given in this book will lead to the general admission of the identity of the hero I call Izdubar with the traditional Nimrod, and when this result is established I shall myself abandon the provisional name Izdubar, which cannot possibly be correct.
At the time of the opening of this story, the great city of the south of Babylonia, and the capital of this part of the country, was Uruk or Aruk, called, in the Genesis account of Nimrod, Erech. Erech was devoted to the worship of Anu, god of heaven, and his wife, the goddess Anatu, and was ruled at this time by a queen named Istar or Ishtar, who was supposed to be daughter of Anu and Anatu. Istar had been the wife of the chief of Erech, Dumuzi (the Tammuz of the Greeks), who like her was afterwards deified. On the death of Dumuzi, Ishtar had ruled at Erech, and according to the accounts had indulged in a dissolute course of life, which was the scandal of the whole country.
Here I provisionally place the first fragment of the Izdubar legends, K 3200. This fragment consists of part of the third column of a tablet, I believe of the first tablet; and it gives an account of a conquest of Erech by some enemy, which happened during the time of Istar and Izdubar. This fragment reads:—
