THE DELUGE TRADITION ACCORDING TO BEROSUS. *

“Obartés Elbaratutu being dead, his son Xisuthros (Khasisatra) reigned eighteen sares (64,800 years). It was under him that the great Deluge took place, the history of which is told in the sacred documents as follows:
Cronos (Ea) appeared to him in his sleep, and announced that on the fifteenth of the month of Daisios—the Assyrian month Sivan—a little before the summer (solstice) all men should perish by a flood. He therefore commanded him to take the beginning, the middle, and the end of whatever was consigned to writing, and to bury it in the city of the Sun, at Sippara; then to build a vessel and to enter it with his family and dearest friends; to place in this vessel provisions to eat and drink, and to cause animals, birds, and quadrupeds to enter it; lastly, to prepare everything for navigation. And when Xisuthros inquired in what direction he should steer his bark, he was answered 'Toward the gods,' and enjoined to pray that good might come of it for men.

“Xisuthros obeyed, and constructed a vessel five stadia long and five broad; he collected all that had been prescribed to him, and embarked his wife, his children, and his intimate friends.

“The Deluge having come, and soon going down, Xisuthros loosed some of the birds. These, finding no food nor place to alight on, returned to the ship. A few days later Xisuthros again let them free, but they returned again to the vessel, their feet full of mud. Finally, loosed the third time, the birds came no more back.

“Then Xisuthros understood that the earth was bare.
He made an opening in the roof of the ship, and saw that it had grounded on the top of a mountain. He then descended with his wife, his daughter, and his pilot, who worshipped the earth, raised an altar, and there sacrificed to the gods; at the same moment he vanished with those who accompanied him. page . 376

“Meanwhile those who had remained in the vessel, not seeing Xisuthros return, descended too, and began to seek him, calling him by his name. They saw Xisuthros no more; but a voice from heaven was heard commanding them piety towards the gods; that he, indeed, was receiving the reward of his piety in being carried away to dwell thenceforth in the midst of the gods, and that his wife, his daughter, and the pilot of the ship shared the same honour.
The voice further said that they were to return to Babylon, and, conformably to the decrees of fate, disinter the writings buried at Sippara, in order to transmit them to men. It added that the country in which they found themselves was Armenia. These, then, having heard the voice, sacrificed to the gods and returned on foot to Babylon.
Of the vessel of Xisuthros, which had finally landed in Armenia, a portion is still to be found in the Gordyan mountains in Armenia, and pilgrims bring thence asphalte that they have scraped from its fragments. It is used to keep off the influence of witchcraft. As to the companions of Xisuthros, they came to Babylon, disinterred the writings left at Sippara, founded numerous cities, built temples, and restored Babylon.”

The large amount of work done by the few followers of Xisuthros, seems very surprising, but easily accounted for if we take the version of the Deluge given by Nicolaus Damascenus (a philosopher and historian of the age of Augustus, and a friend of Herod the Great).

"He mentions that there is a large mountain in Armenia, which stands above the country of the Minyæ, called Baris. To this it was said that many people betook themselves in the time of the Deluge, and were saved. And there is a tradition of one person in particular floating in an ark, and arriving at the summit of the mountain." *

Footnotes

375:* Berosus lived in the time of Alexander the Great, or about B.C. 330-260, or 300 years after the Jews were carried captive to Babylon.

376:* Encyclopædia Britannica.
from public domain: page: www.sacred-texts.com/earth/mm/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So who is BEROSUS?
Versions in Greek of the Legends found by George Smith had long been known to classical scholars, owing to the preservation of fragments of them in the works of later Greek writers, e.g., Eusebius, Syncellus, and others. The most important of these is derived from the History of Babylonia, which was written in Greek by BEROSUS, a priest of Bel-Marduk, i.e., the "Lord Marduk," at Babylon, about 250 B.C.


stone statues of BEROSUS,

In this work Berosus reproduced all the known historical facts and traditions derived from native sources which were current in his day. It is therefore not surprising to find that his account of the Babylonian beliefs about the origin of things corresponds very closely with that given in the cuneiform texts, and that it is of the greatest use in explaining and partly in expanding these texts. His account of the primeval abyss, out of which everything came, and of its inhabitants reads:--

"There was a time in which there existed nothing but darkness and an abyss of waters, wherein resided most hideous beings, which were produced on a two-fold principle. There appeared men, some of whom were furnished with two wings, others with four, and with two faces. They had one body but two heads; the one that of a man, the other of a woman; and likewise in their several organs both male and female, Other human figures were to be seen with the legs and horns of goats; some had horses' feet; while others united the hind-quarters of a horse with the body of a man, resembling in shape the hippo-centaurs.

Bulls likewise were bred there with the heads of men, and dogs with four told bodies, terminated in their extremities with the tails of fishes; horses also with the heads of dogs; men too and other animals, with the heads and bodies of horses and the tails of fishes. In short, there were creatures in which were combined the limbs of every species of animals. In addition to these, fishes, reptiles, serpents, with other monstrous animals, which assumed each other's shape and countenance. Of all which were preserved delineations in the temple of Belus at Babylon."



Mythical Monsters
by Charles Gould
APPENDICES.
APPENDIX I.

THE DELUGE TRADITION ACCORDING TO BEROSUS.


Much more to read about this at>page: englishatheist.org/creation/creationbab.shtml

The Babylonian Legends of the Creation
and the Fight Between Bel and the Dragon
Told by Assyrian Tablets From Nineveh
Discovery of the Tablets.
[1886]

Project Gutenberg's The Babylonian Legends of the Creation, by British Museum Produced by the PG Distributed Proofreaders

Discovery of the Tablets.

The baked clay tablets and portions of tablets which describe the views and beliefs of the Babylonians and Assyrians about the Creation were discovered by Mr. (later Sir) A.H. Layard, Mormuzd Rassam and George Smith, Assistant in the Department of Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum. They were found among the ruins of the Palace and Library of Ashur-bani-pal (B.C. 668-626) at Ḳuyûnjiḳ (Nineveh), between the years 1848 and 1876.

Between 1866 and 1870, the great "find" of tablets and fragments, some 20,000 in number, which Rassam made in 1852, was worked through by George Smith, who identified many of the historical inscriptions of Shalmaneser II, Tiglath-Pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and other kings mentioned in the Bible, and several literary compositions of a legendary character, fables, etc. In the course of this work he discovered fragments of various versions of the Babylonian Legend of the Deluge, and portions of several texts belonging to a work which treated of the beginning of things, and of the Creation. In 1870, Rawlinson and Smith noted allusions to the Creation in the important tablet K.63, but the texts of portions of tablets of the Creation Series at that time available for study were so fragmentary that it was impossible for these scholars to find their correct sequence.

During the excavations which Smith carried out at Ḳuyûnjiḳ in 1873 and 1874 for the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph and the Trustees of the British Museum, he was, he tells us, fortunate enough to discover "several fragments of the Genesis Legends." In January, 1875, he made an exhaustive search among the tablets in the British Museum, and in the following March he published, in the Daily Telegraph (March 4th), a summary of the contents of about twenty fragments of the series of tablets describing the creation of the heavens and the earth. In November of the same year he communicated to the Society of Biblical Archaeology1 copies of:--(1) the texts on fragments of the First and Fifth Tablets of Creation; (2) a text describing the fight between the "Gods and Chaos"; and (3) a fragmentary text which, he believed, described the Fall of Man. In the following year he published translations of all the known fragments of the Babylonian Creation Legends in his "Chaldean Account of Genesis" (London, 1876, 8vo, with photographs). In this volume were included translations of the Exploits of Gizdubar (Gilgamish), and some early Babylonian fables and legends of the gods.

The Legend of the Creation According to Berosus and Damascius.

Site has many pictures of the tablets found the ancient legends