employed by them; as centuries passed on, a pile of vague, confused, and
contradictory traditions were amassed, no one of which was held to be
quite satisfactory, though all found partisans to support them. Just as
in Egypt, the theologians of local priesthoods endeavoured to classify
them and bring them into a kind of harmony: many they rejected and
others they recast in order to better reconcile their statements: they
arranged them in systems, from which they undertook to unravel, under
inspiration from on high, the true history of the universe. That which I
have tried to set forth above is very ancient, if, as is said to be the
case, it was in existence two or even three thousand years before our
era; but the versions of it which we possess were drawn up much later,
perhaps not till about the VIIth century B.C.* It had been accepted by
the inhabitants of Babylon because it flattered their religious vanity
by attributing the credit of having evolved order out of chaos to
Merodach, the protector of their city.** He it was whom the Assyrian
scribes had raised to a position of honour at the court of the last
kings of Nineveh:*** it was Merodach's name which Berossus inscribed at
the beginning of his book, when he set about relating to the Greeks
the origin of the world according to the Chaldeans, and the dawn of
Babylonian civilization.

* The question as to whether the text was originally written
in Sumerian or in the Semitic tongue has frequently been
discussed; the form in which we have it at present is not
very old, and does not date much further back than the reign
of Assurbanipal, if it is not even contemporary with that
monarch. According to Sayce, the first version would date
back beyond the XXth century, to the reign of Khammurabi;
according to Jensen, beyond the XXXth century before our
era.