Читать книгу A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East онлайн

138 страница из 236

Kronos stood over him in his sleep and said that on the fifteenth of the month of Daisios mankind would be destroyed by a flood. He ordered him to deposit the beginnings and middles and ends of all writings under ground, in the city of the Sun, Sippar. (…) After the flood had come and straightaway ended, Xisouthros (…) disembarked with his wife and daughter, and the captain, and made obeisance to the earth, erected an altar and sacrificed to the gods. Then he disappeared together with those who had disembarked from the ship. When Xisouthros and the others did not come back in, those who had remained on the ship disembarked and searched for him, calling out his name. Xisouthros himself they no longer saw, but there was a voice from the air telling them that they should be god-fearing. For Xisouthros, it said, had gone to live with the gods because of his piety. (…) The voice also told them that they would go back to Babylon and that they were fated to fetch the writings from Sippar and hand them down to humankind. (…) So, when they went to Babylon, they dug up the writings from Sippar. After that, they founded many cities and temples, and settled Babylon anew.