"Thou hast paid no ransom to Allat for thy deliverance; so now return to Dumuzi, the lover of thy youth; sprinkle over him the sacred waters, clothe him in splendid garments, adorn him with gems." 26. The last lines are so badly mutilated that no efforts have as yet availed to make their sense anything but obscure, and so it must remain, unless new copies come to light. Yet so much is, at all events, evident, that they bore on the reunion of Ishtar and her young lover. The poem is thus complete in itself; but some think that it was introduced into the Izdubar epic as an independent episode, after the fashion of the Deluge narrative, and, if so, it is supposed to have been part of the seventh tablet. Whether such were really the case or no, matters little in comparison with the great importance these two poems possess as being the most ancient presentations, in a finished literary form, of the two most significant and universal nature-myths--the Solar and the Chthonic (see p. 272), the poetical fancies in which primitive mankind clothed the wonders of the heavens and the mystery of the earth, being content to admire and imagine where it could not comprehend and explain. We shall be led back continually to these, in very truth, _primary_ myths, for they not only served as groundwork to much of the most beautiful poetry of the world but suggested some of its loftiest and most cherished religious conceptions. [For a metrical version by Prof. Dyer of the story of "Ishtar's Descent," see Appendix, p. 367.] FOOTNOTES: [BC] Paul Haupt, "Der Keilinschriftliche Suendfluthbericht," 1881. [BD] There are difficulties in the way of reading this name, and scholars are not sure that this is the right pronunciation of it; but they retain it, until some new discovery helps to settle the question. [BE] Translated from the German version of Paul Haupt, "Der Keilinschriftliche Suendfluthbericht." [BF] The ninth king in the fabulous list of ten. [BG] The figures unfortunately obliterated. [BH] "Les Premieres Civilisations," Vol. II., pp. 78 ff. [BI] A. H. Sayce, "Babylonian Literature," p. 39; Fr. Lenormant, "Il Mito di Adone-Tammuz," pp. 12-13. VIII. RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY.--IDOLATRY AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM.--THE CHALDEAN LEGENDS AND THE BOOK OF GENESIS.--RETROSPECT.