. Babel and Bible;. manyerrors and omissions. In the second verse Japheths oldestson is given as Gomer (mentioned also in Ezekiel xxxviii^6), and the third as Madai. While the Indo-GermanicMedes (Madai) first come within the horizon even of theAssyrians in the time of Sargon (722-705 B. C.), this isnot the case with Gimir (Gomer) until Asarhaddons time(681-668 B. C.)1 The Sapardseans were the inhabitantsof the land Saparda-u which is named in the inscriptionsof King Darius together with Cappadocia and Ionia and 1 See my paper Wo lag das Paradies? p. 245 f. Leipsic, 1881. 172 BABEL AND BIBLE. w
. Babel and Bible;. manyerrors and omissions. In the second verse Japheths oldestson is given as Gomer (mentioned also in Ezekiel xxxviii^6), and the third as Madai. While the Indo-GermanicMedes (Madai) first come within the horizon even of theAssyrians in the time of Sargon (722-705 B. C.), this isnot the case with Gimir (Gomer) until Asarhaddons time(681-668 B. C.)1 The Sapardseans were the inhabitantsof the land Saparda-u which is named in the inscriptionsof King Darius together with Cappadocia and Ionia and 1 See my paper Wo lag das Paradies? p. 245 f. Leipsic, 1881. 172 BABEL AND BIBLE. was probably also in Asia Minor; and these people appearon the clay tablets (Sm. 2005, K. 4668 and others) to-gether with the Girmirraeans, Medes, and Mannaeans asenemies of Asarhaddon. Thus a little light falls on theland Sepharad mentioned by the prophet Obadiah (i. 20)to which the people of Jerusalem were taken as captivesprobably by Ionian merchants or pirates. To rightly appreciate the actual facts, we must take. Fig. 82. Silver Vase of Entemena. Original in the Louvre. Fig. 83. Bronze Ox in the Royal Museum at Berlin. into account that it was a Hebrew author who gave Shemthe rank of first born of the father of post-diluvian human-ity. But we may not always persist in slavish dependenceupon such a shortsighted representation of the history ofcivilisation which is constantly fettered by Semitic preju-dices ; but rather must we be thankful for the enormousexpansion of our knowledge that has been brought about BABEL AND BIBLE. 173 by excavations in Babylonia and Assyria, in the realm ofthe earliest history of mankind. The Old Testamentwriters had no presentiment of those people, for instance,who preceded the later Indo-Germanic Medes (the descen-dants of Japheth) or the Semites in Mesopotamia. Thegenealogy in Genesis takes no note of the non-SemiticElamites whose dominion extended for a time over Baby-lon as far as Canaan in the third millennium before Christ,and
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