When all was ready, the Sun-god, called by the usual Semitic name of Šamaš, appointed the time for the coming of the catastrophe. This would seem to be another confirmation of the statement already made, that the Babylonians, like the Hebrews (see Gen. i. 14-18), regarded one of the uses of the sun as being to indicate seasons and times. It was a great and terrible time, such as caused terror to the beholder, and the patriarch was smitten with fear. Here, as in other parts of the Babylonian version, there is a human interest that is to a large extent wanting in the precise and detailed Hebrew account. Again the maritime nation is in evidence, where the consigning of the ship into the care of a pilot is referred to. Of course such an official could do but little more than prevent disastrous misfortune from the vessel being the plaything of the waves. In the description of the storm, the terror of the gods, Ištar’s grief, and Maḫ’s anger at the destruction of mankind, we see the production of a nation steeped in idolatry, but there are but few Assyro-Babylonian documents in which this fact is not made evident. We have a return to the Biblical story in the sending forth of the birds, and the sacrifice of odoriferous herbs, when the gods smelled a sweet savour, and gathered like flies over the sacrificer. In the signets of Maḫ, “the lady of the gods,” by which she swears, we may, perhaps, see a reflection of the covenant by means of the rainbow, which the Babylonians possibly explained as being the necklace of the goddess. Instead of the promise that a similar visitation to destroy the whole of mankind should not occur again, there is simply a kind of exhortation on the part of the god Ae, addressed to Ellila, not to destroy the world by means of a flood again. To punish mankind for sins and misdeeds committed, other means were to be employed that did not involve the destruction of the whole human race. Noah died at the age of 950 years (Gen. ix. 29), but his Babylonian representative was translated to the abode of the blessed “at the mouths of the rivers,” with his wife, to all appearance immediately after the Flood. In this the Babylonian account differs, and the ultimate fate of the patriarch resembles that of the Biblical Enoch, he who “was not, for God took him” (Gen. v. 24). Appendix. The Second Version Of The Flood-Story. This was found by the late George Smith at Nineveh when excavating for the proprietors of the _Daily Telegraph_, and was at first supposed to belong to the text translated on pp. 101-109. This, however, is impossible, as the narrative is in the third person instead of the first, and in the form of a conversation between Atra-ḫasis (= Pir-napištim) and the god Aê— Tablet D. T. 42.