Zénaïde A. Ragozin’s The Story of Chaldea (1886), Her Findings

I read Zénaïde A. Ragozin’s The Story of Chaldea for the claims a later writer can set beside Genesis, Berosus, and the flood tablet. The copy in front of me is the Putnam edition of 1886, in the series The Story of the Nations. The title page prints her name as Zénaïde A. Ragozin, and the subtitle as a general introduction to the study of ancient history, from the earliest times to the rise of Assyria. New York and London, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press. The copyright page says Copyright By G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1886. The book is out of copyright. The quotes below are her sentences, or the tablet sentences she prints. Page numbers are the printed headers.

She does not place Atlantis, and she does not draw a drowned island in the Atlantic. What she does place is Shumir and Accad, the kings she is willing to date, and two flood traditions: the years in Berosus, and the eleventh tablet of the epic whose hero she calls Izdubar.

The book at a glance

• Title: The Story of Chaldea, from the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria.
• Author: Zénaïde A. Ragozin. The title page also names her as a member of the Société Ethnologique of Paris and a corresponding member of the Athénée Oriental of Paris.
• Edition I read: New York and London, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1886. Copyright by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1886. Series title on the same page: The Story of the Nations.
• What she claims: The plain of Shinar was already occupied when the descendants of Noah arrived. The Flood, as she reads it, may not have been absolutely universal. Her working dates run from a Turanian settlement about 5000 B.C. and a foreign immigration not later than 4000 B.C., to Sargon of Agadê at 3800 B.C., an Elamite invasion in 2280 B.C., and Khudur-Lagamar, the Chedorlaomer of Genesis 14, about 2200 B.C. Beside those she prints Berosus’s 691,200 years from Oannes to the Deluge, and the tablet story of Hâsisadra, the ship, and Mount Nizir, which has no year at all.

Findings worth setting beside other writers

• The Flood and the people already in the land. Berosus, a priest of Babylon writing somewhat after 300 B.C., said that a multitude of men of foreign race had settled in Chaldea. She says they belonged to none of the races classed in the Bible as descended from Noah, and probably to one far older, which had not been included in the Flood. She then says it is pretty generally understood that the Flood may not have been absolutely universal, but may have extended over the countries which the Hebrews knew (p. 129).
• Shumir and Accad. Shumir is Southern or Lower Chaldea, toward and around the Persian Gulf, the land of Shinar in Genesis 11:2. Accad is Northern or Upper Chaldea. She treats them as one Turanian nation, with Shumir the older dialect. Their own traditions, as she gives them, point to a valley in the Altai. Later kings take the title King of Shumir and Accad.
• The dates she treats as usable. Asshurbanipal recovered the statue of the goddess Nana in 645 B.C. It had been carried from Erech by Khudur-Nankhundi 1,635 years before. She adds 1,635 to 645 and gets 2280, “a date not to be disputed.” From that she will not accept a foreign immigration later than 4000 B.C., and she puts the Shumiro-Accadian culture as far back as 5000 B.C. (p. 195).
• Berosus’s years, which she does not use as history. Over 259,000 years between the first appearance of Oannes and the first king. Ten kings after that, one reigning 36,000 years, another 43,000, even 64,000, the most modest figure 10,800. The sum she prints from Oannes to the Deluge is 691,200 years (p. 196). On p. 299 the same line of ten kings is said to have begun 259,000 years after Oannes. On p. 300 their reigns aggregate 432,000 years. I keep the three figures.
• Sargon of Agadê. Scholars had agreed he could not have lived later than 2000 B.C. A cylinder of Nabonidus, whose date she gives as 550 B.C., says that for thrice thousand and twice hundred years no king had seen the foundation-cylinder of Naram-Sin, son of Sharrukin, in the Sun-temple at Sippara. Her addition is 3200 + 550 = 3750 B.C. for Naram-Sin, and 3800 B.C. for his father Sargon (p. 213). She says that date is now generally accepted (p. 214).
• Gudea and Ur-êa. Gudea, patesi of Sirburla, is placed somewhere between 4000 and 3000 B.C. (p. 214). Ur-êa, she says, can scarcely have lived much earlier than 2800 or much later than 2500 B.C., and must have lived somewhat before 2300 B.C., because the Elamite invasion of about that year laid waste the temples he and his son Dungi built. Some place Hammurabi before 2000 B.C., others a little later. A cylinder of Hammurabi says the Sun-temple at Larsam was founded 700 years before his own time, and she takes Ur-êa as that founder (p. 219).
• Khudur-Lagamar and Abraham. Genesis 14 is, for her, the only document of this king’s wars. She identifies him with Chedorlaomer. He marched an army 1,200 miles (1931 kilometers) to the Jordan and the lake of Siddim, later the Dead Sea. Five cities served him for twelve years and rebelled in the thirteenth (p. 221). She dates him, by the most probable calculations, about 2200 B.C., and the Elamite rule at about three hundred years (p. 224). Amraphel of Shinar she reads as Amarpal, also called Sin-muballit, thought to be the father of Hammurabi. Ariokh of Ellassar she reads as the Elamite Eri-Aku, king of Larsam (p. 226).
• Hammurabi. A reign of fifty-five years. He gathered Accad and Shumir into one empire and made Babylon the capital, after a victory over the Elamite king of Larsam (p. 226).
• The week and the rest days. A week of seven days, named for the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets, already in use, and days of rest as far back as Sargon of Agadê. George Smith found a calendar in which Sabattu or Sabattuv means completion of work, a day of rest for the soul. The Babylonians kept five such days every month (p. 256).
• Creation. The series she calls, after George Smith, the Chaldean Genesis opens “When the heaven above and the earth below were as yet unnamed.” Apsu, the Abyss, and Mummu-Tiamat, the billowy Sea, were the beginning of all things (p. 264).
• The deluge tablet. George Smith found the original narrative in 1872. The line he read was: on Mount Nizir the ship stood still, then a dove was sent out and returned (p. 301). In the restored eleventh tablet, Ea tells the man of Surippak, son of Ubaratutu, to build a ship. The length, width, and height are obliterated on the tablet, and she says so (p. 315). Wind, flood, and storm reign six days and seven nights. The mountain of the land Nizir holds the ship. A dove, a swallow, and a raven are sent out, in that order (p. 316). Bel then raises Hâsisadra and his wife to equality with the gods, at the mouth of the rivers (p. 317). Berosus’s Xisuthros, on p. 300, buries the sacred writings at Sippar and strands on a mountain. She treats the two accounts as the same story at two removes.

For the Hebrew flood stories already on this site, see Great Flood Stories. For the king list she is arguing with, see The Sumerian King List. For the hero later read as Gilgamesh, see Epic of Gilgamesh: Tablet I.

The plain, and a flood that may not have covered it (p. 129)

Genesis 11:2, as she quotes it, says that as they journeyed in the east they found a plain in the land of Shinar and dwelt there. Shinar, or as she prefers Shinear, is Babylonia proper, the part of Mesopotamia where Babylon was, and south of it almost to the Gulf. “They” are descendants of Noah, long after the Flood. She says they did not find the land empty.

The only older indication she had, before the Nineveh library, was a fragment of Berosus. He lived immediately after Alexander conquered the country, when the Greeks ruled it, somewhat after 300 B.C. He wrote in Greek. The work is lost. Later writers quote fragments. One of them is the line she uses.

One thing appears clear: they belonged to none of the races classed in the Bible as descended from Noah, but probably to one far older, which had not been included in the Flood.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 129

The next sentence is the one I would set beside any writer who treats Noah’s flood as the drowning of the whole earth. It runs to the bottom of the page and continues overleaf, on the people who were in the Ark. The clause that is complete on p. 129 is this.

the Flood may not have been absolutely universal, but have extended over the countries which the Hebrews knew, which made their world

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 129

She then sets Cain’s line beside Seth’s. Cain goes further east into the land of Nod, builds the first city, named for his son Enoch, and his descendant Tubalcain is the forger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron. Seth’s line ends in Noah. Chapter 10 of Genesis, she says, is a list of races, peoples, and tribes, not of individual men. Asshur, Aram, and Heber are, on her reading, eponyms. Elam, later, is admitted into that list only as a son of Shem, because the writer of the chapter ignores the yellow race and keeps the Semitic aristocracy (p. 221).

Shumir and Accad

The Nineveh tablets, she says, are in two languages. The later one is the speech usually called Assyrian, close enough to Hebrew that it was read first. The older one belongs to the people of Shumir and Accad. Dictionaries and grammars on the tablets, with Assyrian translations, were the way in. She calls the language agglutinative, and the people Turanian. Shumir is the south, Accad the north. “Shinar” is the Hebrew spelling of the old name of Lower Chaldea. Culture and conquest, on her account, moved north from the Gulf. The settlers brought writing, metal-working, canals, and brick. She finds no trace of a people before them in that country.

Their traditions, as she retells them, place an earlier home in a closed valley in the Altai. When the valley could no longer hold them, a smith found that the rocks were almost entirely of iron, and a path was melted through with fire and bellows. She sets that beside Tubalcain. She also calls the far northeast, the Altai valleys, the race’s mountain home, on p. 196, in the same paragraph where she refuses to treat 5000 B.C. as the beginning of the race.

The religion she reconstructs from the older sacred texts is a world of spirits before it is a world of gods. Ea is the beneficent power. Diseases are demons. The incantation of the Seven Maskim is in the collection. I am not copying the charms. The finding I would carry is the sequence: Turanian Shumir and Accad first, then a second settlement whose language replaces theirs, then the Semitic culture in which she says the history of the country can be read as history.

The dates she will use (pp. 195, 196, 213, 214, 219)

She warns that very ancient chronology is vague, and that a difference of a couple of centuries, at that distance, does not change the order. The first positive date she will defend comes from Asshurbanipal, the founder of the library at Nineveh. He was at war with Elam and destroyed Shushan, which foreigners pronounced Susa. In the temple there he found a statue of the Chaldean goddess Nana. It had been carried from her temple in Urukh, Erech, now Warka.

1635 added to 645 make 2280, a date not to be disputed.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 195

The 645 is the year she has already given for Asshurbanipal’s recovery of the statue. The 1,635 is the interval the inscription gives for Khudur-Nankhundi’s raid. If an Elamite army in 2280 found famous sanctuaries to rob, the religion of those sanctuaries, which she calls Cushite or Semitic, was already old. Recent discoveries, she says, show it had been so for considerably over a thousand years.

we cannot possibly accept a date later than 4000 B.C. for the foreign immigration.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 195

The Shumiro-Accadian culture was already too complete, in her judgment, to allow less than about 1,000 years for its own establishment.

This takes us as far back as 5000 B.C.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 195

She calls 5000 B.C. a moderate and probable date, and then prints what the Chaldeans themselves claimed, which she will not use.

there was an interval of over 259,000 years between the first appearance of Oannes and the first king.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 196

one 36,000, another 43,000, even 64,000; 10,800 being the most modest figure

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 196

the pretty sum total of 691,200 years, supposed to have elapsed from the first appearance of Oannes to the Deluge.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 196

Oannes is the Greek form. She says the Accadian name is Ea-Han, Ea the Fish. He comes out of the Persian Gulf and leaves books. She quotes Maspero to the effect that the times before the Deluge were an experimental period, with six manifestations of the deity, answering to six sacred books. That is Maspero’s reading, in his Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient (1878). She says there is no more proof of that reading than of any other.

Sargon is the next landmark, and she treats the change in his date as a warning against guesses. There was no positive indication except that he could not have lived later than 2000 B.C., so scholars had assigned him that date, a little more or a little less. Then a cylinder of Nabonidus turned up. Nabonidus is the last king of Babylon. She dates him 550 B.C. He repaired the great Sun-temple at Sippara, and he says Shamash suffered him to behold the foundation-cylinder of Naram-Sin, the son of Sharrukin.

which for thrice thousand and twice hundred years none of the kings that lived before me had seen.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 213

The simple addition 3200 + 550 gives 3750 B.C. as the date of Naram-Sin, and 3800 as that of his father Sargon, allowing for the latter's long reign!

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 213

She notes the hesitation. A shift of 1,800 years seemed too large, and an engraver’s error was considered. Other documents, found independently and in different places, corroborated the cylinder. The sentence finishes at the top of the next page: the date of 3800 B.C. is now generally accepted for Sargon of Agadê, perhaps the remotest authentic date yet arrived at in history.

On the same page she will not give Gudea a single year. De Sarzec found his statues in the temple whose bricks bear his stamp. The title is patesi, not king. The name of the city is printed in four forms.

he is pretty generally understood to have lived somewhere between 4000 and 3000 B.C.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 214

The city is Sirburla, also read Sirgulla or Sirtilla, and lately Zirlaba. She concludes he was an Accadian prince, not a Semite, from the language, from the archaic writing, and from the head found with the statues, which she calls strikingly Turanian, shaved and turbaned in a fashion still used in Central Asia.

Ur-êa and his son Dungi are the first kings of Ur she treats as authentic. Their bricks are identified at Larsa (Senkereh), and, it appears, at Sirburla (Tel-Loh), Nippur (Niffer), and Urukh (Erech, Warka). They use the title King of Shumir and Accad, and King of the Four Regions. Babylon, under its Accadian name Tin-Tir-Ki, “the Place of the Tree of Life,” or later Ca-Dimirra, “Gate of God,” may not yet have been a capital. Nabonidus again supplies the clue. He found a cylinder of Hammurabi under the corner-stone of the Sun-temple E-Babbara at Larsam. That cylinder states that the temple was founded 700 years before Hammurabi’s time. She takes Ur-êa as the founder. Scholars then split.

Some place Hammurabi before 2000 B.C., others a little later. It is perhaps safest, therefore, to assume that Ur-êa can scarcely have lived much earlier than 2800 or much later than 2500 B.C.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 219

he must necessarily have lived somewhat before 2300 B.C.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 219

The 2300 is her round figure for the Elamite invasion she has already fixed at 2280. Khudur-Nankhundi and his successors stayed. They called themselves kings of Southern Chaldea. She calls the series the Elamite dynasty. Elam itself is a Turanian word meaning highlands, like Accad. The capital is Shushan, the country’s own older name Shushinak. The people are Turanian, the language near that of Shumir and Accad, and a Semitic minority, too small to change the language, becomes the nobility from which the kings are taken.

Khudur-Lagamar, Abraham, Hammurabi (pp. 221, 224, 226)

She spells the Elamite king Khudur-Lagamar. Genesis 14 spells him Chedorlaomer, and she says that chapter is the only document we have of his wars. Three allied kings march with him: the king of Shumir, which the chapter calls Shinear; the king of Larsam, which it calls Ellassar; and the king of the Goiim, the nomadic tribes, which the unrevised translation calls the king of nations.

Khudur-Lagamar marched an army 1200 miles (1931 kilometers) across the desert into the fertile, wealthy and populous valleys of the Jordan and the lake or sea of Siddim, afterwards called the Dead Sea

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 221

Five cities, Sodom, Gomorrah, and three others, are subdued. He goes back to the Persian Gulf and still collects tribute.

for twelve years they "served" him, i.e., paid him tribute regularly

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 221

The sentence breaks at the bottom of the page on the thirteenth year, when they rebel. She then retells the pursuit. Abraham and his tribe are no longer at Chaldean Ur. The change of masters drove them out. Terah leads them, and after Terah dies Abraham is the patriarch. Lot is taken from Sodom. Abraham arms the trained servants born in his own household, takes Mamre and his brothers, overtakes the army near Damascus at night, and brings Lot back. He refuses the goods of the king of Sodom. The year she is willing to print is not a year from an inscription of Khudur-Lagamar. It is her calculation.

lived, according to the most probable calculations, about 2200 B.C.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 224

She calls him probably the first conqueror of whom the world has any authentic record. Egypt, at the same time, had already reached the height of its culture, but its rulers still kept it to the valley of the Nile. The Elamite presence in Chaldea was a conquest, not a raid.

a rule which endured, it would appear, about three hundred years.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 224

On p. 226 she attaches the Biblical names to kings known from the Babylonian side. The line begins mid-word, on Amraphel. She says the king of Shinar who marched with Khudur-Lagamar was a king of Babylon, one of whose names has been read Amarpal, while Ariokh of Ellassar was an Elamite, Eri-Aku, brother or cousin of Khudur-Lagamar, and king of Larsam. Amarpal, more frequently called Sin-muballit, is thought to have been the father of Hammurabi.

In his long reign of fifty-five years he had, indeed, time to achieve much, but what he did achieve was much even for so long a reign.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 226

The decisive victory was over the Elamite king of Larsam. Hammurabi gathered Accad and Shumir, with their cities and sanctuaries, and made his own ancestral city, Babylon, the head of them. She does not say in what year of his reign that victory fell. After his son she describes a new line, the Kasshi, from the highlands in the northwestern portion of Elam, called by later Greek geographers Cossaeans or Cissians. Their language, of which very few specimens have survived, is not yet understood, and it is different both from the Semitic speech of Babylon and from the speech of Shumir and Accad.

The week and the rest days (p. 256)

She gives the Chaldeo-Babylonians the division of time, the sun-dial, and the week of seven days, dedicated in succession to the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets. The names of our days, she says, are translations of the Chaldean ones. Days of rest go back as far as Sargon of Agadê. The name and the observance passed from the Semites of Babylonia, perhaps the Chaldeans of Ur, to the Hebrew branch, the tribe of Abraham.

George Smith found an Assyrian calendar where the day called Sabattu or Sabattuv is explained to mean "completion of work, a day of rest for the soul."

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 256

On that day it was not lawful to cook food, to change one’s dress, or to offer a sacrifice. The king was forbidden to speak in public, to ride in a chariot, to perform any military or civil duty, even to take medicine. She cites Delitzsch, Sayce, and Lotz for this in the footnote. Then the difference she wants kept.

the Babylonians kept five Sabbath days every month, which made more than one a week

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 256

Creation (p. 264)

The sacred books of Babylonia are, for her, the oldest known. The ancestors of the Hebrews learned the legends during their station in Shinar and, she says, remodelled them into what was later written as part of Genesis. The original books were attributed to Ea, teaching mankind in the shape of Oannes. Berosus says Oannes wrote a book on the origin of things and the beginnings of civilization, and gave it to men. George Smith, sorting tablet fragments at the British Museum, found pieces of the originals. The copies she uses come chiefly from the royal library at Nineveh. She warns that the connected story she is about to give was not preserved in that form. It is a restoration. Many lines are broken.

When the heaven above and the earth below were as yet unnamed

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 264

She glosses “unnamed,” in Semitic ideas, as “did not exist.” The tablets are numbered as tablets of the series When Above, and marked as the property of Asshurbanipal, king of nations, king of Assyria.

Apsu (the "Abyss") and Mummu-Tiamat (the "billowy Sea") were the beginning of all things

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 264

Their waters mingled. That was the primeval chaos. It contained the germs of life, but the darkness was not lifted, and nothing sprouted. The gods were not yet. Then the great gods came into being. The text breaks off at the god Anu. She thinks the lost lines told how Anu, Ea, and Bel, the first triad, came into being after a long lapse of time. A later fragment has the ordering of the zodiac, the stars, the months, the year, and the planets, the great gates of heaven on the east and the west, and Nannar the Moon given the night. Another broken tablet has the gods, in the plural, creating cattle, wild beasts, and creeping things. Tablets that may have told the creation of man and a fall are too mutilated, she says, for certainty.

She describes a cylinder of very ancient Babylonian workmanship in the British Museum: a tree in the middle, a human couple reaching for the fruit, a serpent standing behind the woman. She treats it as filling the blank in the written narrative. Bel, in the fragment of Berosus, gives his own blood to be kneaded with the clay of which men are formed, which is why they have reason. In the midst of the chaos, before Bel separates heaven and earth and creates light, life takes shape as mixed monsters: winged men with two heads, goat-legged beings, bulls with human heads, dogs with four bodies and a fish’s tail. They perish when the light comes. Berosus, a priest of the temple of Bel-Marduk at Babylon, says the walls of that temple were painted with those shapes.

The sacred tree, on the later pages of the same chapter, is also a hope of life beyond the grave. It is cut on the coffins at Warka. She still takes the symbol as the old one, including on coffins from a much later time. The holy mountain is placed in the far north or northeast. Its names, as she lists them, include Father of Countries, Mountain of Countries, and Arallu, because the entrance to the land of the dead was imagined there. The soil produces crops without cultivation. Ziggurats imitate that mountain. The temple of the Seven Spheres at Borsippa, Birs-Nimrud, was rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar from an older structure. Its corners, unlike the usual Chaldean rule, do not point at the cardinal points. Later Jewish travellers identified the ruins with the Tower of Babel. Berosus’s separate story of the tower, which she gives from the fragments, is that men built to scale the sky, and the gods sent winds to throw the work down and made men speak different languages. The site was identified with Babylon. She reads a historical core under it: many nations, various in race and speech, did disperse from the plains of Chaldea after living there side by side.

Xisuthros and the eleventh tablet (pp. 299-301, 315-317)

The epic is the oldest she knows. She dates the poem, not the flood inside it.

dating certainly from 2000 years B.C., and probably more.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 299

Berosus’s fragments, she says, contain no indication of this poem. They tell only of a deluge under the last of the ten kings.

a great deluge which took place under the last of that fabulous line of ten kings which is said to have begun 259,000 years after the apparition

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 299

The sentence ends on the next page, at the divine Man-Fish, Oannes. The reigns are then summed.

to have reigned in the aggregate a period of 432,000 years.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 300

Xisuthros is the last of the ten. The deity tells him that on a certain day all men shall perish in a deluge of waters.

ordered him to take all the sacred writings and bury them at Sippar, the City of the Sun, then to build a ship

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 300

He enters with his family, his dearest friends, and animals, birds and quadrupeds of every kind. On the third day after the rain ceases he sends out birds. They return, having found neither food nor a place to rest. Sent again, they return with muddy feet. Sent a third time, they do not return. He opens the roof and sees the ship stranded on the top of a mountain. He comes out with his wife, his daughter, and the pilot, builds an altar, sacrifices, and disappears with them. A voice tells the others that he has been translated among the gods. They are to return to Babylonia, unearth the writings, and make them known. They build many cities and restore Babylon.

She wants the original, because Berosus does not say which tradition is older, his or the Biblical one. George Smith found it in 1872, while sorting fragments at the British Museum.

On the mount Nizir the ship stood still. Then I took a dove and let her fly. The dove flew hither and thither, but finding no resting-place, returned to the ship.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 301

That half-tablet was whitish yellow, three columns on each face. The line was in the third column of the obverse. Smith then found fragments of two more copies. She says the deluge narrative is the eleventh tablet of a series, in a poem on an ancient king of Erech. The first tablet has not been found. The eleventh, she says, has been restored almost completely. She translates from Paul Haupt, Der Keilinschriftliche Sintflutbericht (1881).

The hero, as she prints the name through this chapter, is Izdubar. She notes that the reading of the name is difficult and not settled. A second form she prints is Gisdhubar. He is said to be a native of Marad and a descendant of Hasisadra, the king Berosus calls Xisuthros. Erech is under Elamite conquerors. The seer Eabani lives in the wilderness with the beasts and is brought to the city. The two kill the Elamite tyrant Khumbaba in a cedar forest, and Izdubar is proclaimed king. Ishtar offers marriage. He refuses and taunts her with Dumuzi and the others. Anu sends a bull. They kill it. Ishtar’s mother strikes Eabani dead and Izdubar with a disease. He goes to find Hasisadra at the mouth of the rivers. The warders on the road are scorpion-men. The ferryman is Urubel. The Waters of Death lie between the living and the blessed dead.

Hasisadra’s own account is the eleventh tablet. Ea has sat with the gods when they decide to destroy the seed of life, and he warns his servant.

Man of Surippak, son of Ubaratutu, go out of thy house and build thee a ship.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 315

The footnote on that page says Ubaratutu is the ninth king in the fabulous list of ten. The measurements are not in the copy she prints.

The figures unfortunately obliterated.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 315

The same mark stands where the number of compartments stood. What the tablet does give is the cargo and the warning. He is to bring grain, property, family, men-servants, women-servants, and next of kin. Ea will send the cattle of the field and the wild beasts. He pours bitumen on the outer side and the inner side. He loads gold, silver, and the seed of life of every kind. Shamash brings the appointed time.

This evening the heavens will rain destruction, wherefore go thou into the ship and close thy door.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 315

He enters, shuts the door, and gives the ship to the pilot. A black cloud rises. Raman thunders. Nebo and Nergal meet. The god of pestilence lets loose the whirlwinds. Ninib makes the canals overflow. The Anunnaki bring floods from the depths. The gods climb to the heaven of Anu and crouch by the railing. Ishtar weeps that she did not give men birth so that they should fill the sea like fishes.

For six days and seven nights wind, flood and storm reigned supreme

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 316

At dawn of the seventh day the tempest decreases. He opens a port-hole, weeps, and steers over a sea where the countries were. A piece of land rises.

The mountain of the land Nizir held fast the ship and did not let it go.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 316

It holds through six days. At dawn of the seventh he sends a dove, which returns. Then a swallow, which returns. Then a raven, which sees that the waters have abated, wades, and does not return. He lets out the animals to the four winds and raises an altar on the highest summit. The sacred vessels are placed seven by seven, over reeds, cedar-wood, and sweet herbs. The gods smell the savor and swarm like flies. Ishtar swears by the necklace of her neck that she will remember these days. Bel is not to come to the altar, because he did not control his wrath.

On the next page Bel sees the ship and cries that not a soul shall escape. Ninib asks who but Ea can have done this. Ea answers that the sinner should suffer for his sin, and that lions, hyenas, famine, and pestilence should reduce mankind, instead of another deluge. He says he did not impart the decision of the great gods. He sent a dream, and the man understood.

Until now Hâsisadra was only human: but now he shall be raised to be equal with the gods, together with his wife. He shall dwell in the distant land, by the mouth of the rivers.

Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 317

She then reads the whole epic as a sun myth. The hero’s rise is the year advancing to midsummer, the sign of the Lion. The sickness is autumn. The Waters of Death are winter. I keep that as her reading of the poem. It does not change the place-names in the tablet.

Where I leave the book

The pages I would carry are p. 129 (a people older than Noah’s descent, and a flood that may not have been universal), p. 195 (645 and 1,635 make 2280, immigration not later than 4000, Shumiro-Accadian culture back to 5000), p. 196 (259,000 years, the ten reigns, 691,200 years to the Deluge), p. 213 (Naram-Sin at 3750, Sargon at 3800, from Nabonidus at 550), p. 214 (Gudea between 4000 and 3000), p. 219 (Hammurabi before 2000 or a little later, Ur-êa from 2800 to 2500, and before 2300), p. 221 and p. 224 (Khudur-Lagamar, 1,200 miles (1931 kilometers), twelve years, about 2200 B.C., about three hundred years of Elamite rule), p. 226 (Amarpal, Eri-Aku, Hammurabi’s fifty-five years), p. 256 (five rest days in the month), p. 264 (Apsu and Mummu-Tiamat), and pp. 299 to 301 and 315 to 317 (the ten kings, Sippar, Nizir, the ship, Hâsisadra).

The opening chapters are the mounds, Layard, Botta, and the way the palaces were built. I have not entered a wall measurement I did not read on the page. The ship, on p. 315, has its figures marked obliterated. I do not supply a length. The magic collection, the penitential psalms, and the full incantation of the Seven Maskim are in the book. I have used them only to name the world she says the first settlers lived in.

She says, on p. 214, that the experience with Sargon has not been encouraging to conjectural chronology. The work of comparison is to keep her estimates, her cylinder-dates, and Berosus’s years in three columns.

Where to read it

Ragozin was born in 1835 and died in 1924. This volume is dated 1886, and the copyright page names G. P. Putnam’s Sons. The text is out of copyright. A scan that identifies itself as this book is on the Internet Archive under the identifier storyofchaldeafr00rago. The page numbers above are the printed headers of that edition.

FAQ

Does she place Atlantis?

She does not. There is no Atlantic island, no pillar of Heracles, and no 9,000 years before Solon in this volume. The land she describes is the plain of Shinar, Shumir to the south and Accad to the north, with Elam in the highlands and the Persian Gulf on the south.

What year does she use for the flood?

She does not print a year for Noah. On p. 129 the flood may not have been absolutely universal. On p. 196 Berosus’s tradition puts 691,200 years between Oannes and the Deluge. On p. 300 the ten kings reign, in aggregate, 432,000 years. On pp. 315 to 317 the tablet narrates the flood at Surippak and Mount Nizir and gives no year. The 2280 B.C. on p. 195 is Khudur-Nankhundi’s raid, not the deluge.

What does she do with Sargon?

On p. 213 he is Sharrukin, father of Naram-Sin. Nabonidus, at 550 B.C., found Naram-Sin’s foundation-cylinder after thrice thousand and twice hundred years. Her sum is 3750 B.C. for the son and 3800 B.C. for Sargon. She says scholars had previously put Sargon no later than 2000 B.C.

Who is Izdubar?

He is the hero of the twelve-tablet epic. She also prints the reading Gisdhubar, and she says the pronunciation was not settled. Hasisadra, or Hâsisadra, is his ancestor, the Xisuthros of Berosus. The deluge story is the eleventh tablet, told by Hasisadra at the mouth of the rivers.

Who is Chedorlaomer in her book?

Khudur-Lagamar, king of Elam, successor of Khudur-Nankhundi. She dates him about 2200 B.C. by calculation, not by a cylinder of his own. The allied kings are the king of Shumir, the king of Larsam, and the king of the Goiim. Amraphel she identifies with Amarpal, also Sin-muballit. Ariokh of Ellassar she identifies with Eri-Aku.

Related on this site

1. Sumer, the First Known Civilization: the land she calls Shumir and Accad, in later spelling.
2. Sumerian Cities: Ur, Erech, Nippur, Larsa, and the cities whose bricks she cites.
3. The Sumerian King List: the long antediluvian reigns. Her p. 196 prints Berosus’s version of that kind of list, and sets it aside.
4. Epic of Gilgamesh: Tablet I: the hero she still calls Izdubar or Gisdhubar. Her flood text is the eleventh tablet, not the first.
5. Great Flood Stories: other flood narratives. Her tablet names Surippak, Nizir, a dove, a swallow, and a raven.
6. Paschal Beverly Randolph’s Pre-Adamite Man: he dates the deluge of Xisuthrus at least 10,000 years before the Christian era. She prints Xisuthros with 432,000 years of kings behind him, and with no year on the tablet.

Sources

The book

• Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea, from the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria. New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1886. Copyright by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1886. Series: The Story of the Nations. Page numbers above are the printed headers.

The clocks, as she prints them

• Flood not necessarily universal, and a people in Shinar older than Noah’s descent (p. 129). Nana recovered in the year she ties to 645, plus 1,635 years, making 2280. Immigration not later than 4000 B.C. Shumiro-Accadian culture back to 5000 B.C. (p. 195). Over 259,000 years from Oannes to the first king. Reigns of 36,000, 43,000, 64,000, and 10,800. Sum 691,200 years from Oannes to the Deluge (p. 196). Naram-Sin 3750 B.C., Sargon 3800 B.C., from 3,200 years before Nabonidus at 550 (p. 213). Gudea between 4000 and 3000 B.C. (p. 214). Hammurabi before 2000 or a little later. Ur-êa from 2800 to 2500, and before 2300. Temple founded 700 years before Hammurabi (p. 219). Khudur-Lagamar about 2200 B.C. Elamite rule about 300 years (p. 224). Hammurabi’s reign, 55 years (p. 226). The epic certainly from 2000 B.C., and probably more. Ten kings begun 259,000 years after Oannes (p. 299), reigning in aggregate 432,000 years (p. 300). The tablet itself, pp. 315 to 317, has no year.