* We are ignorant of the object which the goddess lifted up:  it may have been the sceptre surmounted by a radiating star, such as we see on certain cylinders.  Several Assyriologists translate it arrows or lightning.  Ishtar is, in fact, an armed goddess who throws the arrow or lightning made by her father Anu, the heaven.

** Bekossus, fragm. xv.  The legend about the remains of the ark has passed into Jewish tradition concerning the Deluge.  Nicholas of Damascus relates, like Berossus, that they were still to be seen on the top of Mount Baris.  From that time they have been continuously seen, sometimes on one peak and sometimes on another.  In the last century they were pointed out to Chardin, and the memory of them has not died out in our own century.  Discoveries of charcoal and bitumen, such as those made at Gebel Judi, upon one of the mountains identified with Nisir, probably explain many of these local traditions.

The chronicle of these fabulous times placed, soon after the abating of the waters, the foundation of a new dynasty, as extraordinary or almost as extraordinary in character as that before the flood.  According to Berossus it was of Chaldaean origin, and comprised eighty-six kings, who bore rule during 34,080 years; the first two, Evechous and Khomasbelos, reigned 2400 and 2700 years, while the later reigns did not exceed the ordinary limits of human life.  An attempt was afterwards made to harmonize them with probability:  the number of kings was reduced to six, and their combined reigns to 225 years.  This attempt arose from a misapprehension of their true character; names and deeds, everything connected with them belongs to myth and fiction only, and is irreducible to history proper.  They supplied to priests and poets material for scores of different stories, of which several have come down to us in fragments.  Some are short, and serve as preambles to prayers or magical formulas; others are of some length, and may pass for real epics.  The gods intervene in them, and along with kings play an important part.  It is Nera, for instance, the lord of the plague, who declares war against mankind in order to punish them for having despised the authority of Anu.  He makes Babylon to feel his wrath first:  “The children of Babel, they were as birds, and the bird-catcher, thou wert he! thou takest them in the net, thou enclosest them, thou decimatest them—­hero Nera!” One after the other he attacks the mother cities of the Euphrates and obliges them to render homage to him—­even Uruk, “the dwelling of Anu and Ishtar—­the town of the priestesses, of the almehs, and the sacred courtesans; “then he turns upon the foreign nations and carries his ravages as far as Phoenicia.  In other fragments, the hero Etana makes an attempt to raise himself to heaven, and the eagle, his companion, flies away with him, without, however, being able to bring the enterprise to a successful issue.  Nimrod and his exploits