After he had called the names of these cities, and they had
been allotted to divine rulers(?),
(1) In Semitic-Babylonian the first component of this city-
name would read "Dûr".
The completion of the sentence, in the last two lines of the column,
cannot be rendered with any certainty, but the passage appears to have
related the creation of small rivers and pools. It will be noted that
the lines which contain the names of the five cities and their patron
gods(1) form a long explanatory parenthesis, the preceding line being
repeated after their enumeration.
(1) The precise meaning of the sign-group here provisionally
rendered "divine ruler" is not yet ascertained.
As the first of the series of five cities of Eridu, the seat of Nudimmud
or Enki, who was the third of the creating deities, it has been urged
that the upper part of the Second Column must have included an account
of the founding of Erech, the city of Anu, and of Nippur, Enlil's
city.(1) But the numbered sequence of the cities would be difficult to
reconcile with the earlier creation of other cities in the text, and
the mention of Eridu as the first city to be created would be quite
in accord with its great age and peculiarly sacred character as a
cult-centre. Moreover the evidence of the Sumerian Dynastic List is
definitely against any claim of Erech to Antediluvian existence. For
when the hegemony passed from the first Post-diluvian "kingdom" to the
second, it went not to Erech but to the shrine Eanna, which gave its
name to the second "kingdom"; and the city itself was apparently not
founded before the reign of Enmerkar, the second occupant of the throne,
who is the first to be given the title "King of Erech". This conclusion
with regard to Erech incidentally disposes of the arguments for Nippur's
Antediluvian rank in primitive Sumerian tradition, which have been
founded on the order of the cities mentioned at the beginning of the
later Sumerian myth of Creation.(2) The evidence we thus obtain that the
early Sumerians themselves regarded Eridu as the first city in the world
to be created, increases the hope that future excavation at Abu Shahrain
may reveal Sumerian remains of periods which, from an archaeological
standpoint, must still be regarded as prehistoric.
(1) Cf. Poebel, op. cit., p. 41.
(2) The city of Nippur does not occur among the first four
"kingdoms" of the Sumerian Dynastic List; but we may
probably assume that it was the seat of at least one early
"kingdom", in consequence of which Enlil, its city-god,
attained his later pre-eminent rank in the Sumerian
pantheon.
It is noteworthy that no human rulers are mentioned in connexion with
Eridu and the other four Antediluvian cities; and Ziusudu, the hero
of the story, is apparently the only mortal whose name occurred in
our text. But its author's principal subject is the Deluge, and the
preceding history of the world is clearly not given in detail, but is
merely summarized. In view of the obviously abbreviated form of the
narrative, of which we have already noted striking evidence in its
account of the Creation, we may conclude that in the fuller form of
the tradition the cities were also assigned human rulers, each one
the representative of his city-god. These would correspond to the
Antediluvian dynasty of Berossus, the last member of which was
Xisuthros, the later counterpart of Ziusudu.
In support of the exclusion of Nippur and Erech from the myth, it will
be noted that the second city in the list is not Adab,(1) which was
probably the principal seat of the goddess Ninkharsagga, the fourth of
the creating deities. The names of both deity and city in that line
are strange to us. Larak, the third city in the series, is of greater
interest, for it is clearly Larankha, which according to Berossus
was the seat of the eighth and ninth of his Antediluvian kings. In
commercial documents of the Persian period, which have been found during
the excavations at Nippur, Larak is described as lying "on the bank of
the old Tigris", a phrase which must be taken as referring to the Shatt
el-Hai, in view of the situation of Lagash and other early cities
upon it or in its immediate neighbourhood. The site of the city should
perhaps be sought on the upper course of the stream, where it tends
to approach Nippur. It would thus have lain in the neighbourhood of
Bismâya, the site of Adab. Like Adab, Lagash, Shuruppak, and other early
Sumerian cities, it was probably destroyed and deserted at a very early
period, though it was reoccupied under its old name in Neo-Babylonian or
Persian times. Its early disappearance from Babylonian history perhaps
in part accounts for our own unfamiliarity with Pabilkharsag, its
city-god, unless we may regard the name as a variant from of Pabilsag;
but it is hardly likely that the two should be identified.
(1) The site of Adab, now marked by the mounds of Bismâya,
was partially excavated by an expedition sent out in 1903 by
the University of Chicago, and has provided valuable
material for the study of the earliest Sumerian period; see
_Reports of the Expedition of the Oriental Exploration Fund_
(Babylonian Section of the University of Chicago), and
Banks, _Bismya_ (1912). On grounds of antiquity alone we
might perhaps have expected its inclusion in the myth.
In Sibbar, the fourth of the Antediluvian cities in our series, we
again have a parallel to Berossus. It has long been recognized that
Pantibiblon, or Pantibiblia, from which the third, fourth, fifth, sixth,
and seventh of his Antediluvian kings all came, was the city of Sippar
in Northern Babylonia. For the seventh of these rulers, {Euedorakhos},
is clearly Enmeduranki, the mythical king of Sippar, who in Babylonian
tradition was regarded as the founder of divination. In a fragmentary
composition that has come down to us he is described, not only as king
of Sippar, but as "beloved of Anu, Enlil, and Enki", the three creating
gods of our text; and it is there recounted how the patron deities of
divination, Shamash and Adad, themselves taught him to practise their
art.(1) Moreover, Berossus directly implies the existence of Sippar
before the Deluge, for in the summary of his version that has been
preserved Xisuthros, under divine instruction, buries the sacred
writings concerning the origin of the world in "Sispara", the city
of the Sun-god, so that after the Deluge they might be dug up and
transmitted to mankind. Ebabbar, the great Sun-temple, was at Sippar,
and it is to the Sun-god that the city is naturally allotted in the new
Sumerian Version.
(1) Cf. Zimmern, _Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Bab. Relig._,
pp. 116 ff.
The last of the five Antediluvian cities in our list is Shuruppak, in
which dwelt Ut-napishtim, the hero of the Babylonian version of the
Deluge. Its site has been identified with the mounds of Fâra, in the
neighbourhood of the Shatt el-Kâr, the former bed of the Euphrates;
and the excavations that were conducted there in 1902 have been most
productive of remains dating from the prehistoric period of Sumerian
culture.(1) Since our text is concerned mainly with the Deluge, it
is natural to assume that the foundation of the city from which the
Deluge-hero came would be recorded last, in order to lead up to the
central episode of the text. The city of Ziusudu, the hero of the
Sumerian story, is unfortunately not given in the Third Column, but, in
view of Shuruppak's place in the list of Antediluvian cities, it is
not improbable that on this point the Sumerian and Babylonian Versions
agreed. In the Gilgamesh Epic Shuruppak is the only Antediluvian city
referred to, while in the Hebrew accounts no city at all is mentioned in
connexion with Noah. The city of Xisuthros, too, is not recorded, but as
his father came from Larankha or Larak, we may regard that city as his
in the Greek Version. Besides Larankha, the only Antediluvian cities
according to Berossus were Babylon and Sippar, and the influence of
Babylonian theology, of which we here have evidence, would be sufficient
to account for a disturbance of the original traditions. At the same
time it is not excluded that Larak was also the scene of the Deluge in
our text, though, as we have noted, the position of Shuruppak at the
close of the Sumerian list points to it as the more probable of the two.
It may be added that we cannot yet read the name of the deity to whom
Shuruppak was allotted, but as it is expressed by the city's name
preceded by the divine determinative, the rendering "the God of
Shuruppak" will meanwhile serve.
(1) See _Hist. of Sum. and Akk._, pp. 24 ff.
The creation of small rivers and pools, which seems to have followed
the foundation of the five sacred cities, is best explained on the
assumption that they were intended for the supply of water to the
cities and to the temples of their five patron gods. The creation of
the Euphrates and the Tigris, if recorded in our text at all, or in its
logical order, must have occurred in the upper portion of the column.
The fact that in the later Sumerian account their creation is related
between that of mankind and the building of Nippur and Erech cannot be
cited in support of this suggestion, in view of the absence of those
cities from our text and of the process of editing to which the later
version has been subjected, with a consequent disarrangement of its
episodes.