1 (return)
[ In May 1849 the Tigris at
Bagdad rose 22-1/2 feet—5 feet above its usual rise—and nearly
swept away the town. In 1831 a similarly exceptional flood did immense
damage, destroying 7000 houses. See Loftus, Chaldea and Susiana, p.
7.]
2 (return)
[ See the instructive chapter
on Hasisadra's flood in Suess, Das Antlitz der Erde, Abth. I. Only
fifteen years ago a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal gave rise to a flood
which covered 3000 square miles of the delta of the Ganges, 3 to 45 feet
deep, destroying 100,000 people, innumerable cattle, houses, and trees. It
broke inland on the rising ground of Tipperah, and may have swept a vessel
from the sea that far, though I do not know that it did.]
3 (return)
[ See Cernik's maps in Petermanns
Mittheilungen, Erganzungashefte 44 and 45, 1875-76.]
4 (return)
[ I have not cited the
dimensions given to the ships in most translations of the story, because
there appears to be a doubt about them. Haupt (Keilinschriftliche
Sindfluth-Bericht, p. 13: says that the figures are illegible.)]
5 (return)
[ It is probable that a slow
movement of elevation of the land at one time contributed to the result—perhaps
does so still.]
6 (return)
[ At a comparatively recent
period, the littoral margin of the Persian Gulf extended certainly 250
miles farther to the northwest than the present embouchure of the Shatt-el
Arab. (Loftus, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 1853,
p. 251.) The actual extent of the marine deposit inland cannot be defined,
as it is covered by later fluviatile deposits.]
7 (return)
[ Tiele (Babylonisch-Assyrische
Geschicthe, pp. 572-3) has some very just remarks on this aspect of
the epos.]
8 (return)
[ In the second volume of the
History of the Euphrates, p. 637 Col. Chesney gives a very
interesting account of the simple and rapid manner in which the people
about Tekrit and in the marshes of Lemlum construct large barges, and make
them water-tight with bitumen. Doubtless the practice is extremely ancient
and as Colonel Chesney suggests, may possibly have furnished the
conception of Noah's ark. But it is one thing to build a barge 44ft. long
by 11ft. wide and 4ft. deep in the way described; and another to get a
vessel of ten times the dimensions, so constructed, to hold together.]
9 (return)
[ "Es ist nichts
schrecklicher als eine thatige Unwissenheit," Maximen und Reflexionen,
iii.]
10 (return)
[ The well-known
difficulties connected with this case have recently been carefully
discussed by Mr. Bell in the Transactions of the Geological Society
of Glasgow.]
11 (return)
[ An instructive parallel
is exhibited by the "Great Basin" of North America. See the remarkable
memoir on Lake Bonneville by Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the United
States Geological Survey, just published.]
12 (return)
[ It is true that
earthquakes are common enough, but they are incompetent to produce such
changes as those which have taken place.]
13 (return)
[ See Teller, Geologische
Beschreibung des sud-ostlichen Thessalien; Denkschriften d. Akademie
der Wissenschaften, Wien, Bd. xl. p. 199.]
14 (return)
[ Dr. Langenbeck, Die
Theorien uber die Entstehung der Korallen-Inseln und Korallen-Riffe
(p. 13), 1890.]
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