agreements, dowries, bonds for interest (with impressions of seals,
and fingernails, or nail marks), chronography, chronology, Canons of
Eponyms, astrology (forecasts, omens, divinations, charms, spells,
incantations), mythology, legends, grammar, law, geography, etc. [5]


George Smith's Discovery of the Epic of Gilgamish and the Story of
the Deluge.

The mass of tablets which had been discovered by Layard and Rassam at
Nineveh came to the British Museum in 1854-5, and their examination
by Rawlinson and Norris began very soon after. Mr. Bowler, a skilful
draughtsman and copyist of tablets, whom Rawlinson employed in
making transfers of copies of cuneiform texts for publication by
lithography, rejoined a considerable number of fragments of bilingual
lists, syllabaries, etc., which were published in the second volume
of the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, in 1866. In that
year the Trustees of the British Museum employed George Smith to
assist Rawlinson in sorting, classifying and rejoining fragments,
and a comprehensive examination of the collection by him began. His
personal interest in Assyriology was centred upon historical texts,
especially those which threw any light on the Bible Narrative. But in
the course of his search for stories of the campaigns of Sargon II,
Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashur-bani-pal, he discovered among other
important documents (1) a series of portions of tablets which give
the adventures of Gilgamish, an ancient king of Erech; (2) An account
of the Deluge, which is supplied by the Eleventh Tablet of the Legend
of Gilgamish (in more than one version); (3) A detailed description
of the Creation; (4) the Legend of the Descent of Ishtar into Hades
in quest of Tammuz. The general meaning of the texts was quite clear,