Sacrifice he may not offer. The king may not ride in his chariot. In royal fashion he may not legislate. A review of the army the general may not hold. Medicine for his sickness of body he may not apply. [Illustration: MERODACH ATTACKING THE SERPENT, ON AN ASSYRIAN CYLINDER, IN THE POSSESSION OF DR. S. WELLS WILLIAMS, NEWHAVEN.] The antiquity of this text is evident not only from the fact that it has been translated from an Accadian original, but also from the word rendered “prince,” which literally means “a shepherd,” and takes us back to the early times when the Accadian monarchs still remembered that their predecessors had been only shepherd-chieftains. Before concluding this chapter, it must be noted that the word translated “the sea,” in lines three and seven of the reverse of the hymn to the Creator, is Tiamtu, which, as we have seen, was the name applied to the deep, upon which the Babylonians believed that the earth rested, and out of which it had been brought into existence. FOOTNOTES: [8] The seven “sheep (or oxen) of the hero” Tammuz (Orion), of which the first was “the plough-handle,” perhaps Benelnash. One of the others was “the shepherd of the heavenly flock” or Arcturus. [9] This is Dr. Oppert’s rendering of a line which is so mutilated as to make any attempt at translation extremely doubtful. [10] The word used here is Accadian (_ba-an-an-me_). [11] Since, however, a bilingual tablet states that the pronunciation of the Accadian word for “the desert” which lay on the west side of the Euphrates (where Ur was built) was _edinna_, it is possible that “the Garden of Eden” of Genesis may be the cultivated portion of _edinna_, “the desert,” in the neighbourhood of Eridu. CHAPTER VI. OTHER BABYLONIAN ACCOUNTS OF THE CREATION. Cuneiform accounts originally traditions.—Variations.—Account of Berosus.—Tablet from Cutha.—Translation.—Composite animals.—Eagle-headed men.—Seven brothers.—Destruction of men.—Seven wicked spirits.—Mythical explanation of lunar eclipses.—Hymn to the God of Fire.—War in heaven.—Tiamat-Merodach.—The great dragon.—Parallel Biblical account.