Budge_Ethiopic_Alexander

BABYLONIAN SOURCES OF THE ALEXANDER STORY. XLIII
which appear in the narratives of "eye witnesses"
at sea, but the genuine ancestor seems to have
existed in Babylonia, long before Alexander march-
ed through the country, under the name of The dragon
Tiamat. According to a cuneiform text this '^"^
monster was nearly two hundred and fifty miles
long, and about five miles wide, and her jaws
were more than a mile long; her windings occu-
pied a length of nearly seventy miles;' although
no measurements are given of the sea monster
which Alexander saw, there is little doubt that
the fame of Tiamat had reached the early writers
of the Alexander story. In it too we may see
the Leviathan of the Hebrew Scriptures.^
From the above facts it will be seen that many Babylonian
parallels may be drawn between the legends of^e'l^e^an-
Alexander and those of early Babylonian and'''"'
Assyrian heroes, and there is little doubt that if
we had in our hands the whole of the ancient
legendary literature of Mesopotamia we should be
able to prove this statement more fully. Given
a brave, fearless soldier marching with an army
through a certain country for conquest and pleasure,
it seems that the same stories must be told of
his progress and exploits, whether he be Etanna,
Gilgamish, Nimrod, or Alexander. With the ad-
vance of time the first tolerably accurate descrip-
tions of his life will be first distorted and then
' Zimmern, op. at, p. 418.
' Job. iii. 8; xl. 25; Psalm civ. 26; Isaiah xxvii. i.
^^°''^^