fall together.

Before proceeding to the consideration of these less
satisfactory details, it is needful to remark that Hasisadra's
adventure is a mere episode in a cycle of stories of which a
personage, whose name is provisionally read "Izdubar," is the
centre. The nature of Izdubar hovers vaguely between the heroic
and the divine; sometimes he seems a mere man, sometimes
approaches so closely to the divinities of fire and of the sun
as to be hardly distinguishable from them. As I have already
mentioned, the tablet which sets forth Hasisadra's perils is one
of twelve; and, since each of these represents a month and bears
a story appropriate to the corresponding sign of the Zodiac,
great weight must be attached to Sir Henry Rawlinson's
suggestion that the epos of Izdubar is a poetical embodiment of
solar mythology.

In the earlier books of the epos, the hero, not content with
rejecting the proffered love of the Chaldaean Aphrodite, Istar,
freely expresses his very low estimate of her character; and it
is interesting to observe that, even in this early stage of
human experience, men had reached a conception of that law of
nature which expresses the inevitable consequences of an
imperfect appreciation of feminine charms. The injured goddess
makes Izdubar's life a burden to him, until at last, sick in
body and sorry in mind, he is driven to seek aid and comfort
from his forbears in the world of spirits. So this antitype of
Odysseus journeys to the shore of the waters of death, and there
takes ship with a Chaldaean Charon, who carries him within hail
of his ancestor Hasisadra. That venerable personage not only