The veritable name of the hero on the banks of the Euphrates, sung by Homer, has remained unknown to this day. It is constantly found written in ideographic characters, which, pronounced phonetically, give the three syllables Iz‐du‐bar; but we know that they were pronounced in quite a different manner by the Assyrio‐Chaldæans. We are equally certain, from the testimony of other cuneiform inscriptions, that this Izdubar was one of the gods of Chaldæa. Nevertheless, he figures here as a simple hero, and, according to M. Lenormant, is probably Nemrod, “the mighty hunter,” as he is called in the Book of Genesis, alluding to a popular saying, of which the remembrance is still preserved in Assyria, as well as in Palestine, and also in the Egyptian tradition. The historical inscriptions of Assurbanipal name Resen, one of the cities of Assyria, “the town of the hunter.”(37) The Izdubar of the Babylonian inscription, like the Nemrod of the Bible, reigns over four cities,(38) three of which, named in Genesis, are certainly identical with those mentioned on the tablet, and which therefore furnish an argument in favor of the supposition. But however that may be, Izdubar, whose name signifies “God of fire,” “God of the body or mass of fire,” is without doubt the ancient Arcadian God of fire whose worship had so great an importance in the primitive epochs; and this idea throws much light on the Babylonian poem, to which it, in some sort, furnishes the key. This poem is divided into twelve _cantos_, if we may so call them, each forming a distinct episode and inscribed in a separate tablet. Sir Henry Rawlinson has proved that each canto relates to one of the twelve signs of the zodiac, and to one of the twelve months of the year. The god of fire is thus represented as being one with the sun, and the entire epic consists of a poetical history of the annual revolution of that luminary, and its accomplishment in the course of twelve months, around which revolution various incidental episodes have been grouped, amongst others the narrative of the Deluge. The _dénouement_ of the poem is the cure of Izdubar, who, at the instigation of the man saved from the Deluge, plunges into the sea, from whence he issues delivered from a sort of leprosy which had threatened his life. M. Gubernatis remarks that this is identical with the Vedic myth of Indra, and also the Hellenic one of Tithonus. Leprosy is invariably the malady of kingly heroes, and signifies old age, which, according to popular belief, could only be cured either by the waters of youth or by the blood of a child. The old solar hero, the dying sun, sprang forth with renewed youth in the morning, after traversing the sea of night—a symbol which would naturally possess an additional force to the nations who beheld the departing sun‐god sink beneath the Western sea. The Chaldæan epic presents us, therefore, with the same mythological groundwork as the other polytheistic religions with