El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1912-04-25
"COJ1fuSiOn of Tongue"

was blue. Mercury's color, and each OF It's
sides measured 70 feet A cube OF Is feet
form~C the seventh story, and was covered
with plates Of silver, in honor Of the moon
Marduk was the god Of Light In the
beginning Of things he battled with the
dragon Of Chaos; and, to effect the capture
of that frightful creature he fastened
gigantic ct to the four corners Of creation
north, south, east and west Then he
pierced the heart Of the dragon with his
lance and cut the beast in two. OF one
half he lade the roof Of Heaven, and Of
the other half made the earth Heaven he
inlaid with the sun, moon and stars, and
the Earth he covered with plants and AMI
mails. Finally, he made the first man and
woman out Of clay and celestial blood.
The BabylOnians divided history into two
great De iOds-before the Flood and after.
Theirs was land of fOOds-lOW and bOr-
dering on greet rivers flowing into the sea
Just what happened to it on the occasion
Of the stored DeIugc may be known pretty
well by q cent occurrence OF the same
kind, so short time ago as the year 1876.
In that year a tornado gathered in the
Bay Of Bengal and, amid the crash Of thun-
der and violence so terrific as to dismasr
shi-; distant nearly 200 miles, approached
the delta Of the Gauges, met the ebbing
tide and, engulhng it in its own huge tidal
wave, hurled an ocean Of water over al
drowning 215,O0O human beings, and losing
its strength only when it broke against the
foothills Of the mountains far beyond.
book found in the library Of Sardanap-
alus, at Nineveh, written on clay tablets
about 1000 B. c.. gives a description Of the
Deluge which closely corresponds to the
above The sea plays the principal part IN
1t, and the Ark is cast back upon spur Of
mountain
Noah in this case IS called Xisuthros
and is stated to have received from the god
OF the watery deep a command to build a
ship Of a certain pattern and dimensions,
to coat it with pitch, and to put his family
aboard. with the seeds OF all living
things" He enters the vessel, closes the
door, an the craft goes adrift on the
waves On seventh day he releases a
dove. which. flying thither and yOn and
finding no resting place, returns. Then a
swallow is sent forth with like result, and
finally a raven, which does not come back
Xisuthrc- thereupOn abandons the vessel
and Offe-4 sacrifices on the summit OF the
mountain.
It is easy to understand that this story
must have travelled to Canaan long before
the Isr- Iites settled in that country.
Canaan was Babylonian domain; and We
find HeZekiah. the Jewish King. paving
tribute to the Assyrian monarch Sennach-
crib Oh. Kings, xviii, 14), at a town called
Lachish, in southern Palestine. Curiously
enough, a sculptured bas-Telief on Sargon's
palace in Nineveh. which has been dug I'D.
shows Hezekiah in the act OF doing this
very thing, Sennacherib being enthroned
before d tent An accompanying fnscrip-
ton in uniform characters identifies the
personages concerned.
The question still remains, from what
source did the prehistoric Mayas OF Yuca-
tan obtain their ideas for the construction
OF temple-crOwned pyramids? Inasmuch
as these people certainly did not originals
in America, they must have brought their
notions Of architecture from somewhere
else. Their are many well known reasons
for believing they were Asiatic By ORIGIN.
Such being the case. this close similarity
Of their pyramids to those OF ancient Baby
lon would seem obviously to indicate As
syria as the earlier home OF their raca.
Furthermore. they had and their descend
ants to-day still possess. traditions Of a
Deluge and a Tower Of Babel-the story OF
-e 'et-er being substantially the same as
that which has come down to US in thu
Bible.
IN at Teotihuacan, Mexico, Show
ing Its Extraordinary Resem.
blapce to the Tower of Babel
and Other Similar Buildings
IN Babylonia. as Reconstructed
from, Tbasv- P1vsDs