Cuneiform studies have come far since 1872, when George Smith, assistant keeper in the Oriental Department of the British Museum, engrossed the December meeting of the Society of Biblical Archaeology with a paper on 'The Chaldean Account of the Deluge'. Among the tablets recovered from Assurbanipal's library at Nineveh he had found an account of a world-wide flood which resembled the narrative of Genesis not only in its main outline but even in detail. His revelations created such a sensation that the Daily Telegraph promptly offered one thousand guineas to support further excavation under his direction, and the British Museum thus acquired not only further portions of the Deluge narrative but also the text which Smith styled 'The Chaldean Account of Genesis', the Creation Epic commonly known from its opening words as Enuma Elish ('When on high').

LRB 8 November 1990 | PDF Download