with the Legend of Gilgamish, and that it was introduced into it by a
late editor or redactor of the Legend, probably in order to complete
the number of the Twelve Tablets on which it was written in the time
of Ashur-bani-pal.


The Legend of the Deluge in Babylonia.

In the introduction to his paper on the "Chaldean Account of the
Deluge," which Smith read in December, 1872, and published in 1873,
he stated that the Assyrian text which he had found on Ashur-bani-pal's
tablets was copied from an archetype at Erech in Lower Babylonia. This
archetype was, he thought, "either written in, or translated into
Semitic Babylonian, at a very early period," and although he could
not assign a date to it, he adduced a number of convincing proofs in
support of his opinion. The language in which he assumed the Legend
to have been originally composed was known to him under the name of
"Accadian," or "Akkadian," but is now called "Sumerian." Recent
research has shown that his view on this point was correct on the
whole. But there is satisfactory proof available to show that versions
or recensions of the Legend of the Deluge and of the Epic of Gilgamish
existed both in Sumerian and Babylonian, as early as B.C. 2000. The
discovery has been made of a fragment of a tablet with a small portion
of the Babylonian version of the Legend of the Deluge inscribed upon
it, and dated in a year which is the equivalent of the 11th year of
Ammisaduga, i.e. about B.C. 2000. [7] And in the Museum at Philadelphia
[8] is preserved half of a tablet which when whole contained a complete
copy of the Sumerian version of the Legend, and must have been written
about the same date. The fragment of the tablet written in the reign
of Ammisaduga is of special importance because the colophon shows