Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/104

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BABYLONIAN LEGEND

07. beantiful and . . . . to give drink?

08. circle I fill? . . . . his enemies

09. his rising? he seeks . . . . the man . . . .

10. with the lord of thy beauty thou shalt be faithful,

11. to do evil thou shalt not approach him,

12. at thy illness . . . . to him

13. at thy distress . . . .

The obverse of this tablet is a fragment of the address from the deity to the newly created man on his duties to his god, and it is curious that while, in other parts of the story, various gods are mentioned by name, here only one god is mentioned, and simply as the "God." The fragments of this tablet might belong to the purest system of religion; but it would in this case be wrong to ground an argument on a single fragment.

The reverse of the tablet appears, so far as the sense can be ascertained, to be addressed to the woman, the companion of the man, informing her of her duties towards her partner.

The next fragment is a small one; it is the lower corner of a tablet with the ends of a few lines. It may possibly belong to the tablet of the Fall to be mentioned later.

This fragment is of importance, small as it is, because it mentions a speech of Hea to man, and alludes to the Karkartiamat, or dragon of the sea, in connection with a revolt against the deity. The fragment is, however, too mutilated to give more than a general idea of its contents.