There is a legend, named by me (for want of a more precise title) “The Lament of the Daughter of the god Sin,” in which the carrying off (by death?) of “her fair son” is referred to. Here we have another possible Babylonian parallel to the story of the death of Abel, in which the driving forth of her who makes the lament from her city and from her palace might well typify the expulsion of Eve from Paradise, and her delivery into the power of her enemy, who is, to all appearance, the king of terrors, into whose hands she and her husband were, for their disobedience, consigned. In this really beautiful Babylonian poem her “enemy” seems to reproach her, telling her how it was she, and she alone, who had ruined herself. Though there may be something in the comparisons with the story of Cain and Abel which are quoted here, more probably (as has been already remarked) there is nothing, and the real parallels have yet to be found. In any case, they are instances of the popularity among the Babylonians and Assyrians of those stories of one, greatly beloved and in the bloom of youth, coming, like Abel, to an untimely end through the perversity of fate, and by no fault of his own. Though neither may be the original of the Biblical story nor yet derived from it, they are of interest and value as beautiful legends of old time, possibly throwing light on the Biblical story. As yet the Babylonian and Assyrian records shed but little light on the question of the patriarchs of the early ages succeeding Adam, the details that are given concerning them, and their long lives. Upon this last point there is only one remark to be made, and that is, that the prehistoric kings of Babylonia likewise lived and reigned for abnormally long ages, according to the records that have come down to us. Unfortunately, there is nothing complete in the important original of the Canon of Berosus first published by the late G. Smith, and the beginning is especially mutilated. The likeness between Enoch and the Akkadian name of the city of Erech, Unug, has already been pointed out, and it has been suggested that the two words are identical. This, however, can hardly be the case, for the Hebrew form of Enoch is Ḫanôḳ, the initial letter being the guttural _ḫeth_, which, notwithstanding the parallel ease of Hiddekel, the Akkadian Idigna (the Tigris), weakens the comparison. The principal argument against the identification, however, is the fact that, in the bilingual story of the Creation, the god Merodach is said to have built the city, and such was evidently the Babylonian belief.(6) The name of Enoch’s great-grandson, Methusael, finds, as has many times been pointed out, its counterpart in the Babylonian Mut-îli, with the same meaning (“man of God”). [Plate IV.]