If we compare the Babylonian account of the Deluge contained in the Epic with the account in Genesis we shall find some differences between them; but if we consider the differences that existed between the two countries of Palestine and Babylonia these variations do not appear greater than we should expect. Chaldea was essentially a mercantile and maritime country, well watered and flat, while Palestine was a hilly region with no great rivers, and the Jews were shut out from the coast, the maritime regions being mostly in the hands of the Philistines and Phœnicians. There was a total difference between the religious ideas of the two peoples, the Jews believing in one God, the creator and lord of the Universe, while the Babylonians worshipped gods and lords many, every city having its local deity, and these being joined by complicated relations in a poetical mythology, which was in marked contrast to the severe simplicity of the Jewish system. With such differences it was only natural that, in relating the same stories, each nation should colour them in accordance with its own ideas, and stress would naturally in each case be laid upon points with which they were familiar. Thus we should expect beforehand that there would be differences in the narrative such as we actually find, and we may also notice that the cuneiform account does not always coincide even with the account of the same events given by Berosus from Chaldean sources, from which, as already observed, we may infer that there was more than one version of the story of the Deluge current in Babylonia itself. The great value of the inscriptions describing the Flood consists in the fact that they form an independent testimony to the Biblical narrative at a much earlier date than any other evidence. The principal points in the two narratives compared in their order will serve to show the correspondences and differences between the two. It must, however, be remembered that the Biblical narrative is composed of two different accounts of the Flood, generally known as the Elohistic and Jehovistic, and, as M. Lenormant has observed, it is with the union of the two in our present Hebrew text rather than with either one of them alone that the Babylonian version corresponds. The repetitions observable in the Hebrew text are not to be found in the cuneiform text. Genesis: Babylonian Elohist. Jehovist. Account.