not by any slow and gradual process of evolution. According to all history, sacred and profane, many such inventors existed even in the palanthropic and early neanthropic ages, and transmitted their arts in an advanced state to later times. The Book of Genesis testifies to this in its notices of Tubal Cain and Jubal; and the monuments of Chaldea and Egypt show that metallurgy, sculpture, and architecture were as far advanced at the very dawn of history as

named his son Noah-rest or comfort-in the hope that by his means he should be comforted, because of the ground which the Lord had cursed. That curse provoked by the sons of man he may have recognis

made in our own time the subject of much discussion, and as it contains wi