Babylon, and, conformably to the decrees of fate, disinter the writings
buried at Sippara in order to transmit them to men. It added that the
country in which they found themselves was Armenia. These, then, having
heard the voice, sacrificed to the gods and returned on foot to Babylon.
Of the vessel of Xisuthros, which had finally landed in Armenia, a
portion is still to be found in the Gordyan Mountains in Armenia, and
pilgrims bring thence asphalte that they have scraped from its
fragments. It is used to keep off the influence of witchcraft. As to the
companions of Xisuthros, they came to Babylon, disinterred the writings
left at Sippara, founded numerous cities, built temples, and restored
Babylon."

"By the side of this version," says Lenormant, "which, interesting
though it be, is, after all, second-hand, we are now able to place an
original Chaldeo-Babylonian edition, which the lamented George Smith was
the first to decipher on the cuneiform tablets exhumed at Nineveh, and
now in the British Museum. Here the narrative of the Deluge appears as
an episode in the eleventh tablet, or eleventh chant of the great epic
of the town of Uruk. The hero of this poem, a kind of Hercules, whose
name has not as yet been made out with certainty, being attacked by
disease (a kind of leprosy), goes, with a view to its cure, to consult
the patriarch saved from the Deluge, Khasisatra, in the distant land to
which the gods have transported him, there to enjoy eternal felicity. He
asks Khasisatra to reveal the secret of the events which led to his
obtaining the privilege of immortality, and thus the patriarch is
induced to relate the cataclysm.

"By a comparison of the three copies of the poem that the library of the
palace of Nineveh contained, it has been possible to restore the
narrative with hardly any breaks. These three copies were, by order of