The legend in Genesis is much closer to the original myth, and in fact almost identical with that of the deluge of Hasisadra in the Chaldæan epic, discovered by Mr. George Smith among the clay tablets in the British Museum. This poem was obviously based on an astronomical myth. It was in twelve chapters, dedicated to the sun's passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac. The adventures of Izdubar, like those of Heracles, have obvious reference to these signs, and to the sun's birth, growth, summer splendour, decline to the tomb when smitten with the sickness of approaching winter by the incensed Nature-goddess, and final new birth and resurrection from the nether world. The Deluge is introduced as an episode told to Izdubar during his descent to the lower regions by his ancestor Hasisadra, one of the God-kings, who are said to have reigned for periods of tens of thousands of years in a fabulous antiquity. It has every appearance of being a myth to commemorate the sun's passage through the rainy sign of Aquarius, just as the contests of Izdubar and Heracles with Leo, Taurus, Draco, Sagittarius, etc., symbolize his passage through other zodiacal constellations. It forms the eleventh chapter of the Epic of Izdubar, corresponding to the eleventh month of the Chaldæan year, which was the time of heavy rains and floods. Now, this deluge of Hasisadra, as related by Berosus, and still more distinctly by Smith's Izdubar tablets, corresponds so closely with that of Noah that no doubt can remain that one is taken from the other. All the principal incidents and the order of events are the same, and even particular expressions, such as the dove finding no rest for the sole of her foot, are so identical as to show that they must have been taken from the same written record. Even the name Noah is that of Nouah, the Semitic translation of the Accadian god who presided over the realm of water, and navigated the bark or ark of the sun across it, when returning from its setting in the west to its rising in the east. The chief difference is the same as in the Chaldæan and Biblical cosmogonies of the creation of the universe--viz. that the former is Polytheistic, and the latter Monotheistic. Where the former talks of Bel, Ea, and Istar, the latter attributes everything to Jehovah or Elohim. Thus the warning to Hasisadra is given in a dream sent by Ea, who is a sort of Chaldæan Prometheus, or kindly god, who wishes to save mankind from the total destruction contemplated by the wrathful superior god, Bel; while in Genesis it is "Elohim said unto Noah." In Genesis the altar is built to the Lord, who smells the sweet savour of the sacrifice, while in the Chaldæan legend the altar is built to the seven gods, who "smelt the sweet savour of sacrifice, and swarmed like bees about it."