Yima is punished for “presumptuously grasping at immortality for himself and mankind, on the suggestion of an evil power, instead of waiting Ahura’s good time”.  Professor Moulton wonders if this story, which he endeavours to reconstruct, “owed anything to Babylon?”

Yima, like the Babylonian Pir-napishtim, is also a revealer of the secrets of creation.  He was appointed to be “Guardian, Overseer, Watcher over my Creation” by Ahura, the supreme god.  Three hundred years went past—­

Then the earth became abounding,
Full of flocks and full of cattle,
Full of men, of birds, dogs likewise,
Full of fires all bright and blazing,
Nor did men, flocks, herds of cattle,
Longer find them places in it.

Jackson’s Translation.

The earth was thereafter cloven with a golden arrow.  Yima then built a refuge in which mankind and the domesticated animals might find shelter during a terrible winter.  “The picture”, says Professor Moulton, “strongly tempts us to recognize the influence of the Babylonian Flood-Legend."[240] The “Fimbul winter” of Germanic mythology is also recalled.  Odin asks in one of the Icelandic Eddie poems: 

What beings shall live when the long dread winter
Comes o’er the people of earth?[241]

In another Eddie poem, the Voluspa, the Vala tells of a Sword Age, an Axe Age, a Wind Age, and a Wolf Age which is to come “ere the world sinks”.  After the battle of the gods and demons,

    The sun is darkened, earth sinks in the sea.

In time, however, a new world appears.

    I see uprising a second time
    Earth from the Ocean, green anew;
    The waters fall, on high the eagle
    Flies o’er the fell and catches fish.

When the surviving gods return, they will talk, according to the Vala (prophetess), of “the great world serpent” (Tiamat).  The fields will be sown and “Balder will come"[242]—­apparently as Tammuz came.  The association of Balder with corn suggests that, like Nata of the Nahua tribes, he was a harvest spirit, among other things.

Leaving, meantime, the many problems which arise from consideration of the Deluge legends and their connection with primitive agricultural myths, the attention of readers may be directed to the Babylonian conception of the Otherworld.

Pir-napishtim, who escaped destruction at the Flood, resides in an Island Paradise, which resembles the Greek “Islands of the Blessed”, and the Irish “Tir nan og” or “Land of the Young”, situated in the western ocean, and identical with the British[243]

      island-valley of Avilion,
    Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
    Nor ever wind blows loudly, but it lies
    Deep meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard lawns
    And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea.[244]