It is impossible to determine the age of the great Chaldean epic, but it must have been composed subsequently to the period when, through the precession of the equinoxes, Aries came to be the first sign of the Zodiac instead of Taurus, that is to say, about B.C. 2500. On the other hand, it is difficult to make it later than B.C. 2000, while the whole character and texture of the poem shows that it has been put together from older lays, which have been united into a single whole. The poem deservedly continued to be a favourite among the Babylonians and Assyrians, and more than one edition of it was made for the library of Assur-bani-pal. A translation of all the portions of it that have been discovered will be found in George Smith's 'Chaldean Account of Genesis.' It is difficult for the English reader to appreciate justly the real character of many of these old poems. The tablets on which they are inscribed were broken in pieces when Nineveh was destroyed, and the roof of the library fell in upon them. A text, therefore, has generally to be pieced together from a number of fragments, leaving gaps and lacunæ which mar the pleasure of reading it. Then, again, the translator frequently comes across a word or phrase which is new to him, and which he is consequently obliged to leave untranslated or to render purely conjecturally. At times there is a lacuna in the original text itself. When the Assyrian scribe was unable to read the tablet he was copying, either because the characters had been effaced by time or because their Babylonian forms were unknown to him, he wrote the word _khibi_, 'it is wanting,' and left a blank in his text. It is not wonderful, therefore, that what is really a fine piece of literature reads tamely and poorly in its English dress, more especially when we remember that the decipherer is compelled to translate literally, and cannot have recourse to those idiomatic paraphrases which are permissible when we are dealing with known languages. But it must be confessed that many of the best compositions of Babylonia are spoilt for us by the references to a puerile superstition, and the ever-present dread of witchcraft and magic which they contain. A good example of this curious mixture of exalted thought and debasing superstition is the following hymn to the Sun-god:—