As has been already remarked, the tree of Paradise of the Babylonians was, to all appearance, a vine, described as being in colour like blue and white mottled lapis-lazuli, and apparently bearing fruit (grapes) of a dark colour. That the Babylonian tree of life was a vine is supported by the fact that the ideograms composing the word for “wine” are _geš-tin_ (for _kaš-tin_), “drink of life,” and “the vine,” _giš geš-tin_, “tree of the drink of life.” In the text describing the Babylonian Paradise and its divine tree, the name of the latter is given as _kiškanû_ in Semitic, and _giš-kin_ or _giš-kan_ in Akkadian, a word mentioned in the bilingual lists among plants of the vine species. Whether the Hebrews regarded the tree of life as having been a vine or not, cannot at present be decided, but it is very probable that they had the same ideas as the Babylonians in the matter. It is noteworthy, in this connection, that the Babylonians also believed that there still existed in the world a plant (they do not seem to have regarded it as a tree) which “would make an old man young again.” Judging from the statements concerning it, one would imagine that it was a kind of thorn-bush. As we shall see later, when treating of the story of the Flood, it was this plant which the Chaldean Noah gave the hero Gilgameš instructions how to find—for the desire to become young again had seized him—and he seems to have succeeded in possessing himself of it, only to lose it again almost immediately, for a lion, coming that way at a time when Gilgameš was otherwise occupied, carried it off—to his own benefit, as the hero remarks, for he naturally supposed that the lion who had seized the plant would have his life renewed, and prey all the longer upon the people. The title of a lost legend, “When the _kiškanû_ (? vine, see above) grew in the land” (referring, perhaps, to the tree of life which grew in Êridu), leads one to ask whether “The legend of Nisaba (the corn-deity) and the date-palm,” and “The legend of the _luluppu_-tree” may not also refer to sacred trees, bearing upon the question of the tree of knowledge referred to in Gen. ii. As, however, the titles (generally a portion of the first line only) are all that are at present preserved, there is nothing to be done but wait patiently until it pleases Providence to make them further known to us.