(1) Cf. Elliot Smith, _The Ancient Egyptians_, 1911.

(2) See in particular his monograph "On the significance of
the Geographical Distribution of the Practice of
Mummification" in the _Memoirs of the Manchester Literary
and Philosophical Society_, 1915.

One weakness of this particular strand is that the Egyptians themselves
possessed no tradition of the Deluge. Indeed the annual inundation
of the Nile is not such as would give rise to a legend of
world-destruction; and in this respect it presents a striking contrast
to the Tigris and Euphrates. The ancient Egyptian's conception of his
own gentle river is reflected in the form he gave the Nile-god, for Hapi
is represented as no fierce warrior or monster. He is given a woman's
breasts as a sign of his fecundity. The nearest Egyptian parallel to
the Deluge story is the "Legend of the Destruction of Mankind", which
is engraved on the walls of a chamber in the tomb of Seti I.(1) The late
Sir Gaston Maspero indeed called it "a dry deluge myth", but his paradox
was intended to emphasize the difference as much as the parallelism
presented. It is true that in the Egyptian myth the Sun-god causes
mankind to be slain because of their impiety, and he eventually pardons
the survivors. The narrative thus betrays undoubted parallelism to
the Babylonian and Hebrew stories, so far as concerns the attempted
annihilation of mankind by the offended god, but there the resemblance
ends. For water has no part in man's destruction, and the essential
element of a Deluge story is thus absent.(2) Our new Sumerian document,
on the other hand, contains what is by far the earliest example yet
recovered of a genuine Deluge tale; and we may thus use it incidentally
to test this theory of Egyptian influence, and also to ascertain whether