Positive discrepancies, however, occur between the two records. Thus they differ as regards the size of the ark. According to the cuneiform account, its length and breadth were in the proportion of ten to one and the height and breadth were the same; but the Bible makes the proportion as six to one, and describes the height as being thirty cubits and the breadth fifty. The version of the story given by Berosus, on the other hand, agrees in this matter neither with Genesis nor with the tablet from Erech. It measures the ark by stadia and not by cubits, makes the proportion of its length and breadth as five to two, and says nothing of the height. Another difference may be found in the description of the patriarch who escapes the Flood. Xisuthrus is a king who enters the ark with his servants, people, and pilot, while in the Bible only Noah and his family are saved. So, too, no reference is made in the Babylonian account to the distinction between the clean and unclean animals mentioned by the Jehovist, though seven was a sacred number among the Babylonians. The most remarkable difference, however, between the two accounts is with respect to the duration of the Deluge. On this point the inscription gives seven days for the Flood, and seven days for the resting of the ark on the mountain, while the Elohist puts the commencement of the Flood on the 17th day of the second month (Marchesvan) and its termination on the 27th day of the second month in the following year, making a total duration of one lunar year and eleven days. This exactly accords with the climatic conditions of Babylonia, where the rains begin at the end of November. The Euphrates and Tigris then begin to rise, the country is inundated in March, the seventh month of the Hebrew narrative, and from the end of May onwards the waters go down. According to the Jehovist, however, the Deluge is announced to Noah only seven days before it takes place; the waters are at their height for forty days and then decrease during another forty days, after which the patriarch sends out the birds at intervals of seven days, so that it was not till twenty-one days after he has first opened the window that he finally leaves the ark. This is in practical agreement with the cuneiform account, since seven was a sacred number among the Babylonians just as forty is in the Old Testament. As M. Lenormant points out, the date of the 15th of Dæsius (or May) given by Berosus must be due to a scribe’s error, since this would place the Flood at a time when the waters were going down. There is again a difference as to the mountain on which the ark rested; Nizir, the place mentioned in the cuneiform text, being east of Assyria, and its mountain, also called “the mountain of the world” where the gods were supposed to dwell, being the present peak of Elwend, while the mountains of Ararat mentioned in the Bible were north of Assyria, near Lake Van. It is evident that different traditions have placed the