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Updated: June 15, 2025
This 'Oannes, as Berosus is said to have called him, was none other than Ea. As the great benefactor of mankind, it is natural that Ea should have come to be viewed as the god whose special function it is to protect the human race, to advance it in all its good undertakings, to protect it against the evil designs of gods or demons.
I will now relate what hath been written concerning us in the Chaldean histories, which records have a great agreement with our books in oilier things also. Berosus shall be witness to what I say: he was by birth a Chaldean, well known by the learned, on account of his publication of the Chaldean books of astronomy and philosophy among the Greeks.
The Median dynasty of Berosus at Babylon appears, by recent discoveries, to have represented those Susianian monarchs who bore sway there from B.C. 2286 to 2052. The early Median preponderance in Western Asia, if it is a fact, must have been anterior to this, and is an event which has only left traces in ethnological names and in mythological speculations.
Jensen and Zimmern render "reed." Delitzsch, I think, comes nearer the real meaning with "marsh." See Haupt's translation, Proc. Amer. Oriental Soc., 1896, p. 161. Delitzsch supplies a parallel phrase like "periods elapsed." Supplied from Damascius' extract of the work of Berosus on Babylonia. See Cory, Ancient Fragments, p. 92; Delitzsch, Babylonische Weltschöpfungsepos, p. 94.
This account of Berosus is now confirmed by the cuneiform records. The associates of Tiâmat are described in a manner that leaves no doubt as to their being the monsters referred to. We are told that Ummu-Khubur, the creator of everything, added Strong warriors, creating great serpents, Sharp of tooth, merciless in attack. With poison in place of blood, she filled their bodies.
Alexander Polyhistor quotes Berosus as saying in his book on Babylonia that the first result of the mixture of water and chaos i.e., of Apsu and Tiâmat was the production of monsters partly human, partly bestial. The winged bulls and lions that guarded the approaches to temples and palaces are illustrations of this old notion, and it is to this class of mythical beings that Lakhmu belongs.
Now as to what I have said before about the temple at Jerusalem, that it was fought against by the Babylonians, and burnt by them, but was opened again when Cyrus had taken the kingdom of Asia, shall now be demonstrated from what Berosus adds further upon that head; for thus he says in his third book: "Nabuchodonosor, after he had begun to build the forementioned wall, fell sick, and departed this life, when he had reigned forty-three years; whereupon his son Evilmerodach obtained the kingdom.
The evidence of Polyhistor and Abydenus as to the date of the foundation, representing, as it must, the testimony of Berosus upon the point, is to be preferred; and we may accept it as a fact, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the native city of St. Paul derived, if not its origin, yet, at any rate, its later splendor and magnificence, from the antagonist of Hezekiah.
The flood, which, in the version of Berosus, has grown so high as to cast the ship among the mountains of Armenia, is improved upon in the Hebrew account until it covers "all the high hills that were under the whole heaven"; and, when it begins to subside, the ark is left stranded on the summit of the highest peak, commonly identified with Ararat itself.
The "paintings in the temple of Belos," described by Berosus, were in all probability carried out in the same way. They decorated the walls of the great temple of Bel Merodach at Babylon, where "all kinds of marvellous monsters with the greatest variety in their forms" were to be seen.
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