for study were so fragmentary that it was impossible for these
scholars to find their correct sequence. During the excavations which
Smith carried out at Kuyunjik in 1873 and 1874 for the proprietors of
the _Daily Telegraph_ and the Trustees of the British Museum, he
was, he tells us, fortunate enough to discover "several fragments of
the Genesis Legends." In January, 1875, he made an exhaustive search
among the tablets in the British Museum, and in the following March he
published, in the _Daily Telegraph_ (March 4th), a summary of the
contents of about twenty fragments of the series of tablets describing
the creation of the heavens and the earth. In November of the same
year he communicated to the Society of Biblical Archaeology [1]
copies of:--(1) the texts on fragments of the First and Fifth Tablets
of Creation; (2) a text describing the fight between the "Gods and
Chaos"; and (3) a fragmentary text which, he believed, described the
Fall of Man. In the following year he published translations of all
the known fragments of the Babylonian Creation Legends in his
"Chaldean Account of Genesis" (London, 1876, 8vo, with photographs).
In this volume were included translations of the Exploits of Gizdubar
(Gilgamish), and some early Babylonian fables and legends of the gods.

[Footnote 1: See the _Transactions_, Vol. IV, Plates I-VI, London,
1876.]



PUBLICATION OF THE CREATION TABLETS.

The publication of the above-mentioned texts and translations proved
beyond all doubt the correctness of Rawlinson's assertion made in
1865, that "certain portions of the Babylonian and Assyrian Legends of