so old in Mesopotamia that the scribes added to or abbreviated the text at will, and treated the incidents recorded in it according to local or popular taste, tradition and prejudice. There seems to be no evidence that proves conclusively that the Sumerian version is older than the Semitic, or that the latter was translated direct from the former version. It is probable that both the Sumerians and the Semites, each in their own way, attempted to commemorate an appalling disaster of unparalleled magnitude, the knowledge of which, through tradition, was common to both peoples. It is, at all events, clear that the Sumerians regarded the Deluge as an historic event, which they were, practically, able to date, for some of their tablets contain lists of kings who reigned before the Deluge, though it must be confessed that the lengths assigned to their reigns are incredible. It is not too much to assume that the original event commemorated in the Legend of the Deluge was a serious and prolonged inundation or flood in Lower Babylonia, which was accompanied by great loss of life and destruction of property. The Babylonian versions state that this inundation or flood was caused by rain, but passages in some of them suggest that the effects of the rainstorm were intensified by other physical happenings connected with the earth, of a most destructive character. The Hebrews also, as we may see from the Bible, had alternative views as to the cause of the Deluge. According to one, rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights (Gen. vii, 12), and according to the other the Deluge came because "all the fountains of the "great deep" were broken up, and "the flood-gates of heaven were opened" (Gen. vii, 11). The latter view suggests that the rain flood was joined by the waters of the sea. Later tradition, based partly on Babylonian and partly on Hebrew sources, asserts in the "Cave of Treasures" [9] that when Noah had entered the Ark and the door was shut, "the sluices of heaven were opened, and the deeps were rent asunder," and "that the Ocean, that great sea that surroundeth the whole world, vomited its waters, and the sluices of heaven being opened, and the deeps of the earth being rent asunder, the storehouses of the winds were opened, and the whirlwinds broke loose, and the Ocean roared and poured out its waters in floods." The ark was steered over the waters by an angel who acted as pilot, and when that had come to rest on the mountains of Kardô (Armenia) "God commanded the waters and they separated from each other. The waters that had been above ascended to their place above the heavens, whence they had come; and the waters that had come up from under the earth returned to the lower deep; and the waters that were from the Ocean returned into it" (Brit. Mus. MS. Orient. No. 25,875, fol. 17b, col. 1 and fol. 18a, cols. 1 and 2). Many authorities seeking to find a foundation of fact