Book Description

Ziusudu is here warned that a flood is to be sent 'to destroy the seed of mankind'... The destruction of mankind had been decreed in 'the assembly [of the gods]' and would be carried out by the commands of Anu and Enlil... -from "The Piety of Ziusudu" The interconnected influences of different traditions of ancient mythology on one another consumed the archaeological efforts of the late 19th and early 20th century, though much work in Britain and Europe was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. This fascinating 1918 study-adapted from a series of lectures delivered to the British Academy in 1916-rings with the frustration of its British author, a renowned classical scholar, as he incorporates the then-latest research from American academics into his intriguing analysis of the impact of Babylonian and Egyptian mythology on the foundations of Judaism. Drawing on newly discovered five-thousand-year-old texts, he weaves a narrative of the folklore of human origins unbroken from our earliest collective memories, and his comparison of the creation and deluge stories of a range of ancient Old World civilizations remains compelling today. British classical scholar LEONARD W. KING (1869-1919) was Assistant Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum and professor of Assyrian and Babylonian archaeology at the University of London, King's College. He also wrote Babylonian Magic and Sorcery (1896) and A History of Sumer and Akkad (1910).