The epic of Gisdhubar, as has already been stated, contained the account of the Deluge, introduced as an episode into the eleventh book. It consisted in all of twelve books, and was arranged upon an astronomical principle, the subject-matter of each of the books being made to correspond with one of the signs of Zodiac. Thus the fifth book records the death of a monstrous lion at the hands of Gisdhubar, answering to the Zodiacal Leo; in the sixth book the hero is vainly wooed by Istar, the Virgo of the Zodiacal signs; and just as Aquarius is in the eleventh Zodiacal sign, so the history of the Deluge is embodied in the eleventh book. There was a special reason, however, for this arrangement; Gisdhubar himself was a solar hero. He seems originally to have been the fire-stick of the primitive Accadians, and then the god or spirit of the fire it produced, eventually in the Semitic period passing first into a form of the Sun-god, and then into a solar hero. His twelve labours or adventures answer to the twelve months of the year through which the sun moves, like the twelve labours of the Greek Hêraklês. The latter, indeed, were simply the twelve labours of Gisdhubar transported to the west. The Greeks received many myths and mythological conceptions from the Phœnicians, along with their early culture, and these myths had themselves been brought by the Phœnicians from their original home in Chaldea. It has long been recognised that Hêraklês was the borrowed Phœnician Sun-god; we now know that his primitive prototype had been adopted by the Phœnicians from the Accadians of Babylonia. It is not strange, therefore, that just as in the Greek myth of Aphroditê and Adônis we find the outlines of the old Chaldean story of Istar and Tammuz, so in the legends of Hêraklês we find an echo of the legends of Gisdhubar. The lion destroyed by Gisdhubar is the lion of Nemea; the winged bull made by Anu to avenge the slight offered to Istar is the winged bull of Krete; the tyrant Khumbaba, slain by Gisdhubar in 'the land of pine-trees, the seat of the gods, the sanctuary of the spirits' is the tyrant Geryôn; the gems borne by the trees of the forest beyond 'the gateway of the sun' are the apples of the Hesperides; and the deadly sickness of Gisdhubar himself is but the fever sent by the poisoned tunic of Nessos through the veins of the Greek hero. It is curious thus to trace to their first source the myths which have made so deep an impress on classical art and literature. The indebtedness of European culture to the valley of the Euphrates is becoming more and more apparent every year.