Nevertheless, even the genius of Mr. Smith could not do more than give a general idea of the contents of the fragments, and not always even this. A comparison of the translations contained in the present edition with those contained in the preceding ones will show to what an extent the details of translation have had to be modified and changed, sometimes with important consequences. Thus the corrected translation of the fragments relating to the Tower of Babel will remove the doubts raised by Mr. Smith’s translation as to his correctness in associating them with that event; thus, too, the corrected rendering of a passage in the Izdubar Epic will show that the practice of erecting a Bethel or sacred stone was familiar to the early Babylonians. In some instances Mr. Smith has misconceived the true character of a whole text. What he believed to be a record of the Fall, for instance, is really, as M. Oppert first pointed out, a hymn to the Creator. On the other hand, the fresh materials that have been acquired by the British Museum during the last five years, or a closer examination of the treasures it already possessed, have enabled us to add to the number of cuneiform texts which illustrate the earlier portions of Genesis. Mr. Rassam, for example, has brought home a fragment of the Deluge tablet, which not only helps us to fill up some of the _lacunæ_ in the text, but is also important in another way. It is written, not in Assyrian, but in Babylonian cuneiform characters, and comes, not from an Assyrian, but from a Babylonian library. But it agrees exactly with the corresponding parts of the Assyrian editions of the story, and thus furnishes us with a proof of the trustworthiness of the Assyrian copies of the old Babylonian texts. The text, again, which relates to the destruction of a country by a rain of fire, though long contained in the British Museum Collection, was first noticed by myself as being apparently the Babylonian version of the biblical account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Numerous alterations and insertions have had to be made in the text which accompanies the translations. The latter necessarily occupied the main part of Mr. Smith’s attention; he had neither time nor inclination to enter very elaborately into the questions raised by them, or the illustrations they might receive from elsewhere. In fact, any adequate treatment of the great Izdubar Epic, for instance, demanded a special acquaintance with the method and results of Comparative Philology, as well as a more intimate knowledge of its history and character than was possible at the time when Mr. Smith wrote.