There is hardly any doubt, then, that we have here the long-sought parallel to the Biblical “tree of knowledge,” for that, too, was in the domain of “the lord of knowledge,” the god Ae, and also in the land which might be described as that of “the lord of Eden,” the “hidden place of heaven and earth” for all the sons of Adam, who are no longer allowed to enter into that earthly Paradise wherein their first parents gained, at such a cost, the knowledge, imperfect as it must have been, and evidently undesirable, which they handed down to their successors. Adam. The name of the first man, Adam, is one that has tried the learning of the most noted Hebraists to explain satisfactorily. It was formerly regarded as being derived from the root _ādam_, “to be red,” but this explanation has been given up in favour of the root _ādam_, “to make, produce,” man being conceived as “the created one.” This etymology is that put forward by the Assyriologist Fried. Delitzsch, who quotes the Assyrian _âdmu_, “young bird,” and _âdmi summāti_, “young doves,” literally, “the young of doves,” though he does not seem to refer the Assyrian _udumu_, “monkey,” to the same root. He also quotes, apparently from memory, the evidence of a fragment of a bilingual list found by Mr. Rassam, in which Adam is explained by the usual Babylonian word for “man,” _amēlu_. The writer of Genesis has given to the first man the name of Adam, thus personifying in him the human race, which was to descend from him. In all probability, the Babylonians had the same legends, but, if so, no fragment of them has as yet come to light. That the Hebrew stories of the Creation had their origin in Babylonia, will probably be conceded by most people as probable, if not actually proven, and the fact that the word _a-dam_ occurs, as Delitzsch has pointed out, in a bilingual list would, supposing the text to which he refers to be actually bilingual, be a matter of peculiar significance, for it would show that this word, which does not occur in Semitic Babylonian as the word for “man,” occurred in the old Akkadian language with that meaning. And the proof that Delitzsch was right in his recollection of the tablet of which he speaks, is shown by the bilingual Babylonian story of the Creation. There, in lines 9, 10, we read as follows— Akkadian (dialectic): Uru nu-dim, a-dam nu-mun-ia. Babylonian: Âlu ûl êpuš, nammaššu ûl šakin. “A city had not been made, the community had not been established.” Here we have the non-Semitic _adam_ translated by the Babylonian _nammaššu_, which seems to mean a number of men, in this passage something like community, for that is the idea which best fits the context. But besides this Semitic rendering, the word also has the meanings of _tenišētu_, “mankind,” _amelūtu_, “human beings.” The word _adam_, meaning “man,” is found also in Phœnician, Sabean, and apparently in Arabic, under the form of _atam_, a collective meaning “creatures.”