In 1865 the Palestine Exploration fund was opened, and excavations were begun in Jerusalem, and have continued, with some interruptions, until now. Since then researches have followed in the south, east and north of Palestine. Geological investigations have been made, natural history collections have been formed, enquiries into nationalities and customs carried on, towns, villages, hills, valleys, water courses, wells, cisterns, notable trees and other land marks have been located. In 1868 a party of engineering experts left England to make a scientific survey of the Sinaitic Peninsula. This they effected, making plans and models, taking three thousand copies of inscriptions with collections of specimens bearing on the zoology, botany and geology of the country. [16] The results of these explorations and discoveries, in the valley of the Euphrates, in Palestine and the Sinaitic Peninsula, have been even more fruitful, in the production of materials which tend to confirm the truth of the Bible narrative and general credibility, than the discoveries so far made in Egypt. The confirmation of the Bible narrative of ancient events is remarkable. So, too, the confirmation of its location of cities, mountains, rivers, plains and, indeed, the whole geography of the scriptures. The confirmation given of the Bible's incidental allusions to the manners and customs of neighboring and contemporary nations is no less remarkable; together with what is said of reigning kings and dynasties, and the incidental allusions that the Bible makes to their invasions of each other's territories, their alliances, their victories, and their defeats. The following are a few of the special Bible incidents which receive confirmation from the results of these researches condensed from the article of Professor Sayce: CREATION: One of the accounts of creation in cuneiform characters found on the tablets very nearly resembles the first chapter of Genesis. It commences with the statement that "in the beginning" all was a chaos of waters, called the deep (Tiamat, the Hebrew tehom). Then the Upper and Lower Firmaments were created, and the Gods came into existence. After that comes a long account of the struggle between Bel-Merodach and the "Dragon" of chaos, "Timaat," "the serpent of evil," with her allies, the forces of anarchy and darkness. It ended in the victory of the god of light, who thereupon created the present world by the power of his "word." The fifth tablet or book of the poem describes the appointment of the heavenly bodies for signs and seasons, and the sixth (or perhaps the seventh) the creation of animals and reptiles. The latter part of the poem, in which the creation of man was doubtless described, has not yet been recovered. But we learn from other texts that man was regarded as having been formed out of the "dust" of the ground.