Thus, then, we have no formal and direct proof that the tradition of the original transgression, as told in our Holy Scriptures, formed part of the cycle of the records of Babylon and Chaldea, respecting the origin of the world and of man. Neither do we find any allusion to the subject in the fragments of Berosus. But, despite this silence, a similarity between Chaldean and Hebrew traditions on this point, as upon others, has so great a probability in its favour as almost to amount to a certainty. Further on we shall return to certain very valid proofs of the existence of myths relating to a terrestrial paradise in the sacred traditions of the lower basin of the Euphrates and Tigris. But it behoves us to dwell for a few moments on the representations of the sacred and mysterious plant, guarded by celestial genii, that Assyrian bas-reliefs so often display. Up to the present time no text has been found to elucidate the meaning of the symbol, and we have to deplore a want, that no doubt will one of these days be met by the discovery of new documents. But the study of these figured monuments alone renders it impossible to doubt the high importance of this representation of the sacred plant. Whether it appear alone, or, as sometimes happens, worshipped by royal figures, or, as I have just said, guarded by genii in an attitude of adoration, it is incontrovertibly one of the loftiest of religious emblems; and what places this character beyond doubt is, that we often see above the plant the symbolic image of the Supreme God, the winged disc--surmounted or not by a human bust. The cylinders of Babylonian or Assyrian workmanship present this emblem no less frequently than the bas-reliefs of Assyrian palaces, and always under the same conditions, and evidently attributing to it an equal importance.
It is very difficult to avoid comparing this mysterious plant, in which everything points out a religious symbol of the first order, with that famous tree of life and knowledge which plays so prominent a part in the narrative of the earliest transgression. All paradisiacal traditions make mention of it; the tradition in Genesis, which sometimes seems to admit of two trees, one of life and one of knowledge, sometimes of one tree only combining both attributes, and standing in the midst of the garden; the Indian tradition, which supposes four plants on the four counterforts of Mount Méru; and, lastly, that of the Iranians, which sometimes treats of a single tree springing from the very middle of the holy spring of water, Ardvî-çûra, in Airyana-Vædja, and sometimes of two, corresponding exactly to those of the Biblical Eden. This similarity is so much the more natural, that we find the Sabians or Mendaites, an almost pagan sect, dwelling in the environs of Bussorah, who retain a great number of Babylonian religious traditions, to be also conversant with the tree of life, which they designate in their Scriptures as _Setarvan_, "that which shades." The most ancient name of Babylon in the idiom of the Ante-Semitic population, _Tin-tir-kî_, signifies "the place of the tree of life." Finally, the representation of the sacred plant which we assimilate with that of the Edenic traditions, appears as a symbol of life eternal on those curious sarcophagi, in enamelled clay, belonging to the latest period of Chaldean civilization, after Alexander the Great, which have been discovered at Warkah, the ancient Uruk.