In the opening words of the warning to Ziusudu, with its prominent repetition of the word "wall", we must evidently trace some connexion with the puzzling words of Ea in the Gilgamesh Epic, when he begins his warning to Ut-napishtim. The warnings, as given in the two versions, are printed below in parallel columns for comparison.(1) The Gilgamesh Epic, after relating how the great gods in Shuruppak had decided to send a deluge, continues as follows in the right-hand column:

SUMERIAN VERSION SEMITIC VERSION

For (. . .) . . . the gods a Nin-igi-azag,(2) the god Ea, . . . (. . .); sat with them, Ziusudu standing at its side And he repeated their word to heard (. . .): the house of reeds: "At the wall on my left side take "Reed-hut, reed-hut! Wall, thy stand and (. . .), wall! At the wall I will speak a word O reed-hut, hear! O wall, to thee (. . .). understand! O my devout one . . . (. . .), Thou man of Shuruppak, son of Ubar-Tutu, By our hand(?) a flood(3) . . . Pull down thy house, build a (. . .) will be (sent). ship, To destroy the seed of mankind Leave thy possessions, take (. . .) heed for thy life, Is the decision, the word of the Abandon thy property, and save assembly(4) (of the gods) thy life. The commands of Anu (and) And bring living seed of every En(lil . . .) kind into the ship. Its kingdom, its rule (. . .) As for the ship, which thou shalt build, To his (. . .)" Of which the measurements shall be carefully measured, (. . .) Its breadth and length shall correspond. (. . .) In the deep shalt thou immerse it."

(1) Col. IV, ll. 1 ff. are there compared with Gilg. Epic, XI, ll. 19-31.

(2) Nin-igi-azag, "The Lord of Clear Vision", a title borne by Enki, or Ea, as God of Wisdom.

(3) The Sumerian term amaru, here used for the flood and rendered as "rain-storm" by Dr. Poebel, is explained in a later syllabary as the equivalent of the Semitic-Babylonian word abubu (cf. Meissner, S.A.I., No. 8909), the term employed for the flood both in the early Semitic version of the Atrakhasis story dated in Ammizaduga's reign and in the Gilgamesh Epic. The word abubu is often conventionally rendered "deluge", but should be more accurately translated "flood". It is true that the tempests of the Sumerian Version probably imply rain; and in the Gilgamesh Epic heavy rain in the evening begins the flood and is followed at dawn by a thunderstorm and hurricane. But in itself the term abubu implies flood, which could take place through a rise of the rivers unaccompanied by heavy local rain. The annual rainfall in Babylonia to-day is on an average only about 8 in., and there have been years in succession when the total rainfall has not exceeded 4 in.; and yet the abubu is not a thing of the past.

(4) The word here rendered "assembly" is the Semitic loan- word buhrum, in Babylonian puhrum, the term employed for the "assembly" of the gods both in the Babylonian Creation Series and in the Gilgamesh Epic. Its employment in the Sumerian Version, in place of its Sumerian equivalent ukkin, is an interesting example of Semitic influence. Its occurrence does not necessarily imply the existence of a recognized Semitic Version at the period our text was inscribed. The substitution of buhrum for ukkin in the text may well date from the period of Hammurabi, when we may assume that the increased importance of the city-council was reflected in the general adoption of the Semitic term (cf. Poebel, Hist. Texts, p. 53).

In the Semitic Version Ut-napishtim, who tells the story in the first person, then says that he "understood", and that, after assuring Ea that he would carry out his commands, he asked how he was to explain his action to "the city, the people, and the elders"; and the god told him what to say. Then follows an account of the building of the ship, introduced by the words "As soon as the dawn began to break". In the Sumerian Version the close of the warning, in which the ship was probably referred to, and the lines prescribing how Ziusudu carried out the divine instructions are not preserved.

It will be seen that in the passage quoted from the Semitic Version there is no direct mention of a dream; the god is represented at first as addressing his words to a "house of reeds" and a "wall", and then as speaking to Ut-napishtim himself. But in a later passage in the Epic, when Ea seeks to excuse his action to Enlil, he says that the gods' decision was revealed to Atrakhasis through a dream.(1) Dr. Poebel rightly compares the direct warning of Ut-napishtim by Ea in the passage quoted above with the equally direct warning Ziusudu receives in the Sumerian Version. But he would have us divorce the direct warning from the dream-warning, and he concludes that no less than three different versions of the story have been worked together in the Gilgamesh Epic. In the first, corresponding to that in our text, Ea communicates the gods' decision directly to Ut-napishtim; in the second he sends a dream from which Atrakhasis, "the Very Wise one", guesses the impending peril; while in the third he relates the plan to a wall, taking care that Ut-napishtim overhears him.(2) The version of Berossus, that Kronos himself appears to Xisuthros in a dream and warns him, is rejected by Dr. Poebel, who remarks that here the "original significance of the dream has already been obliterated". Consequently there seems to him to be "no logical connexion" between the dreams or dream mentioned at the close of the Third Column and the communication of the plan of the gods at the beginning of the Fourth Column of our text.(3)

(1) Cf. l. 195 f.; "I did not divulge the decision of the great gods. I caused Atrakhasis to behold a dream and thus he heard the decision of the gods."

(2) Cf. Poebel, Hist. Texts, p. 51 f. With the god's apparent subterfuge in the third of these supposed versions Sir James Frazer (Ancient Stories of a Great Flood, p. 15) not inaptly compares the well-known story of King Midas's servant, who, unable to keep the secret of the king's deformity to himself, whispered it into a hole in the ground, with the result that the reeds which grew up there by their rustling in the wind proclaimed it to the world (Ovid, Metamorphoses, xi, 174 ff.).

(3) Op. cit., p. 51; cf. also Jastrow, Heb. and Bab. Trad., p. 346.

So far from Berossus having missed the original significance of the narrative he relates, I think it can be shown that he reproduces very accurately the sense of our Sumerian text; and that the apparent discrepancies in the Semitic Version, and the puzzling references to a wall in both it and the Sumerian Version, are capable of a simple explanation. There appears to me no justification for splitting the Semitic narrative into the several versions suggested, since the assumption that the direct warning and the dream-warning must be distinguished is really based on a misunderstanding of the character of Sumerian dreams by which important decisions of the gods in council were communicated to mankind. We fortunately possess an instructive Sumerian parallel to our passage. In it the will of the gods is revealed in a dream, which is not only described in full but is furnished with a detailed interpretation; and as it seems to clear up our difficulties, it may be well to summarize its main features.

The occasion of the dream in this case was not a coming deluge but a great dearth of water in the rivers, in consequence of which the crops had suffered and the country was threatened with famine. This occurred in the reign of Gudea, patesi of Lagash, who lived some centuries before our Sumerian document was inscribed. In his own inscription(1) he tells us that he was at a loss to know by what means he might restore prosperity to his country, when one night he had a dream; and it was in consequence of the dream that he eventually erected one of the most sumptuously appointed of Sumerian temples and thereby restored his land to prosperity. Before recounting his dream he describes how the gods themselves took counsel. On the day in which destinies were fixed in heaven and earth, Enlil, the chief of the gods, and Ningirsu, the city-god of Lagash, held converse; and Enlil, turning to Ningirsu, described the sad condition of Southern Babylonia, and remarked that "the decrees of the temple Eninnu should be made glorious in heaven and upon earth", or, in other words, that Ningirsu's city-temple must be rebuilt. Thereupon Ningirsu did not communicate his orders directly to Gudea, but conveyed the will of the gods to him by means of a dream.

(1) See Thureau-Dangin, Les inscriptions de Sumer et d'Akkad, Cyl. A, pp. 134 ff., Germ. ed., pp. 88 ff.; and cf. King and Hall, Eg. and West. Asia, pp. 196 ff.

It will be noticed that we here have a very similar situation to that in the Deluge story. A conference of the gods has been held; a decision has been taken by the greatest god, Enlil; and, in consequence, another deity is anxious to inform a Sumerian ruler of that decision. The only difference is that here Enlil desires the communication to be made, while in the Deluge story it is made without his knowledge, and obviously against his wishes. So the fact that Ningirsu does not communicate directly with the patesi, but conveys his message by means of a dream, is particularly instructive. For here there can be no question of any subterfuge in the method employed, since Enlil was a consenting party.

The story goes on to relate that, while the patesi slept, a vision of the night came to him, and he beheld a man whose stature was so great that it equalled the heavens and the earth. By the diadem he wore upon his head Gudea knew that the figure must be a god. Beside the god was the divine eagle, the emblem of Lagash; his feet rested upon the whirlwind, and a lion crouched upon his right hand and upon his left. The figure spoke to the patesi, but he did not understand the meaning of the words. Then it seemed to Gudea that the Sun rose from the earth; and he beheld a woman holding in her hand a pure reed, and she carried also a tablet on which was a star of the heavens, and she seemed to take counsel with herself. While Gudea was gazing, he seemed to see a second man, who was like a warrior; and he carried a slab of lapis lazuli, on which he drew out the plan of a temple. Before the patesi himself it seemed that a fair cushion was placed, and upon the cushion was set a mould, and within the mould was a brick. And on the right hand the patesi beheld an ass that lay upon the ground. Such was the dream of Gudea, and he was troubled because he could not interpret it.(1)

(1) The resemblance its imagery bears to that of apocalyptic visions of a later period is interesting, as evidence of the latter's remote ancestry, and of the development in the use of primitive material to suit a completely changed political outlook. But those are points which do not concern our problem.

To cut the long story short, Gudea decided to seek the help of Nina, "the child of Eridu", who, as daughter of Enki, the God of Wisdom, could divine all the mysteries of the gods. But first of all by sacrifices and libations he secured the mediation of his own city-god and goddess, Ningirsu and Gatumdug; and then, repairing to Nina's temple, he recounted to her the details of his vision. When the patesi had finished, the goddess addressed him and said she would explain to him the meaning of his dream. Here, no doubt, we are to understand that she spoke through the mouth of her chief priest. And this was the interpretation of the dream. The man whose stature was so great, and whose head was that of a god, was the god Ningirsu, and the words which he uttered were an order to the patesi to rebuild the temple Eninnu. The Sun which rose from the earth was the god Ningishzida, for like the Sun he goes forth from the earth. The maiden who held the pure reed and carried the tablet with the star was the goddess Nisaba; the star was the pure star of the temple's construction, which she proclaimed. The second man, who was like a warrior, was the god Nibub; and the plan of the temple which he drew was the plan of Eninnu; and the ass that lay upon the ground was the patesi himself.(1)

(1) The symbolism of the ass, as a beast of burden, was applicable to the patesi in his task of carrying out the building of the temple.

The essential feature of the vision is that the god himself appeared to the sleeper and delivered his message in words. That is precisely the manner in which Kronos warned Xisuthros of the coming Deluge in the version of Berossus; while in the Gilgamesh Epic the apparent contradiction between the direct warning and the dream-warning at once disappears. It is true that Gudea states that he did not understand the meaning of the god's message, and so required an interpretation; but he was equally at a loss as to the identity of the god who gave it, although Ningirsu was his own city-god and was accompanied by his own familiar city-emblem. We may thus assume that the god's words, as words, were equally intelligible to Gudea. But as they were uttered in a dream, it was necessary that the patesi, in view of his country's peril, should have divine assurance that they implied no other meaning. And in his case such assurance was the more essential, in view of the symbolism attaching to the other features of his vision. That this is sound reasoning is proved by a second vision vouchsafed to Gudea by Ningirsu. For the patesi, though he began to prepare for the building of the temple, was not content even with Nina's assurance. He offered a prayer to Ningirsu himself, saying that he wished to build the temple, but had received no sign that this was the will of the god; and he prayed for a sign. Then, as the patesi lay stretched upon the ground, the god again appeared to him and gave him detailed instructions, adding that he would grant the sign for which he asked. The sign was that he should feel his side touched as by a flame,(1) and thereby he should know that he was the man chosen by Ningirsu to carry out his commands. Here it is the sign which confirms the apparent meaning of the god's words. And Gudea was at last content and built the temple.(2)

(1) Cyl. A., col. xii, l. 10 f.; cf. Thureau-Dangin, op. cit., p. 150 f., Germ. ed., p. 102 f. The word translated "side" may also be rendered as "hand"; but "side" is the more probable rendering of the two. The touching of Gudea's side (or hand) presents an interesting resemblance to the touching of Jacob's thigh by the divine wrestler at Peniel in Gen. xxxii. 24 ff. (J or JE). Given a belief in the constant presence of the unseen and its frequent manifestation, such a story as that of Peniel might well arise from an unexplained injury to the sciatic muscle, while more than one ailment of the heart or liver might perhaps suggest the touch of a beckoning god. There is of course no connexion between the Sumerian and Hebrew stories beyond their common background. It may be added that those critics who would reverse the roles of Jacob and the wrestler miss the point of the Hebrew story.

(2) Even so, before starting on the work, he took the further precautions of ascertaining that the omens were favourable and of purifying his city from all malign influence.

We may conclude, then, that in the new Sumerian Version of the Deluge we have traced a logical connexion between the direct warning to Ziusudu in the Fourth Column of the text and the reference to a dream in the broken lines at the close of the Third Column. As in the Gilgamesh Epic and in Berossus, here too the god's warning is conveyed in a dream; and the accompanying reference to conjuring by the Name of Heaven and Earth probably represents the means by which Ziusudu was enabled to verify its apparent meaning. The assurance which Gudea obtained through the priest of Nina and the sign, the priest-king Ziusudu secured by his own act, in virtue of his piety and practice of divination. And his employment of the particular class of incantation referred to, that which conjures by the Name of Heaven and Earth, is singularly appropriate to the context. For by its use he was enabled to test the meaning of Enki's words, which related to the intentions of Anu and Enlil, the gods respectively of Heaven and of Earth. The symbolical setting of Gudea's vision also finds a parallel in the reed-house and wall of the Deluge story, though in the latter case we have not the benefit of interpretation by a goddess. In the Sumerian Version the wall is merely part of the vision and does not receive a direct address from the god. That appears as a later development in the Semitic Version, and it may perhaps have suggested the excuse, put in that version into the mouth of Ea, that he had not directly revealed the decision of the gods.(1)

(1) In that case the parallel suggested by Sir James Frazer between the reed-house and wall of the Gilgamesh Epic, now regarded as a medium of communication, and the whispering reeds of the Midas story would still hold good.

The omission of any reference to a dream before the warning in the Gilgamesh Epic may be accounted for on the assumption that readers of the poem would naturally suppose that the usual method of divine warning was implied; and the text does indicate that the warning took place at night, for Gilgamesh proceeds to carry out the divine instructions at the break of day. The direct warning of the Hebrew Versions, on the other hand, does not carry this implication, since according to Hebrew ideas direct speech, as well as vision, was included among the methods by which the divine will could be conveyed to man.



V. THE FLOOD, THE ESCAPE OF THE GREAT BOAT, AND THE SACRIFICE TO THE SUN-GOD

The missing portion of the Fourth Column must have described Ziusudu's building of his great boat in order to escape the Deluge, for at the beginning of the Fifth Column we are in the middle of the Deluge itself. The column begins:

All the mighty wind-storms together blew, The flood . . . raged. When for seven days, for seven nights, The flood had overwhelmed the land When the wind-storm had driven the great boat over the mighty waters, The Sun-god came forth, shedding light over heaven and earth. Ziusudu opened the opening of the great boat; The light of the hero, the Sun-god, (he) causes to enter into the interior(?) of the great boat. Ziusudu, the king, Bows himself down before the Sun-god; The king sacrifices an ox, a sheep he slaughters(?).

The connected text of the column then breaks off, only a sign or two remaining of the following half-dozen lines. It will be seen that in the eleven lines that are preserved we have several close parallels to the Babylonian Version and some equally striking differences. While attempting to define the latter, it will be well to point out how close the resemblances are, and at the same time to draw a comparison between the Sumerian and Babylonian Versions of this part of the story and the corresponding Hebrew accounts.

Here, as in the Babylonian Version, the Flood is accompanied by hurricanes of wind, though in the latter the description is worked up in considerable detail. We there read(1) that at the appointed time the ruler of the darkness at eventide sent a heavy rain. Ut-napishtim saw its beginning, but fearing to watch the storm, he entered the interior of the ship by Ea's instructions, closed the door, and handed over the direction of the vessel to the pilot Puzur-Amurri. Later a thunder-storm and hurricane added their terrors to the deluge. For at early dawn a black cloud came up from the horizon, Adad the Storm-god thundering in its midst, and his heralds, Nabu and Sharru, flying over mountain and plain. Nergal tore away the ship's anchor, while Ninib directed the storm; the Anunnaki carried their lightning-torches and lit up the land with their brightness; the whirlwind of the Storm-god reached the heavens, and all light was turned into darkness. The storm raged the whole day, covering mountain and people with water.(2) No man beheld his fellow; the gods themselves were afraid, so that they retreated into the highest heaven, where they crouched down, cowering like dogs. Then follows the lamentation of Ishtar, to which reference has already been made, the goddess reproaching herself for the part she had taken in the destruction of her people. This section of the Semitic narrative closes with the picture of the gods weeping with her, sitting bowed down with their lips pressed together.

(1) Gilg. Epic, XI, ll. 90 ff.

(2) In the Atrakhasis version, dated in the reign of Ammizaduga, Col. I, l. 5, contains a reference to the "cry" of men when Adad the Storm-god, slays them with his flood.

It is probable that the Sumerian Version, in the missing portion of its Fourth Column, contained some account of Ziusudu's entry into his boat; and this may have been preceded, as in the Gilgamesh Epic, by a reference to "the living seed of every kind", or at any rate to "the four-legged creatures of the field", and to his personal possessions, with which we may assume he had previously loaded it. But in the Fifth Column we have no mention of the pilot or of any other companions who may have accompanied the king; and we shall see that the Sixth Column contains no reference to Ziusudu's wife. The description of the storm may have begun with the closing lines of the Fourth Column, though it is also quite possible that the first line of the Fifth Column actually begins the account. However that may be, and in spite of the poetic imagery of the Semitic Babylonian narrative, the general character of the catastrophe is the same in both versions.

We find an equally close parallel, between the Sumerian and Babylonian accounts, in the duration of the storm which accompanied the Flood, as will be seen by printing the two versions together:(3)

SUMERIAN VERSION SEMITIC VERSION

When for seven days, for seven For six days and nights nights, The flood had overwhelmed the The wind blew, the flood, the land, tempest overwhelmed the land. When the wind-storm had driven When the seventh day drew near, the great boat over the the tempest, the flood, ceased mighty waters, from the battle In which it had fought like a host. The Sun-god came forth shedding Then the sea rested and was light over heaven and earth. still, and the wind-storm, the flood, ceased.

(3) Col. V, ll. 3-6 are here compared with Gilg. Epic, XI, ll. 128-32.

The two narratives do not precisely agree as to the duration of the storm, for while in the Sumerian account the storm lasts seven days and seven nights, in the Semitic-Babylonian Version it lasts only six days and nights, ceasing at dawn on the seventh day. The difference, however, is immaterial when we compare these estimates with those of the Hebrew Versions, the older of which speaks of forty days' rain, while the later version represents the Flood as rising for no less than a hundred and fifty days.

The close parallel between the Sumerian and Babylonian Versions is not, however, confined to subject-matter, but here, even extends to some of the words and phrases employed. It has already been noted that the Sumerian term employed for "flood" or "deluge" is the attested equivalent of the Semitic word; and it may now be added that the word which may be rendered "great boat" or "great ship" in the Sumerian text is the same word, though partly expressed by variant characters, which occurs in the early Semitic fragment of the Deluge story from Nippur.(1) In the Gilgamesh Epic, on the other hand, the ordinary ideogram for "vessel" or "ship"(2) is employed, though the great size of the vessel is there indicated, as in Berossus and the later Hebrew Version, by detailed measurements. Moreover, the Sumerian and Semitic verbs, which are employed in the parallel passages quoted above for the "overwhelming" of the land, are given as synonyms in a late syllabary, while in another explanatory text the Sumerian verb is explained as applying to the destructive action of a flood.(3) Such close linguistic parallels are instructive as furnishing additional proof, if it were needed, of the dependence of the Semitic-Babylonian and Assyrian Versions upon Sumerian originals.

(1) The Sumerian word is (gish)ma-gur-gur, corresponding to the term written in the early Semitic fragment, l. 8, as (isu)ma-gur-gur, which is probably to be read under its Semitized form magurgurru. In l. 6 of that fragment the vessel is referred to under the synonymous expression (isu)elippu ra-be-tu, "a great ship".

(2) i.e. (GISH)MA, the first element in the Sumerian word, read in Semitic Babylonian as elippu, "ship"; when employed in the early Semitic fragment it is qualified by the adj. ra-be-tu, "great". There is no justification for assuming, with Prof. Hilbrecht, that a measurement of the vessel was given in l. 7 of the early Semitic fragment.

(3) The Sumerian verb ur, which is employed in l. 2 of the Fifth Column in the expression ba-an-da-ab-ur-ur, translated as "raged", occurs again in l. 4 in the phrase kalam-ma ba-ur-ra, "had overwhelmed the land". That we are justified in regarding the latter phrase as the original of the Semitic i-sap-pan mata (Gilg. Epic, XI, l. 129) is proved by the equation Sum. ur-ur = Sem. sa-pa-nu (Rawlinson, W.A.I., Vol. V, pl. 42, l. 54 c) and by the explanation Sum. ur-ur = Sem. sa-ba-tu sa a-bu-bi, i.e. "ur-ur = to smite, of a flood" (Cun. Texts, Pt. XII, pl. 50, Obv., l. 23); cf. Poebel, Hist. Texts, p. 54, n. 1.

It may be worth while to pause for a moment in our study of the text, in order to inquire what kind of boat it was in which Ziusudu escaped the Flood. It is only called "a great boat" or "a great ship" in the text, and this term, as we have noted, was taken over, semitized, and literally translated in an early Semitic-Babylonian Version. But the Gilgamesh Epic, representing the later Semitic-Babylonian Version, supplies fuller details, which have not, however, been satisfactorily explained. Either the obvious meaning of the description and figures there given has been ignored, or the measurements have been applied to a central structure placed upon a hull, much on the lines of a modern "house-boat" or the conventional Noah's ark.(1) For the latter interpretation the text itself affords no justification. The statement is definitely made that the length and breadth of the vessel itself are to be the same;(2) and a later passage gives ten gar for the height of its sides and ten gar for the breadth of its deck.(3) This description has been taken to imply a square box-like structure, which, in order to be seaworthy, must be placed on a conjectured hull.

(1) Cf., e.g., Jastrow, Hebr. and Bab. Trad., p. 329.

(2) Gilg. Epic, XI, ll. 28-30.

(3) L. 58 f. The gar contained twelve cubits, so that the vessel would have measured 120 cubits each way; taking the Babylonian cubit, on the basis of Gudea's scale, at 495 mm. (cf. Thureau-Dangin, Journal Asiatique, Dix. Ser., t. XIII, 1909, pp. 79 ff., 97), this would give a length, breadth, and height of nearly 195 ft.

I do not think it has been noted in this connexion that a vessel, approximately with the relative proportions of that described in the Gilgamesh Epic, is in constant use to-day on the lower Tigris and Euphrates. A kuffah,(1) the familiar pitched coracle of Baghdad, would provide an admirable model for the gigantic vessel in which Ut-napishtim rode out the Deluge. "Without either stem or stern, quite round like a shield"—so Herodotus described the kuffah of his day;2() so, too, is it represented on Assyrian slabs from Nineveh, where we see it employed for the transport of heavy building material;(3) its form and structure indeed suggest a prehistoric origin. The kuffah is one of those examples of perfect adjustment to conditions of use which cannot be improved. Any one who has travelled in one of these craft will agree that their storage capacity is immense, for their circular form and steeply curved side allow every inch of space to be utilized. It is almost impossible to upset them, and their only disadvantage is lack of speed. For their guidance all that is required is a steersman with a paddle, as indicated in the Epic. It is true that the larger kuffah of to-day tends to increase in diameter as compared to height, but that detail might well be ignored in picturing the monster vessel of Ut-napishtim. Its seven horizontal stages and their nine lateral divisions would have been structurally sound in supporting the vessel's sides; and the selection of the latter uneven number, though prompted doubtless by its sacred character, is only suitable to a circular craft in which the interior walls would radiate from the centre. The use of pitch and bitumen for smearing the vessel inside and out, though unusual even in Mesopotamian shipbuilding, is precisely the method employed in the kuffah's construction.

(1) Arab. kuffah, pl. kufaf; in addition to its common use for the Baghdad coracle, the word is also employed for a large basket.

(2) Herodotus, I, 194.

(3) The kuffah is formed of wicker-work coated with bitumen. Some of those represented on the Nineveh sculptures appear to be covered with skins; and Herodotus (I, 94) states that "the boats which come down the river to Babylon are circular and made of skins." But his further description shows that he is here referred to the kelek or skin-raft, with which he has combined a description of the kuffah. The late Sir Henry Rawlinson has never seen or heard of a skin-covered kuffah on either the Tigris or Euphrates, and there can be little doubt that bitumen was employed for their construction in antiquity, as it is to-day. These craft are often large enough to carry five or six horses and a dozen men.

We have no detailed description of Ziusudu's "great boat", beyond the fact that it was covered in and had an opening, or light-hole, which could be closed. But the form of Ut-napishtim's vessel was no doubt traditional, and we may picture that of Ziusudu as also of the kuffah type, though smaller and without its successor's elaborate internal structure. The gradual development of the huge coracle into a ship would have been encouraged by the Semitic use of the term "ship" to describe it; and the attempt to retain something of its original proportions resulted in producing the unwieldy ark of later tradition.(1)

(1) The description of the ark is not preserved from the earlier Hebrew Version (J), but the latter Hebrew Version (P), while increasing the length of the vessel, has considerably reduced its height and breadth. Its measurements are there given (Gen. vi. 15) as 300 cubits in length, 50 cubits in breadth, and 30 cubits in height; taking the ordinary Hebrew cubit at about 18 in., this would give a length of about 450 ft., a breadth of about 75 ft., and a height of about 45 ft. The interior stories are necessarily reduced to three. The vessel in Berossus measures five stadia by two, and thus had a length of over three thousand feet and a breadth of more than twelve hundred.

We will now return to the text and resume the comparison we were making between it and the Gilgamesh Epic. In the latter no direct reference is made to the appearance of the Sun-god after the storm, nor is Ut-napishtim represented as praying to him. But the sequence of events in the Sumerian Version is very natural, and on that account alone, apart from other reasons, it may be held to represent the original form of the story. For the Sun-god would naturally reappear after the darkness of the storm had passed, and it would be equally natural that Ziusudu should address himself to the great light-god. Moreover, the Gilgamesh Epic still retains traces of the Sumerian Version, as will be seen from a comparison of their narratives,(1) the Semitic Version being quoted from the point where the hurricane ceased and the sea became still.

(1) Col. V, ll. 7-11 are here compared with Gilg. Epic, XI, ll. 133-9.

SUMERIAN VERSION SEMITIC VERSION

When I looked at the storm, the uproar had ceased, And all mankind was turned into clay; In place of fields there was a swamp. Ziusudu opened the opening of I opened the opening (lit. the great boat; "hole"), and daylight fell upon my countenance. The light of the hero, the Sun- god, (he) causes to enter into the interior(?) of the great boat. Ziusudu, the king, Bows himself down before the I bowed myself down and sat down Sun-god; weeping; The king sacrifices an ox, a Over my countenance flowed my sheep he slaughters(?). tears. I gazed upon the quarters (of the world)—all(?) was sea.

It will be seen that in the Semitic Version the beams of the Sun-god have been reduced to "daylight", and Ziusudu's act of worship has become merely prostration in token of grief.

Both in the Gilgamesh Epic and in Berossus the sacrifice offered by the Deluge hero to the gods follows the episode of the birds, and it takes place on the top of the mountain after the landing from the vessel. It is hardly probable that two sacrifices were recounted in the Sumerian Version, one to the Sun-god in the boat and another on the mountain after landing; and if we are right in identifying Ziusudu's recorded sacrifice with that of Ut-napishtim and Xisuthros, it would seem that, according to the Sumerian Version, no birds were sent out to test the abatement of the waters. This conclusion cannot be regarded as quite certain, inasmuch as the greater part of the Fifth Column is waning. We have, moreover, already seen reason to believe that the account on our tablet is epitomized, and that consequently the omission of any episode from our text does not necessarily imply its absence from the original Sumerian Version which it follows. But here at least it is clear that nothing can have been omitted between the opening of the light-hole and the sacrifice, for the one act is the natural sequence of the other. On the whole it seems preferable to assume that we have recovered a simpler form of the story.

As the storm itself is described in a few phrases, so the cessation of the flood may have been dismissed with equal brevity; the gradual abatement of the waters, as attested by the dove, the swallow, and the raven, may well be due to later elaboration or to combination with some variant account. Under its amended form the narrative leads naturally up to the landing on the mountain and the sacrifice of thanksgiving to the gods. In the Sumerian Version, on the other hand, Ziusudu regards himself as saved when he sees the Sun shining; he needs no further tests to assure himself that the danger is over, and his sacrifice too is one of gratitude for his escape. The disappearance of the Sun-god from the Semitic Version was thus a necessity, to avoid an anti-climax; and the hero's attitude of worship had obviously to be translated into one of grief. An indication that the sacrifice was originally represented as having taken place on board the boat may be seen in the lines of the Gilgamesh Epic which recount how Enlil, after acquiescing in Ut-napishtim's survival of the Flood, went up into the ship and led him forth by the hand, although, in the preceding lines, he had already landed and had sacrificed upon the mountain. The two passages are hardly consistent as they stand, but they find a simple explanation of we regard the second of them as an unaltered survival from an earlier form of the story.

If the above line of reasoning be sound, it follows that, while the earlier Hebrew Version closely resembles the Gilgamesh Epic, the later Hebrew Version, by its omission of the birds, would offer a parallel to the Sumerian Version. But whether we may draw any conclusion from this apparent grouping of our authorities will be best dealt with when we have concluded our survey of the new evidence.

As we have seen, the text of the Fifth Column breaks off with Ziusudu's sacrifice to the Sun-god, after he had opened a light-hole in the boat and had seen by the god's beams that the storm was over. The missing portion of the Fifth Column must have included at least some account of the abatement of the waters, the stranding of the boat, and the manner in which Anu and Enlil became apprised of Ziusudu's escape, and consequently of the failure of their intention to annihilate mankind. For in the Sixth Column of the text we find these two deities reconciled to Ziusudu and bestowing immortality upon him, as Enlil bestows immortality upon Ut-napishtim at the close of the Semitic Version. In the latter account, after the vessel had grounded on Mount Nisir and Ut-napishtim had tested the abatement of the waters by means of the birds, he brings all out from the ship and offers his libation and sacrifice upon the mountain, heaping up reed, cedar-wood, and myrtle beneath his seven sacrificial vessels. And it was by this act on his part that the gods first had knowledge of his escape. For they smelt the sweet savour of the sacrifice, and "gathered like flies over the sacrificer".(1)

(1) Gilg. Epic, XI, l. 162.

It is possible in our text that Ziusudu's sacrifice in the boat was also the means by which the gods became acquainted with his survival; and it seems obvious that the Sun-god, to whom it was offered, should have continued to play some part in the narrative, perhaps by assisting Ziusudu in propitiating Anu and Enlil. In the Semitic-Babylonian Version, the first deity to approach the sacrifice is Belit-ili or Ishtar, who is indignant with Enlil for what he has done. When Enlil himself approaches and sees the ship he is filled with anger against the gods, and, asking who has escaped, exclaims that no man must live in the destruction. Thereupon Ninib accuses Ea, who by his pleading succeeds in turning Enlil's purpose. He bids Enlil visit the sinner with his sin and lay his transgression on the transgressor; Enlil should not again send a deluge to destroy the whole of mankind, but should be content with less wholesale destruction, such as that wrought by wild beasts, famine, and plague. Finally he confesses that it was he who warned Ziusudu of the gods' decision by sending him a dream. Enlil thereupon changes his intention, and going up into the ship, leads Ut-napishtim forth. Though Ea's intervention finds, of course, no parallel in either Hebrew version, the subject-matter of his speech is reflected in both. In the earlier Hebrew Version Yahweh smells the sweet savour of Noah's burnt offering and says in his heart he will no more destroy every living creature as he had done; while in the later Hebrew Version Elohim, after remembering Noah and causing the waters to abate, establishes his covenant to the same effect, and, as a sign of the covenant, sets his bow in the clouds.

In its treatment of the climax of the story we shall see that the Sumerian Version, at any rate in the form it has reached us, is on a lower ethical level than the Babylonian and Hebrew Versions. Ea's argument that the sinner should bear his own sin and the transgressor his own transgression in some measure forestalls that of Ezekiel;(1) and both the Hebrew Versions represent the saving of Noah as part of the divine intention from the beginning. But the Sumerian Version introduces the element of magic as the means by which man can bend the will of the gods to his own ends. How far the details of the Sumerian myth at this point resembled that of the Gilgamesh Epic it is impossible to say, but the general course of the story must have been the same. In the latter Enlil's anger is appeased, in the former that of Anu and Enlil; and it is legitimate to suppose that Enki, like Ea, was Ziusudu's principal supporter, in view of the part he had already taken in ensuring his escape.

(1) Cf. Ezek. xviii, passim, esp. xviii. 20.



VI. THE PROPITIATION OF THE ANGRY GODS, AND ZIUSUDU'S IMMORTALITY

The presence of the puzzling lines, with which the Sixth Column of our text opens, was not explained by Dr. Poebel; indeed, they would be difficult to reconcile with his assumption that our text is an epic pure and simple. But if, as is suggested above, we are dealing with a myth in magical employment, they are quite capable of explanation. The problem these lines present will best be stated by giving a translation of the extant portion of the column, where they will be seen with their immediate context in relation to what follows them:

"By the Soul of Heaven, by the soul of Earth, shall ye conjure him, That with you he may . . . ! Anu and Enlil by the Soul of Heaven, by the Soul of Earth, shall ye conjure, And with you will he . . . !

"The niggilma of the ground springs forth in abundance(?)!" Ziusudu, the king, Before Anu and Enlil bows himself down. Life like (that of) a god he gives to him, An eternal soul like (that of) a god he creates for him. At that time Ziusudu, the king, The name of the niggilma (named) "Preserver of the Seed of Mankind".

In a . . . land,(1) the land(1) of Dilmun(?), they caused him to dwell.

(1) Possibly to be translated "mountain". The rendering of the proper name as that of Dilmun is very uncertain. For the probable identification of Dilmun with the island of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf, cf. Rawlinson, Journ. Roy. As. Soc., 1880, pp. 20 ff.; and see further, Meissner, Orient. Lit- Zeit., XX. No. 7, col. 201 ff.

The first two lines of the column are probably part of the speech of some deity, who urges the necessity of invoking or conjuring Anu and Enlil "by the Soul of Heaven, by the Soul of Earth", in order to secure their support or approval. Now Anu and Enlil are the two great gods who had determined on mankind's destruction, and whose wrath at his own escape from death Ziusudu must placate. It is an obvious inference that conjuring "by the Soul of Heaven" and "by the Soul of Earth" is either the method by which Ziusudu has already succeeded in appeasing their anger, or the means by which he is here enjoined to attain that end. Against the latter alternative it is to be noted that the god is addressing more than one person; and, further, at Ziusudu is evidently already pardoned, for, so far from following the deity's advice, he immediately prostrates himself before Anu and Enlil and receives immortality. We may conjecture that at the close of the Fifth Column Ziusudu had already performed the invocation and thereby had appeased the divine wrath; and that the lines at the beginning of the Sixth Column point the moral of the story by enjoining on Ziusudu and his descendants, in other words on mankind, the advisability of employing this powerful incantation at their need. The speaker may perhaps have been one of Ziusudu's divine helpers—the Sun-god to whom he had sacrificed, or Enki who had saved him from the Flood. But it seems to me more probable that the words are uttered by Anu and Enlil themselves.(1) For thereby they would be represented as giving their own sanction to the formula, and as guaranteeing its magical efficacy. That the incantation, as addressed to Anu and Enlil, would be appropriate is obvious, since each would be magically approached through his own sphere of control.

(1) One of them may have been the speaker on behalf of both.

It is significant that at another critical point of the story we have already met with a reference to conjuring "by the Name of Heaven and Earth", the phrase occurring at the close of the Third Column after the reference to the dream or dreams. There, as we saw, we might possibly explain the passage as illustrating one aspect of Ziusudu's piety: he may have been represented as continually practising this class of divination, and in that case it would be natural enough that in the final crisis of the story he should have propitiated the gods he conjured by the same means. Or, as a more probable alternative, it was suggested that we might connect the line with Enki's warning, and assume that Ziusudu interpreted the dream-revelation of Anu and Enlil's purpose by means of the magical incantation which was peculiarly associated with them. On either alternative the phrase fits into the story itself, and there is no need to suppose that the narrative is interrupted, either in the Third or in the Sixth Column, by an address to the hearers of the myth, urging them to make the invocation on their own behalf.

On the other hand, it seems improbable that the lines in question formed part of the original myth; they may have been inserted to weld the myth more closely to the magic. Both incantation and epic may have originally existed independently, and, if so, their combination would have been suggested by their contents. For while the former is addressed to Anu and Enlil, in the latter these same gods play the dominant parts: they are the two chief creators, it is they who send the Flood, and it is their anger that must be appeased. If once combined, the further step of making the incantation the actual means by which Ziusudu achieved his own rescue and immortality would be a natural development. It may be added that the words would have been an equally appropriate addition if the incantation had not existed independently, but had been suggested by, and developed from, the myth.

In the third and eleventh lines of the column we have further references to the mysterious object, the creation of which appears to have been recorded in the First Column of the text between man's creation and that of animals. The second sign of the group composing its name was not recognized by Dr. Poebel, but it is quite clearly written in two of the passages, and has been correctly identified by Professor Barton.(1) The Sumerian word is, in fact, to be read nig-gil-ma,(2) which, when preceded by the determinative for "pot", "jar", or "bowl", is given in a later syllabary as the equivalent of the Semitic word mashkhalu. Evidence that the word mashkhalu was actually employed to denote a jar or vessel of some sort is furnished by one of the Tel el-Amarna letters which refers to "one silver mashkhalu" and "one (or two) stone mashkhalu".(3) In our text the determinative is absent, and it is possible that the word is used in another sense. Professor Barton, in both passages in the Sixth Column, gives it the meaning "curse"; he interprets the lines as referring to the removal of a curse from the earth after the Flood, and he compares Gen. viii. 21, where Yahweh declares he will not again "curse the ground for man's sake". But this translation ignores the occurrence of the word in the First Column, where the creation of the niggilma is apparently recorded; and his rendering "the seed that was cursed" in l. 11 is not supported by the photographic reproduction of the text, which suggests that the first sign in the line is not that for "seed", but is the sign for "name", as correctly read by Dr. Poebel. In that passage the niggilma appears to be given by Ziusudu the name "Preserver of the Seed of Mankind", which we have already compared to the title bestowed on Uta-napishtim's ship, "Preserver of Life". Like the ship, it must have played an important part in man's preservation, which would account not only for the honorific title but for the special record of its creation.

(1) See American Journal of Semitic Languages, Vol. XXXI, April 1915, p. 226.

(2) It is written nig-gil in the First Column.

(3) See Winckler, El-Amarna, pl. 35 f., No. 28, Obv., Col. II, l. 45, Rev., Col. I, l. 63, and Knudtzon, El-Am. Taf., pp. 112, 122; the vessels were presents from Amenophis IV to Burnaburiash.

It we may connect the word with the magical colouring of the myth, we might perhaps retain its known meaning, "jar" or "bowl", and regard it as employed in the magical ceremony which must have formed part of the invocation "by the Soul of Heaven, by the Soul of Earth". But the accompanying references to the ground, to its production from the ground, and to its springing up, if the phrases may be so rendered, suggest rather some kind of plant;(1) and this, from its employment in magical rites, may also have given its name to a bowl or vessel which held it. A very similar plant was that found and lost by Gilgamesh, after his sojourn with Ut-napishtim; it too had potent magical power and bore a title descriptive of its peculiar virtue of transforming old age to youth. Should this suggestion prove to be correct, the three passages mentioning the niggilma must be classed with those in which the invocation is referred to, as ensuring the sanction of the myth to further elements in the magic. In accordance with this view, the fifth line in the Sixth Column is probably to be included in the divine speech, where a reference to the object employed in the ritual would not be out of place. But it is to be hoped that light will be thrown on this puzzling word by further study, and perhaps by new fragments of the text; meanwhile it would be hazardous to suggest a more definite rendering.

(1) The references to "the ground", or "the earth", also tend to connect it peculiarly with Enlil. Enlil's close association with the earth, which is, of course, independently attested, is explicitly referred to in the Babylonian Version (cf. Gilg. Epic. XI, ll. 39-42). Suggested reflections of this idea have long been traced in the Hebrew Versions; cf. Gen. viii. 21 (J), where Yahweh says he will not again curse the ground, and Gen. ix. 13 (P), where Elohim speaks of his covenant "between me and the earth".

With the sixth line of the column it is clear that the original narrative of the myth is resumed.(1) Ziusudu, the king, prostrates himself before Anu and Enlil, who bestow immortality upon him and cause him to dwell in a land, or mountain, the name of which may perhaps be read as Dilmun. The close parallelism between this portion of the text and the end of the myth in the Gilgamesh Epic will be seen from the following extracts,(2) the magical portions being omitted from the Sumerian Version:

(1) It will also be noted that with this line the text again falls naturally into couplets.

(2) Col. VI, ll. 6-9 and 12 are there compared with Gilg. Epic, XI, ll. 198-205.

SUMERIAN VERSION SEMITIC VERSION

Then Enlil went up into the ship; Ziusudu, the king, He took me by the hand and led me forth. Before Anu and Enlil bows himself He brought out my wife and down. caused her to bow down at my side; He touched our brows, standing between us and blessing us: Life like (that of) a god he "Formerly was Ut-napishtim of gives to him. mankind, An eternal soul like (that of) a But now let Ut-napishtim be god he creates for him. like the gods, even us! And let Ut-napishtim dwell afar off at the mouth of the rivers!" In a . . . land, the land of(1) Then they took me and afar off, Dilmun(?), they caused him to at the mouth of the rivers, dwell. they caused me to dwell.

(1) Or, "On a mountain, the mountain of", &c.

The Sumerian Version thus apparently concludes with the familiar ending of the legend which we find in the Gilgamesh Epic and in Berossus, though it here occurs in an abbreviated form and with some variations in detail. In all three versions the prostration of the Deluge hero before the god is followed by the bestowal of immortality upon him, a fate which, according to Berossus, he shared with his wife, his daughter, and the steersman. The Gilgamesh Epic perhaps implies that Ut-napishtim's wife shared in his immortality, but the Sumerian Version mentions Ziusudu alone. In the Gilgamesh Epic Ut-napishtim is settled by the gods at the mouth of the rivers, that is to say at the head of the Persian Gulf, while according to a possible rendering of the Sumerian Version he is made to dwell on Dilmun, an island in the Gulf itself. The fact that Gilgamesh in the Epic has to cross the sea to reach Ut-napishtim may be cited in favour of the reading "Dilmun"; and the description of the sea as "the Waters of Death", if it implies more than the great danger of their passage, was probably a later development associated with Ut-napishtim's immortality. It may be added that in neither Hebrew version do we find any parallel to the concluding details of the original story, the Hebrew narratives being brought to an end with the blessing of Noah and the divine promise to, or covenant with, mankind.

Such then are the contents of our Sumerian document, and from the details which have been given it will have been seen that its story, so far as concerns the Deluge, is in essentials the same as that we already find in the Gilgamesh Epic. It is true that this earlier version has reached us in a magical setting, and to some extent in an abbreviated form. In the next lecture I shall have occasion to refer to another early mythological text from Nippur, which was thought by its first interpreter to include a second Sumerian Version of the Deluge legend. That suggestion has not been substantiated, though we shall see that the contents of the document are of a very interesting character. But in view of the discussion that has taken place in the United States over the interpretation of the second text, and of the doubts that have subsequently been expressed in some quarters as to the recent discovery of any new form of the Deluge legend, it may be well to formulate briefly the proof that in the inscription published by Dr. Poebel an early Sumerian Version of the Deluge story has actually been recovered. Any one who has followed the detailed analysis of the new text which has been attempted in the preceding paragraphs will, I venture to think, agree that the following conclusions may be drawn:

(i) The points of general resemblance presented by the narrative to that in the Gilgamesh Epic are sufficiently close in themselves to show that we are dealing with a Sumerian Version of that story. And this conclusion is further supported (a) by the occurrence throughout the text of the attested Sumerian equivalent of the Semitic word, employed in the Babylonian Versions, for the "Flood" or "Deluge", and (b) by the use of precisely the same term for the hero's "great boat", which is already familiar to us from an early Babylonian Version.

(ii) The close correspondence in language between portions of the Sumerian legend and the Gilgamesh Epic suggest that the one version was ultimately derived from the other. And this conclusion in its turn is confirmed (a) by the identity in meaning of the Sumerian and Babylonian names for the Deluge hero, which are actually found equated in a late explanatory text, and (b) by small points of difference in the Babylonian form of the story which correspond to later political and religious developments and suggest the work of Semitic redactors.

The cumulative effect of such general and detailed evidence is overwhelming, and we may dismiss all doubts as to the validity of Dr. Poebel's claim. We have indeed recovered a very early, and in some of its features a very primitive, form of the Deluge narrative which till now has reached us only in Semitic and Greek renderings; and the stream of tradition has been tapped at a point far above any at which we have hitherto approached it. What evidence, we may ask, does this early Sumerian Version offer with regard to the origin and literary history of the Hebrew Versions?

The general dependence of the biblical Versions upon the Babylonian legend as a whole has long been recognized, and needs no further demonstration; and it has already been observed that the parallelisms with the version in the Gilgamesh Epic are on the whole more detailed and striking in the earlier than in the later Hebrew Version.(1) In the course of our analysis of the Sumerian text its more striking points of agreement or divergence, in relation to the Hebrew Versions, were noted under the different sections of its narrative. It was also obvious that, in many features in which the Hebrew Versions differ from the Gilgamesh Epic, the latter finds Sumerian support. These facts confirm the conclusion, which we should naturally base on grounds of historical probability, that while the Semitic-Babylonian Versions were derived from Sumer, the Hebrew accounts were equally clearly derived from Babylon. But there are one or two pieces of evidence which are apparently at variance with this conclusion, and these call for some explanation.

(1) For details see especially Skinner, Genesis, pp. 177 ff.

Not too much significance should be attached to the apparent omission of the episode of the birds from the Sumerian narrative, in which it would agree with the later as against the earlier Hebrew Version; for, apart from its epitomized character, there is so much missing from the text that the absence of this episode cannot be regarded as established with certainty. And in any case it could be balanced by the Sumerian order of Creation of men before animals, which agrees with the earlier Hebrew Version against the later. But there is one very striking point in which our new Sumerian text agrees with both the Hebrew Versions as against the Gilgamesh Epic and Berossus; and that is in the character of Ziusudu, which presents so close a parallel to the piety of Noah. As we have already seen, the latter is due to no Hebrew idealization of the story, but represents a genuine strand of the original tradition, which is completely absent from the Babylonian Versions. But the Babylonian Versions are the media through which it has generally been assumed that the tradition of the Deluge reached the Hebrews. What explanation have we of this fact?

This grouping of Sumerian and Hebrew authorities, against the extant sources from Babylon, is emphasized by the general framework of the Sumerian story. For the literary connexion which we have in Genesis between the Creation and the Deluge narratives has hitherto found no parallel in the cuneiform texts. In Babylon and Assyria the myth of Creation and the Deluge legend have been divorced. From the one a complete epic has been evolved in accordance with the tenets of Babylonian theology, the Creation myth being combined in the process with other myths of a somewhat analogous character. The Deluge legend has survived as an isolated story in more than one setting, the principal Semitic Version being recounted to the national hero Gilgamesh, towards the close of the composite epic of his adventures which grew up around the nucleus of his name. It is one of the chief surprises of the newly discovered Sumerian Version that the Hebrew connexion of the narratives is seen to be on the lines of very primitive tradition. Noah's reputation for piety does not stand alone. His line of descent from Adam, and the thread of narrative connecting the creation of the world with its partial destruction by the Deluge, already appear in Sumerian form at a time when the city of Babylon itself had not secured its later power. How then are we to account for this correspondence of Sumerian and Hebrew traditions, on points completely wanting in our intermediate authorities, from which, however, other evidence suggests that the Hebrew narratives were derived?

At the risk of anticipating some of the conclusions to be drawn in the next lecture, it may be well to define an answer now. It is possible that those who still accept the traditional authorship of the Pentateuch may be inclined to see in this correspondence of Hebrew and Sumerian ideas a confirmation of their own hypothesis. But it should be pointed out at once that this is not an inevitable deduction from the evidence. Indeed, it is directly contradicted by the rest of the evidence we have summarized, while it would leave completely unexplained some significant features of the problem. It is true that certain important details of the Sumerian tradition, while not affecting Babylon and Assyria, have left their stamp upon the Hebrew narratives; but that is not an exhaustive statement of the case. For we have also seen that a more complete survival of Sumerian tradition has taken place in the history of Berossus. There we traced the same general framework of the narratives, with a far closer correspondence in detail. The kingly rank of Ziusudu is in complete harmony with the Berossian conception of a series of supreme Antediluvian rulers, and the names of two of the Antediluvian cites are among those of their newly recovered Sumerian prototypes. There can thus be no suggestion that the Greek reproductions of the Sumerian tradition were in their turn due to Hebrew influence. On the contrary we have in them a parallel case of survival in a far more complete form.

The inference we may obviously draw is that the Sumerian narrative continued in existence, in a literary form that closely resembled the original version, into the later historical periods. In this there would be nothing to surprise us, when we recall the careful preservation and study of ancient Sumerian religious texts by the later Semitic priesthood of the country. Each ancient cult-centre in Babylonia continued to cling to its own local traditions, and the Sumerian desire for their preservation, which was inherited by their Semitic guardians, was in great measure unaffected by political occurrences elsewhere. Hence it was that Ashur-bani-pal, when forming his library at Nineveh, was able to draw upon so rich a store of the more ancient literary texts of Babylonia. The Sumerian Version of the Deluge and of Antediluvian history may well have survived in a less epitomized form than that in which we have recovered it; and, like other ancient texts, it was probably provided with a Semitic translation. Indeed its literary study and reproduction may have continued without interruption in Babylon itself. But even if Sumerian tradition died out in the capital under the influence of the Babylonian priesthood, its re-introduction may well have taken place in Neo-Babylonian times. Perhaps the antiquarian researches of Nabonidus were characteristic of his period; and in any case the collection of his country's gods into the capital must have been accompanied by a renewed interest in the more ancient versions of the past with which their cults were peculiarly associated. In the extant summary from Berossus we may possibly see evidence of a subsequent attempt to combine with these more ancient traditions the continued religious dominance of Marduk and of Babylon.

Our conclusion, that the Sumerian form of the tradition did not die out, leaves the question as to the periods during which Babylonian influence may have acted upon Hebrew tradition in great measure unaffected; and we may therefore postpone its further consideration to the next lecture. To-day the only question that remains to be considered concerns the effect of our new evidence upon the wider problem of Deluge stories as a whole. What light does it throw on the general character of Deluge stories and their suggested Egyptian origin?

One thing that strikes me forcibly in reading this early text is the complete absence of any trace or indication of astrological motif. It is true that Ziusudu sacrifices to the Sun-god; but the episode is inherent in the story, the appearance of the Sun after the storm following the natural sequence of events and furnishing assurance to the king of his eventual survival. To identify the worshipper with his god and to transfer Ziusudu's material craft to the heavens is surely without justification from the simple narrative. We have here no prototype of Ra sailing the heavenly ocean. And the destructive flood itself is not only of an equally material and mundane character, but is in complete harmony with its Babylonian setting.

In the matter of floods the Tigris and Euphrates present a striking contrast to the Nile. It is true that the life-blood of each country is its river-water, but the conditions of its use are very different, and in Mesopotamia it becomes a curse when out of control. In both countries the river-water must be used for maturing the crops. But while the rains of Abyssinia cause the Nile to rise between August and October, thus securing both summer and winter crops, the melting snows of Armenia and the Taurus flood the Mesopotamian rivers between March and May. In Egypt the Nile flood is gentle; it is never abrupt, and the river gives ample warning of its rise and fall. It contains just enough sediment to enrich the land without choking the canals; and the water, after filling its historic basins, may when necessary be discharged into the falling river in November. Thus Egypt receives a full and regular supply of water, and there is no difficulty in disposing of any surplus. The growth in such a country of a legend of world-wide destruction by flood is inconceivable.

In Mesopotamia, on the other hand, the floods, which come too late for the winter crops, are followed by the rainless summer months; and not only must the flood-water be controlled, but some portion of it must be detained artificially, if it is to be of use during the burning months of July, August, and September, when the rivers are at their lowest. Moreover, heavy rain in April and a warm south wind melting the snow in the hills may bring down such floods that the channels cannot contain them; the dams are then breached and the country is laid waste. Here there is first too much water and then too little.

The great danger from flood in Babylonia, both in its range of action and in its destructive effect, is due to the strangely flat character of the Tigris and Euphrates delta.(1) Hence after a severe breach in the Tigris or Euphrates, the river after inundating the country may make itself a new channel miles away from the old one. To mitigate the danger, the floods may be dealt with in two ways—by a multiplication of canals to spread the water, and by providing escapes for it into depressions in the surrounding desert, which in their turn become centres of fertility. Both methods were employed in antiquity; and it may be added that in any scheme for the future prosperity of the country they must be employed again, of course with the increased efficiency of modern apparatus.(2) But while the Babylonians succeeded in controlling the Euphrates, the Tigris was never really tamed,(3) and whenever it burst its right bank the southern plains were devastated. We could not have more suitable soil for the growth of a Deluge story.

(1) Baghdad, though 300 miles by crow-fly from the sea and 500 by river, is only 120 ft. above sea-level.

(2) The Babylonians controlled the Euphrates, and at the same time provided against its time of "low supply", by escapes into two depressions in the western desert to the NW. of Babylon, known to-day as the Habbaniyah and Abu Dis depressions, which lie S. of the modern town of Ramadi and N. of Kerbela. That these depressions were actually used as reservoirs in antiquity is proved by the presence along their edges of thick beds of Euphrates shells. In addition to canals and escapes, the Babylonian system included well- constructed dikes protected by brushwood. By cutting an eight-mile channel through a low hill between the Habbaniyah and Abu Dis depressions and by building a short dam 50 ft. high across the latter's narrow outlet, Sir William Willcocks estimates that a reservoir could be obtained holding eighteen milliards of tons of water. See his work The Irrigations of Mesopotamia (E. and F. N. Spon, 1911), Geographical Journal, Vol. XL, No. 2 (Aug., 1912), pp. 129 ff., and the articles in The Near East cited on p. 97, n. 1, and p. 98, n. 2. Sir William Willcocks's volume and subsequent papers form the best introduction to the study of Babylonian Deluge tradition on its material side.

(3) Their works carried out on the Tigris were effective for irrigation; but the Babylonians never succeeded in controlling its floods as they did those of the Euphrates. A massive earthen dam, the remains of which are still known as "Nimrod's Dam", was thrown across the Tigris above the point where it entered its delta; this served to turn the river over hard conglomerate rock and kept it at a high level so that it could irrigate the country on both banks. Above the dam were the heads of the later Nahrwan Canal, a great stream 400 ft. wide and 17 ft. deep, which supplied the country east of the river. The Nar Sharri or "King's Canal", the Nahar Malkha of the Greeks and the Nahr el-Malik of the Arabs, protected the right bank of the Tigris by its own high artificial banks, which can still be traced for hundreds of miles; but it took its supply from the Euphrates at Sippar, where the ground is some 25 ft. higher than on the Tigris. The Tigris usually flooded its left bank; it was the right bank which was protected, and a breach here meant disaster. Cf. Willcocks, op. cit., and The Near East, Sept. 29, 1916 (Vol. XI, No. 282), p. 522.

It was only by constant and unremitting attention that disaster from flood could be averted; and the difficulties of the problem were and are increased by the fact that the flood-water of the Mesopotamian rivers contains five times as much sediment as the Nile. In fact, one of the most pressing of the problems the Sumerian and early Babylonian engineers had to solve was the keeping of the canals free from silt.(1) What the floods, if left unchecked, may do in Mesopotamia, is well illustrated by the decay of the ancient canal-system, which has been the immediate cause of the country's present state of sordid desolation. That the decay was gradual was not the fault of the rivers, but was due to the sound principles on which the old system of control had been evolved through many centuries of labour. At the time of the Moslem conquest the system had already begun to fail. In the fifth century there had been bad floods; but worse came in A.D. 629, when both rivers burst their banks and played havoc with the dikes and embankments. It is related that the Sassanian king Parwiz, the contemporary of Mohammed, crucified in one day forty canal-workers at a certain breach, and yet was unable to master the flood.(2) All repairs were suspended during the anarchy of the Moslem invasion. As a consequence the Tigris left its old bed for the Shatt el-Hai at Kut, and pouring its own and its tributaries' waters into the Euphrates formed the Great Euphrates Swamp, two hundred miles long and fifty broad. But even then what was left of the old system was sufficient to support the splendour of the Eastern Caliphate.

(1) Cf. Letters of Hammurabi, Vol. III, pp. xxxvi ff.; it was the duty of every village or town upon the banks of the main canals in Babylonia to keep its own section clear of silt, and of course it was also responsible for its own smaller irrigation-channels. While the invention of the system of basin-irrigation was practically forced on Egypt, the extraordinary fertility of Babylonia was won in the teeth of nature by the system of perennial irrigation, or irrigation all the year round. In Babylonia the water was led into small fields of two or three acres, while the Nile valley was irrigated in great basins each containing some thirty to forty thousand acres. The Babylonian method gives far more profitable results, and Sir William Willcocks points out that Egypt to-day is gradually abandoning its own system and adopting that of its ancient rival; see The Near East, Sept. 29, 1916, p. 521.

(2) See Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, p. 27.

The second great blow to the system followed the Mongol conquest, when the Nahrwan Canal, to the east of the Tigris, had its head swept away by flood and the area it had irrigated became desert. Then, in about the fifteenth century, the Tigris returned to its old course; the Shatt el-Hai shrank, and much of the Great Swamp dried up into the desert it is to-day.(1) Things became worse during the centuries of Turkish misrule. But the silting up of the Hillah, or main, branch of the Euphrates about 1865, and the transference of a great part of its stream into the Hindiyah Canal, caused even the Turks to take action. They constructed the old Hindiyah Barrage in 1890, but it gave way in 1903 and the state of things was even worse than before; for the Hillah branch then dried entirely.(2)

(1) This illustrates the damage the Tigris itself is capable of inflicting on the country. It may be added that Sir William Willcocks proposes to control the Tigris floods by an escape into the Tharthar depression, a great salt pan at the tail of Wadi Tharthar, which lies 14 ft. below sea level and is 200 ft. lower than the flood-level of the Tigris some thirty-two miles away. The escape would leave the Tigris to the S. of Samarra, the proposed Beled Barrage being built below it and up-stream of "Nimrod's Dam". The Tharthar escape would drain into the Euphrates, and the latter's Habbaniyah escape would receive any surplus water from the Tigris, a second barrage being thrown across the Euphrates up-stream of Fallujah, where there is an outcrop of limestone near the head of the Sakhlawiyah Canal. The Tharthar depression, besides disposing of the Tigris flood- water, would thus probably feed the Euphrates; and a second barrage on the Tigris, to be built at Kut, would supply water to the Shatt el-Hai. When the country is freed from danger of flood, the Baghdad Railway could be run through the cultivated land instead of through the eastern desert; see Willcocks, The Near East, Oct. 6, 1916 (Vol. XI, No. 283), p. 545 f.

(2) It was then that Sir William Willcocks designed the new Hindiyah Barrage, which was completed in 1913. The Hindiyah branch, to-day the main stream of the Euphrates, is the old low-lying Pallacopas Canal, which branched westward above Babylon and discharged its waters into the western marshes. In antiquity the head of this branch had to be opened in high floods and then closed again immediately after the flood to keep the main stream full past Babylon, which entailed the employment of an enormous number of men. Alexander the Great's first work in Babylonia was cutting a new head for the Pallacopas in solid ground, for hitherto it had been in sandy soil; and it was while reclaiming the marshes farther down-stream that he contracted the fever that killed him.

From this brief sketch of progressive disaster during the later historical period, the inevitable effect of neglected silt and flood, it will be gathered that the two great rivers of Mesopotamia present a very strong contrast to the Nile. For during the same period of misgovernment and neglect in Egypt the Nile did not turn its valley and delta into a desert. On the Tigris and Euphrates, during ages when the earliest dwellers on their banks were struggling to make effective their first efforts at control, the waters must often have regained the upper hand. Under such conditions the story of a great flood in the past would not be likely to die out in the future; the tradition would tend to gather illustrative detail suggested by later experience. Our new text reveals the Deluge tradition in Mesopotamia at an early stage of its development, and incidentally shows us that there is no need to postulate for its origin any convulsion of nature or even a series of seismic shocks accompanied by cyclone in the Persian Gulf.

If this had been the only version of the story that had come down to us, we should hardly have regarded it as a record of world-wide catastrophe. It is true the gods' intention is to destroy mankind, but the scene throughout is laid in Southern Babylonia. After seven days' storm, the Sun comes out, and the vessel with the pious priest-king and his domestic animals on board grounds, apparently still in Babylonia, and not on any distant mountain, such as Mt. Nisir or the great mass of Ararat in Armenia. These are obviously details which tellers of the story have added as it passed down to later generations. When it was carried still farther afield, into the area of the Eastern Mediterranean, it was again adapted to local conditions. Thus Apollodorus makes Deucalion land upon Parnassus,(1) and the pseudo-Lucian relates how he founded the temple of Derketo at Hierapolis in Syria beside the hole in the earth which swallowed up the Flood.(2) To the Sumerians who first told the story, the great Flood appeared to have destroyed mankind, for Southern Babylonia was for them the world. Later peoples who heard it have fitted the story to their own geographical horizon, and in all good faith and by a purely logical process the mountain-tops are represented as submerged, and the ship, or ark, or chest, is made to come to ground on the highest peak known to the story-teller and his hearers. But in its early Sumerian form it is just a simple tradition of some great inundation, which overwhelmed the plain of Southern Babylonia and was peculiarly disastrous in its effects. And so its memory survived in the picture of Ziusudu's solitary coracle upon the face of the waters, which, seen through the mists of the Deluge tradition, has given us the Noah's ark of our nursery days.

(1) Hesiod is our earliest authority for the Deucalion Flood story. For its probable Babylonian origin, cf. Farnell, Greece and Babylon (1911), p. 184.

(2) De Syria dea, 12 f.

Thus the Babylonian, Hebrew, and Greek Deluge stories resolve themselves, not into a nature myth, but into an early legend, which has the basis of historical fact in the Euphrates Valley. And it is probable that we may explain after a similar fashion the occurrence of tales of a like character at least in some other parts of the world. Among races dwelling in low-lying or well-watered districts it would be surprising if we did not find independent stories of past floods from which few inhabitants of the land escaped. It is only in hilly countries such as Palestine, where for the great part of the year water is scarce and precious, that we are forced to deduce borrowing; and there is no doubt that both the Babylonian and the biblical stories have been responsible for some at any rate of the scattered tales. But there is no need to adopt the theory of a single source for all of them, whether in Babylonia or, still less, in Egypt.(1)

(1) This argument is taken from an article I published in Professor Headlam's Church Quarterly Review, Jan., 1916, pp. 280 ff., containing an account of Dr. Poebel's discovery.

I should like to add, with regard to this reading of our new evidence, that I am very glad to know Sir James Frazer holds a very similar opinion. For, as you are doubtless all aware, Sir James is at present collecting Flood stories from all over the world, and is supplementing from a wider range the collections already made by Lenormant, Andree, Winternitz, and Gerland. When his work is complete it will be possible to conjecture with far greater confidence how particular traditions or groups of tradition arose, and to what extent transmission has taken place. Meanwhile, in his recent Huxley Memorial Lecture,(1) he has suggested a third possibility as to the way Deluge stories may have arisen.

(1) Sir J. G. Frazer, Ancient Stories of a Great Flood (the Huxley Memorial Lecture, 1916), Roy. Anthrop. Inst., 1916.

Stated briefly, it is that a Deluge story may arise as a popular explanation of some striking natural feature in a country, although to the scientific eye the feature in question is due to causes other than catastrophic flood. And he worked out the suggestion in the case of the Greek traditions of a great deluge, associated with the names of Deucalion and Dardanus. Deucalion's deluge, in its later forms at any rate, is obviously coloured by Semitic tradition; but both Greek stories, in their origin, Sir James Frazer would trace to local conditions—the one suggested by the Gorge of Tempe in Thessaly, the other explaining the existence of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. As he pointed out, they would be instances, not of genuine historical traditions, but of what Sir James Tyler calls "observation myths". A third story of a great flood, regarded in Greek tradition as the earliest of the three, he would explain by an extraordinary inundation of the Copaic Lake in Boeotia, which to this day is liable to great fluctuations of level. His new theory applies only to the other two traditions. For in them no historical kernel is presupposed, though gradual erosion by water is not excluded as a cause of the surface features which may have suggested the myths.

This valuable theory thus opens up a third possibility for our analysis. It may also, of course, be used in combination, if in any particular instance we have reason to believe that transmission, in some vague form, may already have taken place. And it would with all deference suggest the possibility that, in view of other evidence, this may have occurred in the case of the Greek traditions. With regard to the theory itself we may confidently expect that further examples will be found in its illustration and support. Meanwhile in the new Sumerian Version I think we may conclude that we have recovered beyond any doubt the origin of the Babylonian and Hebrew traditions and of the large group of stories to which they in their turn have given rise.



LECTURE III — CREATION AND THE DRAGON MYTH; AND THE PROBLEM OF BABYLONIAN PARALLELS IN HEBREW TRADITION

In our discussion of the new Sumerian version of the Deluge story we came to the conclusion that it gave no support to any theory which would trace all such tales to a single origin, whether in Egypt or in Babylonia. In spite of strong astrological elements in both the Egyptian and Babylonian religious systems, we saw grounds for regarding the astrological tinge of much ancient mythology as a later embellishment and not as primitive material. And so far as our new version of the Deluge story was concerned, it resolved itself into a legend, which had a basis of historical fact in the Euphrates Valley. It will be obvious that the same class of explanation cannot be applied to narratives of the Creation of the World. For there we are dealing, not with legends, but with myths, that is, stories exclusively about the gods. But where an examination of their earlier forms is possible, it would seem to show that many of these tales also, in their origin, are not to be interpreted as nature myths, and that none arose as mere reflections of the solar system. In their more primitive and simpler aspects they seem in many cases to have been suggested by very human and terrestrial experience. To-day we will examine the Egyptian, Sumerian, and Babylonian myths of Creation, and, after we have noted the more striking features of our new material, we will consider the problem of foreign influences upon Hebrew traditions concerning the origin and early history of the world.

In Egypt, as until recently in Babylonia, we have to depend for our knowledge of Creation myths on documents of a comparatively late period. Moreover, Egyptian religious literature as a whole is textually corrupt, and in consequence it is often difficult to determine the original significance of its allusions. Thanks to the funerary inscriptions and that great body of magical formulae and ritual known as "The Chapters of Coming forth by Day", we are very fully informed on the Egyptian doctrines as to the future state of the dead. The Egyptian's intense interest in his own remote future, amounting almost to an obsession, may perhaps in part account for the comparatively meagre space in the extant literature which is occupied by myths relating solely to the past. And it is significant that the one cycle of myth, of which we are fully informed in its latest stage of development, should be that which gave its sanction to the hope of a future existence for man. The fact that Herodotus, though he claims a knowledge of the sufferings or "Mysteries" of Osiris, should deliberately refrain from describing them or from even uttering the name,(1) suggests that in his time at any rate some sections of the mythology had begun to acquire an esoteric character. There is no doubt that at all periods myth played an important part in the ritual of feast-days. But mythological references in the earlier texts are often obscure; and the late form in which a few of the stories have come to us is obviously artificial. The tradition, for example, which relates how mankind came from the tears which issued from Ra's eye undoubtedly arose from a play upon words.

(1) Herodotus, II, 171.

On the other hand, traces of myth, scattered in the religious literature of Egypt, may perhaps in some measure betray their relative age by the conceptions of the universe which underlie them. The Egyptian idea that the sky was a heavenly ocean, which is not unlike conceptions current among the Semitic Babylonians and Hebrews, presupposes some thought and reflection. In Egypt it may well have been evolved from the probably earlier but analogous idea of the river in heaven, which the Sun traversed daily in his boats. Such a river was clearly suggested by the Nile; and its world-embracing character is reminiscent of a time when through communication was regularly established, at least as far south as Elephantine. Possibly in an earlier period the long narrow valley, or even a section of it, may have suggested the figure of a man lying prone upon his back. Such was Keb, the Earth-god, whose counterpart in the sky was the goddess Nut, her feet and hands resting at the limits of the world and her curved body forming the vault of heaven. Perhaps still more primitive, and dating from a pastoral age, may be the notion that the sky was a great cow, her body, speckled with stars, alone visible from the earth beneath. Reference has already been made to the dominant influence of the Sun in Egyptian religion, and it is not surprising that he should so often appear as the first of created beings. His orb itself, or later the god in youthful human form, might be pictured as emerging from a lotus on the primaeval waters, or from a marsh-bird's egg, a conception which influenced the later Phoenician cosmogeny. The Scarabaeus, or great dung-feeding beetle of Egypt, rolling the ball before it in which it lays its eggs, is an obvious theme for the early myth-maker. And it was natural that the Beetle of Khepera should have been identified with the Sun at his rising, as the Hawk of Ra represented his noonday flight, and the aged form of Attun his setting in the west. But in all these varied conceptions and explanations of the universe it is difficult to determine how far the poetical imagery of later periods has transformed the original myths which may lie behind them.

As the Egyptian Creator the claims of Ra, the Sun-god of Heliopolis, early superseded those of other deities. On the other hand, Ptah of Memphis, who for long ages had been merely the god of architects and craftsmen, became under the Empire the architect of the universe and is pictured as a potter moulding the world-egg. A short poem by a priest of Ptah, which has come down to us from that period, exhibits an attempt to develop this idea on philosophical lines.(1) Its author represents all gods and living creatures as proceeding directly from the mind and thought of Ptah. But this movement, which was more notably reflected in Akhenaton's religious revolution, died out in political disaster, and the original materialistic interpretation of the myths was restored with the cult of Amen. How materialistic this could be is well illustrated by two earlier members of the XVIIIth Dynasty, who have left us vivid representations of the potter's wheel employed in the process of man's creation. When the famous Hatshepsut, after the return of her expedition to Punt in the ninth year of her young consort Thothmes III, decided to build her temple at Deir el-Bahari in the necropolis of Western Thebes, she sought to emphasize her claim to the throne of Egypt by recording her own divine origin upon its walls. We have already noted the Egyptians' belief in the solar parentage of their legitimate rulers, a myth that goes back at least to the Old Kingdom and may have had its origin in prehistoric times. With the rise of Thebes, Amen inherited the prerogatives of Ra; and so Hatshepsut seeks to show, on the north side of the retaining wall of her temple's Upper Platform, that she was the daughter of Amen himself, "the great God, Lord of the sky, Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands, who resides at Thebes". The myth was no invention of her own, for obviously it must have followed traditional lines, and though it is only employed to exhibit the divine creation of a single personage, it as obviously reflects the procedure and methods of a general Creation myth.

(1) See Breasted, Zeitschrift fur Aegyptische Sprache, XXXIX, pp. 39 ff., and History of Egypt, pp. 356 ff.

This series of sculptures shared the deliberate mutilation that all her records suffered at the hands of Thothmes III after her death, but enough of the scenes and their accompanying text has survived to render the detailed interpretation of the myth quite certain.(1) Here, as in a general Creation myth, Amen's first act is to summon the great gods in council, in order to announce to them the future birth of the great princess. Of the twelve gods who attend, the first is Menthu, a form of the Sun-god and closely associated with Amen.(2) But the second deity is Atum, the great god of Heliopolis, and he is followed by his cycle of deities—Shu, "the son of Ra"; Tefnut, "the Lady of the sky"; Keb, "the Father of the Gods"; Nut, "the Mother of the Gods"; Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Set, Horus, and Hathor. We are here in the presence of cosmic deities, as befits a projected act of creation. The subsequent scenes exhibit the Egyptian's literal interpretation of the myth, which necessitates the god's bodily presence and personal participation. Thoth mentions to Amen the name of queen Aahmes as the future mother of Hatshepsut, and we later see Amen himself, in the form of her husband, Aa-kheperka-Ra (Thothmes I), sitting with Aahmes and giving her the Ankh, or sign of Life, which she receives in her hand and inhales through her nostrils.(3) God and queen are seated on thrones above a couch, and are supported by two goddesses. After leaving the queen, Amen calls on Khnum or Khnemu, the flat-horned ram-god, who in texts of all periods is referred to as the "builder" of gods and men;(4) and he instructs him to create the body of his future daughter and that of her Ka, or "double", which would be united to her from birth.

(1) See Naville, Deir el-Bahari, Pt. II, pp. 12 ff., plates xlvi ff.

(2) See Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, Vol. II, pp. 23 ff. His chief cult-centre was Hermonthis, but here as elsewhere he is given his usual title "Lord of Thebes".

(3) Pl. xlvii. Similar scenes are presented in the "birth- temples" at Denderah, Edfu, Philae, Esneh, and Luxor; see Naville, op. cit., p. 14.

(4) Cf. Budge, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 50.

The scene in the series, which is of greatest interest in the present connexion, is that representing Khnum at his work of creation. He is seated before a potter's wheel which he works with his foot,(1) and on the revolving table he is fashioning two children with his hands, the baby princess and her "double". It was always Hatshepsut's desire to be represented as a man, and so both the children are boys.(2) As yet they are lifeless, but the symbol of Life will be held to their nostrils by Heqet, the divine Potter's wife, whose frog-head typifies birth and fertility. When Amenophis III copied Hatshepsut's sculptures for his own series at Luxor, he assigned this duty to the greater goddess Hathor, perhaps the most powerful of the cosmic goddesses and the mother of the world. The subsequent scenes at Deir el-Bahari include the leading of queen Aahmes by Khnum and Heqet to the birth-chamber; the great birth scene where the queen is attended by the goddesses Nephthys and Isis, a number of divine nurses and midwives holding several of the "doubles" of the baby, and favourable genii, in human form or with the heads of crocodiles, jackals, and hawks, representing the four cardinal points and all bearing the gift of life; the presentation of the young child by the goddess Hathor to Amen, who is well pleased at the sight of his daughter; and the divine suckling of Hatshepsut and her "doubles". But these episodes do not concern us, as of course they merely reflect the procedure following a royal birth. But Khnum's part in the princess's origin stands on a different plane, for it illustrates the Egyptian myth of Creation by the divine Potter, who may take the form of either Khnum or Ptah. Monsieur Naville points out the extraordinary resemblance in detail which Hatshepsut's myth of divine paternity bears to the Greek legend of Zeus and Alkmene, where the god takes the form of Amphitryon, Alkmene's husband, exactly as Amen appears to the queen;(3) and it may be added that the Egyptian origin of the Greek story was traditionally recognized in the ancestry ascribed to the human couple.(4)

(1) This detail is not clearly preserved at Deir el-Bahari; but it is quite clear in the scene on the west wall of the "Birth-room" in the Temple at Luxor, which Amenophis III evidently copied from that of Hatshepsut.

(2) In the similar scene at Luxor, where the future Amenophis III is represented on the Creator's wheel, the sculptor has distinguished the human child from its spiritual "double" by the quaint device of putting its finger in its mouth.

(3) See Naville, op. cit., p. 12.

(4) Cf., e.g., Herodotus, II, 43.

The only complete Egyptian Creation myth yet recovered is preserved in a late papyrus in the British Museum, which was published some years ago by Dr. Budge.(1) It occurs under two separate versions embedded in "The Book of the Overthrowing of Apep, the Enemy of Ra". Here Ra, who utters the myth under his late title of Neb-er-tcher, "Lord to the utmost limit", is self-created as Khepera from Nu, the primaeval water; and then follow successive generations of divine pairs, male and female, such as we find at the beginning of the Semitic-Babylonian Creation Series.(2) Though the papyrus was written as late as the year 311 B.C., the myth is undoubtedly early. For the first two divine pairs Shu and Tefnut, Keb and Nut, and four of the latter pairs' five children, Osiris and Isis, Set and Nephthys, form with the Sun-god himself the Greater Ennead of Heliopolis, which exerted so wide an influence on Egyptian religious speculation. The Ennead combined the older solar elements with the cult of Osiris, and this is indicated in the myth by a break in the successive generations, Nut bringing forth at a single birth the five chief gods of the Osiris cycle, Osiris himself and his son Horus, with Set, Isis, and Nephthys. Thus we may see in the myth an early example of that religious syncretism which is so characteristic of later Egyptian belief.