’To the gods, with a prayer that it might fare well with mankind.’  Then Xisuthrus was not disobedient to the vision, but built a ship five furlongs (3125 feet) in length, and two furlongs (1250 feet) in breadth; and collected all that had been commanded him, and put his wife and children and close friends on board.  The flood came; and as soon as it ceased, Xisuthrus let loose some birds, which, finding neither food nor a place where they could rest, came back to the ark.  After some days he again sent out the birds, which again returned to the ark, but with feet covered with mud.  Sent out a third time, the birds returned no more, and Xisuthrus knew that land had reappeared:  so he removed some of the covering of the ark, and looked, and behold! the vessel had grounded on a mountain.  Then Xisuthrus went forth with his wife and his daughter, and his pilot, and fell down and worshipped the earth, and built an altar, and offered sacrifice to the gods; after which he disappeared from sight, together with those who had accompanied him.  They who had remained in the ark and not gone forth with Xisuthrus, now left it and searched for him, and shouted out his name; but Xisuthrus was not seen any more.  Only his voice answered them out of the air, saying, ’Worship God; for because I worshipped God, am I gone to dwell with the gods; and they who were with me have shared the same honor.’  And he bade them return to Babylon, and recover the writings buried at Sippara, and make them known among men; and he told them that the land in which they then were was Armenia.  So they, when they had heard all, sacrificed to the gods and went their way on foot to Babylon, and, having reached it, recovered the buried writings from Sippara, and built many cities and temples, and restored Babylon.  Some portion of the ark still continues in Armenia, in the Gordiaean (Kurdish) Mountains; and persons scrape off the bitumen from it to bring away, and this they use as a remedy to avert misfortunes.”

“The earth was still of one language, when the primitive men, who were proud of their strength and stature, and despised the gods as their inferiors, erected a tower of vast height, in order than they might mount to heaven.  And the tower was now near to heaven, when the gods (or God) caused the winds to blow and overturned the structure upon the men, and made them speak with divers tongues; wherefore the city was called Babylon.”

Here again we have a harmony with Scripture of the most remarkable kind—­a harmony not confined to the main facts, but reaching even to the minuter points, and one which is altogether most curious and interesting.  The Babylonians have not only, in common with the great majority of nations, handed down from age to age the general tradition of the Flood, but they are acquainted with most of the particulars of the occurrence.  They know of the divine warning to a single man, the direction to construct a huge ship or ark, the command to take into it a chosen few