6. There are some tablets which have been supposed to treat of the creation of man and perhaps to give a story of his disobedience and fall, answering to that in Genesis; but unfortunately they are in too mutilated a condition to admit of certainty, and no other copies have as yet come to light. However, the probability that such was really the case is very great, and is much enhanced by a cylinder of very ancient Babylonian workmanship, now in the British Museum, and too important not to be reproduced here. The tree in the middle, the human couple stretching out their hands for the fruit, the serpent standing _behind the woman_ in--one might almost say--a whispering attitude, all this tells its own tale. And the authority of this artistic presentation, which so strangely fits in to fill the blank in the written narrative, is doubled by the fact that the engravings on the cylinders are invariably taken from subjects connected with religion, or at least religious beliefs and traditions. As to the creation of man, we may partly eke out the missing details from the fragment of Berosus already quoted. He there tells us--and so well-informed a writer must have spoken on good authority--that Bel gave his own blood to be kneaded with the clay out of which men were formed, and that is why they are endowed with reason and have a share of the divine nature in them--certainly a most ingenious way of expressing the blending of the earthly and the divine elements which has made human nature so deep and puzzling a problem to the profounder thinkers of all ages.