[75] A tablet obtained by Dr. Hayes Ward divides Sippara into four quarters, “Sippara of Eden,” “Sippara that is from everlasting,” “Sippara of the Sun-god,” and “Sippara,” which may be the “Sippara of Anunit” or “Sippara of Aruru,” the creatress of man, of other inscriptions. Amelon or Amelu, “man,” who corresponds with the Enos of Scripture, is said in the fragments of Berossus to have belonged to Pantibibla, or “Book-town,” and since Euedoranchus of Pantibibla, the counterpart of the Biblical Enoch, is the monumental Enme-dhur-anki of Sippara, it is clear that Pantibibla is a play on the supposed signification of Sippara (from _sipru_, “a writing” or “book”). The claim to immemorial antiquity made on behalf of Sippara may be due to the fact that Akkad, the seat of the first Semitic empire, was either in the immediate neighbourhood of Sippara or another name of one of the four quarters of Sippara itself. [76] _Chaldæa and Susiana_, p. 282. [77] _Journal of the Royal Geographical Society_, xxvii. p. 186. Rawlinson calculated the rate of advance from that made by the Babylonian Delta between 1793 and 1833. In the age of Strabo and Arrian the Tigris and Euphrates were not yet united, while in the time of Nearchus (B.C. 335) the mouth of the Euphrates was 345 miles from Babylon. De Morgan calculates that between the age of Nearchus and that of Sennacherib, when the Euphrates had not yet joined the more rapid Tigris, the rate of increase must have been much slower than it is to-day and have not exceeded eighty metres a year. In the age of Sennacherib Eridu was already seventy miles distant from the coast (de Morgan, _Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse_, i. pp. 5–23). The distance from the Shatt el-Arab (the united stream of the Tigris and Euphrates) to the end of the alluvium in the Persian Gulf is 277 kilometres, or 172 miles. Some idea of the appearance of the coast in the Abrahamic age may be gained from the map of the world drawn by a Babylonian tourist in the time of Khammu-rabi which I have published in the _Expository Times_, November 1906. [78] There is a striking resemblance between the primitive Babylonian picture of a boat and the sailing boat depicted on the prehistoric pottery of Egypt, for which last see Capart, _Les Débuts de l’Art en Egypte_, p. 116. [79] Perhaps, however, this was really due to the accidental similarity of sound between _gi_, “a reed,” and _gin_, “to be firm.” [80] The various forms of vases represented in the early pictography are given by de Morgan in a very instructive article, “Sur les procédés techniques en usage chez les scribes babyloniens,” in the _Recueil des Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes_, xxvii. 3, 4 (1905). Among special vases were those for oil, wine and honey. The butter or oil jar was closed with a clay sealing exactly like those of early Egypt. Vases with spouts were also used.