The Biblical narrative bears the impress of an inland people, ignorant of navigation. In Genesis, the name of the ark, _têbâh_, signifies "coffer," and not "vessel." Nothing is said about the launching of the ark; there is no mention made of the sea, or of navigation; there is no pilot. In the Epic of Uruk, on the contrary, everything shows it to have been composed amidst a maritime population; every circumstance bears a reflex of the manners and customs of people living on the shore of the Persian Gulf. Khasisatra enters a vessel, properly so called; it is launched, undergoes a trial trip, all its seams are caulked with bitumen, it is entrusted to a pilot. The Chaldeo-Babylonian narrative represents Khasisatra as a king, who goes up into the ship surrounded by a whole population of servants and companions; in the Bible, we have only Noah and his family who are saved; the new human race has no other source than the patriarch's three sons. Nor is there any trace in the Chaldean poem of the distinction (in the Bible peculiar indeed only to the Jehovist) between clean and unclean beasts, and of each kind of the former being numbered by sevens, although in Babylonia the number seven had a specially sacramental character. As to the dimensions of the ark, we find a disagreement not only between the Bible and the tablet copied by order of Asshurbanabal, but between the latter and Berosus. Both Genesis and the cuneiform documents measure the ark's dimensions by cubits, Berosus by stadia. Genesis states its length and breadth to have been in the proportion of 6 to 1, Berosus of 5 to 2, the tablet in the British Museum of 10 to 1. On the other hand, the fragments of Berosus do not treat of the relative dimensions of height and breadth, and the tablet gives them as equal, while the Bible speaks of thirty cubits of height and fifty of breadth. But these differences as to figures have but a secondary importance; nothing so liable to alterations and variations in different editions of the same narrative. We may observe, however, that in Genesis it is only the Elohist--always much addicted to figures--who gives the dimensions of the ark. And, on the other hand, it is the Jehovist alone who tells of the sending forth of the birds, which occupies a considerable place in the Chaldean tradition. As to the variations here between the Biblical story and that in the poem of Uruk, the latter adding the swallow to the dove and the raven, and not attributing to the dove the part of a messenger of good tidings, I do not think they go for much. The agreement as to the main point is, in my eyes, of far more importance.