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Updated: June 15, 2025
For the Pentateuchal story is indubitably a patchwork, composed of fragments of at least two, different and partly discrepant, narratives, quilted together in such an inartistic fashion that the seams remain conspicuous. And, in the matter of circumstantial exaggeration, it in some respects excels even the second-hand legend of Berosus.
The existence of these associates shows that the 'epic' does not aim to account for the real origin of things, but only for the origin of the order of the universe. Through Alexander Polyhistor, as already mentioned, we obtain a satisfactory description of this period of chaos as furnished by Berosus.
He made war upon the southern kingdom, and with such success that he felt himself entitled to claim its conquuest, and to inscribe upon his signet-seal the proud title of "Conqueror of Babylonia." This is probably the exact event of which Berosus spoke as occurring 526 years before Phul or Pul, and which Herodotus regarded as marking the commencement of the Assyrian "Empire."
Again, it would be fatal to all conversation, supposing the dinner at last to take place; for the Amphitryon, on the one hand, has already exploited everything he knows and does not know, from Sanconiathon, Manetho, and Berosus, to Dr. Hickok, and the guests but the thought of their united efforts is too appalling. Cushing's system will ever become popular.
With the consideration of these two events the military history of his reign will terminate. The conquest of Egypt by Esar-haddon, though concealed from Herodotus, and not known even to Diodorus, was no secret to the more learned Greeks, who probably found an account of the expedition in the great work of Berosus.
It is necessary, then, to discard as unhistorical the names and numbers assigned to his first dynasty by Berosus, and to retain from this part of his scheme nothing but the fact which he lays down of an ancient Chaldaean dynasty having ruled in Babylonia, prior to a conquest, which led to the establishment of a second dynasty, termed by him Median.
But stories, like Madeira, acquire a heightened flavour with time and travel; and the version of Berosus is characterised by those circumstantial improbabilities which habitually gather round the legend of a legend. The later narrator knows the exact day of the month on which the flood began.
The remaining monumental kings belong almost certainly to the fifth, or Arabian, dynasty of Berosus, to which he assigns the period of 245 years from about B.C. 1546 to B.C. 1300. That the list comprises as many as fifteen names, whereas Berosus speaks of nine Arabian kings only, need not surprise us, since it is not improbable that Berosus may have omitted kings who reigned for less than a year.
The inverted form, Khasis-adra, was distorted into Xisusthros, which appears in the writers dependent upon Berosus as the name of the hero of the Babylonian deluge. See, e.g., Cory's Ancient Fragments, pp. 52, 54, 60, etc. I.e., mortal. I.e., immortal. Cf. Gen. iii. 22. The Hebrew account, it must be remembered, consists of two narratives dovetailed into one another.
The probability would seem to be that Berosus has been misreported, his numbers having suffered corruption during their passage through so many hands, and being in this instance quite untrustworthy.
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