3 Review(s)

George Smith's The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876) is one of the most important contributions to the understanding of the development of Near Eastern myth cycles ever published. This volume delivered to a shocked Victorian audience the first reports of the Babylonian Flood legend, of the Epic of Gilgamesh (then known as Izdubar), and the uncanny parallels between the Hebrew Bible and the myths and legends of Babylon. This edition is an unabridged republication of the 1876 first edition of this important work, which highlights George Smith's astonishing scholarship and the amazing amount of information Smith was able to collect and publish in the first years after their discovery. It is astounding just how much Smith got right and just how fast so much became known about some of humanity's oldest literature.