THE GARDEN OF EDEN.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 165, 14 April 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE GARDEN OF EDEN.

A NEWLY-DISCOVERED S r ;ORY. Some' years ago among the ruins oi Niaeveh there was found a cylindrical stone seal engraved with the figures of a man, a woman, and a sperpeu" gathered* about atree. At once it was suggested that the ancient Babylonians were familiar with the old Semiticstory of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, or the story of the Fall of Man. Also among the ruins of Nineveh was discovered a large collection of clay tablets, a hundred thousand in number, inscribed with the literature of the Babylonians and Assyrians. When the tablets were read the world was surprised to fine. 1 among them the, story of the Creation of the World, and also a story of the Deluge so similar to the biblical story that it was evident that Hebrew and Assyrian stories were the same?

For several years an expedition from the University of Pennsylvania carried on excavations in the Babylonian city of Nippur, where something like 70,00>J inscribed 1 objects were discovered. In the autumn of 1912 Professor Stephen Langdon, of Oxford, while visiting tha museum of the University of Pennsylvania, noticed a fragment of a tablet [tearing an inscription which suggested the story of the Garden of Eden. The fragment was brought to Oxford anc carefully examined, and at last a few lines of a Babylonian story resembling the biblical story was discovered. Upon Professor Langdon's next visit to Philadelphia search was made for other fragments of the tablet. Two were found and fitted together, and the tablet became nearly complete. The tablet is of baked clay, of a light brownish colour, measuring 7£ inches in length and sin width. One side is flat; the other is slightly convex. Upon each side are three columns of cuneiform writing, containing about 273 lines ; originally it contained' about 300 lines. Scholars are agreed that it comes tr-jin about 1000 years before the biblical story was written in its present shape.

THE WRITERS. The story is written in the Sumerian language. The Sumerians were the first cultured people to live in the lower Mesopotamian valley to the north of the Persian Gulf. To just what race they belonged or where they originally lived, no man knows. We are only sure that at a very early time, probably about 4500 8.C., they came to Babylonia bringing a high civilisation with them. »They wrote their language in cuneiform characters upon tablets oi clay and stone. They had a highly developed religion, literature, and art. Poems and legends and historical inscriptions have come from them. They were the world's cultured people of 6000 years ago, just as were the Greeks of a later period. After the Sumerians had occupied Babylonia for several centuries, the Semitic Babylonians, from whom the Jews descended, entered the valley. They conquered the older civilised Sumerians, possessed their dties, and adopted their culture. The Semites had no written language, but soon they began to write their spoken language in the Sumerian characters. They adopted many of the Sumerian religious customs, and made that earlier civilisation their own. It was these cultured Sumerians who wrote the story upon the tablet in the University of Pennsylvania.

THE STORY. A brief outline of the story is as follows:—Enki, the god of the sea, and his wife or daughter Ninella, ruled over Mankinu in Paradise. Paradise was the land of Dilmun, or the modern island of Bahrein. In Paradise sickness was unknown. Sin had not entered. Though the years passed, it was a land of perpetual youth. No wild beasts destroyed the flocks, and no storms raged. Enki, the god, decided to destroy mankind with a Hood, and he revealed his purpose to Nintud, the goo dess who had created mankind. For nine months and nine days the flood raged, and men were dissolved in the -water "like tallow and fat." But Nintud, the mother-goddess, determined to save the king, Tagtug, and him she called to the shore and embarked on a boat. Tagtug, who was thus saved, corresponds to the biblical Noah. It was the custom of the Babylonians to deify their kings after death. The goddess Nintud explained to the god Enki how Tagtug had escaped the universal destruction, and had become a god. He then became a gardener. Enki revealed to him the secrets of trees and plants. Tagtug was permitted to eat of the fruit of all thp erees. excepting that of the Cassia. But he ate of the fruit of the Cassia tree, and at once the goddess Nintud took from him immortality. He was compelled to labour and suffer until the gods took pity on him and taught him various arts to comfort him.