Many of these tablets containing
Neo-Babylonian copies of earlier literary texts are preserved in the
British Museum, and have been recently published, and we have thus
recovered some of the principal grammatical, religious, and magical
compositions of the earlier Babylonian period.
[Illustration: 426.jpg TRENCH IN THE BABYLONIAN PLAIN]
Between The Mound Of The Kasr And Tell Amran Ibn-Ali,
Showing A Section Of The Paved Sacred Way.
Among the most interesting of such recent finds is a series of tablets
inscribed with the Babylonian legends concerning the creation of the
world and man, which present many new and striking parallels to the
beliefs on these subjects embodied in Hebrew literature. We have not
space to treat this subject at greater length in the present work, but
we may here note that discovery and research in its relation to the
later empires that ruled at Babylon have produced results of literary
rather than of historical importance. But we should exceed the space
at our disposal if we attempted even to skim this fascinating field of
study in which so much has recently been achieved. For it is time we
turned once more to Egypt and directed our inquiry towards ascertaining
what recent research has to tell us with regard to her inhabitants
during the later periods of her existence as a nation of the ancient
world.
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