At that time Nintu (. . .) Ishtar cried aloud like a woman
like a (. . .), in travail,
The holy Innanna lament(ed) Bêlit-ili lamented with a loud
on account of her people. voice.
(1) Gilg. Epic, XI, l. 117 f.
The expression Bêlit-ili, "the Lady of the Gods", is attested as a title
borne both by the Semitic goddess Ishtar and by the Sumerian goddess
Nintu or Ninkharsagga. In the passage in the Babylonian Version, "the
Lady of the Gods" has always been treated as a synonym of Ishtar, the
second half of the couplet being regarded as a restatement of the first,
according to a recognized law of Babylonian poetry. We may probably
assume that this interpretation is correct, and we may conclude by
analogy that "the holy Innanna" in the second half of the Sumerian
couplet is there merely employed as a synonym of Nintu.(1) When the
Sumerian myth was recast in accordance with Semitic ideas, the _rôle_ of
creatress of mankind, which had been played by the old Sumerian goddess
Ninkharsagga or Nintu, was naturally transferred to the Semitic Ishtar.
And as Innanna was one of Ishtar's designations, it was possible to make
the change by a simple transcription of the lines, the name Nintu being
replaced by the synonymous title Bêlit-ili, which was also shared by
Ishtar. Difficulties are at once introduced if we assume with Dr.
Poebel that in each version two separate goddesses are represented as
lamenting, Nintu or Bêlit-ili and Innanna or Ishtar. For Innanna as
a separate goddess had no share in the Sumerian Creation, and the
reference to "her people" is there only applicable to Nintu. Dr. Poebel
has to assume that the Sumerian names should be reversed in order to
restore them to their original order, which he suggests the Babylonian
Version has preserved. But no such textual emendation is necessary. In
the Semitic Version Ishtar definitely displaces Nintu as the mother of
men, as is proved by a later passage in her speech where she refers to
her own bearing of mankind.(2) The necessity for the substitution of her
name in the later version is thus obvious, and we have already noted how
simply this was effected.
(1) Cf. also Jastrow, _Hebr. and Bab. Trad._, p. 336.
(2) Gilg. Epic, XI, l. 123.
Another feature in which the two versions differ is that in the Sumerian
text the lamentation of the goddess precedes the sending of the Deluge,
while in the Gilgamesh Epic it is occasioned by the actual advent of the
storm. Since our text is not completely preserved, it is just possible
that the couplet was repeated at the end of the Fourth Column after
mankind's destruction had taken place. But a further apparent difference
has been noted. While in the Sumerian Version the goddess at once
deplores the divine decision, it is clear from Ishtar's words in the
Gilgamesh Epic that in the assembly of the gods she had at any rate
concurred in it.(1) On the other hand, in Bêlit-ili's later speech in
the Epic, after Ut-napishtim's sacrifice upon the mountain, she appears
to subscribe the decision to Enlil alone.(2) The passages in the
Gilgamesh Epic are not really contradictory, for they can be interpreted
as implying that, while Enlil forced his will upon the other gods
against Bêlit-ili's protest, the goddess at first reproached herself
with her concurrence, and later stigmatized Enlil as the real author of
the catastrophe. The Semitic narrative thus does not appear, as has been
suggested, to betray traces of two variant traditions which have been
skilfully combined, though it may perhaps exhibit an expansion of the
Sumerian story. On the other hand, most of the apparent discrepancies
between the Sumerian and Babylonian Versions disappear, on the
recognition that our text gives in many passages only an epitome of the
original Sumerian Version.
(1) Cf. l. 121 f., "Since I commanded evil in the assembly
of the gods, (and) commanded battle for the destruction of
my people".
(2) Cf. ll. 165 ff., "Ye gods that are here! So long as I
forget not the (jewels of) lapis lazuli upon my neck, I will
keep these days in my memory, never will I forget them! Let
the gods come to the offering, but let not Enlil come to the
offering, since he took not counsel but sent the deluge and
surrendered my people to destruction."
The lament of the goddess is followed by a brief account of the action
taken by the other chief figures in the drama. Enki holds counsel with
his own heart, evidently devising the project, which he afterwards
carried into effect, of preserving the seed of mankind from destruction.
Since the verb in the following line is wanting, we do not know what
action is there recorded of the four creating deities; but the fact that
the gods of heaven and earth invoked the name of Anu and Enlil suggests
that it was their will which had been forced upon the other gods. We
shall see that throughout the text Anu and Enlil are the ultimate rulers
of both gods and men.
The narrative then introduces the human hero of the Deluge story:
At that time Ziusudu, the king, . . . priest of the god (. . .),
Made a very great . . ., (. . .).
In humility he prostrates himself, in reverence (. . .),
Daily he stands in attendance (. . .).
A dream,(1) such as had not been before, comes forth(2) . . .
(. . .),
By the Name of Heaven and Earth he conjures (. . .).
(1) The word may also be rendered "dreams".
(2) For this rendering of the verb _e-de_, for which Dr.
Poebel does not hazard a translation, see Rawlinson,
_W.A.I._, IV, pl. 26, l. 24 f.(a), _nu-e-de_ = Sem. _la us-
su-u_ (Pres.); and cf. Brünnow, _Classified List_, p. 327.
An alternative rendering "is created" is also possible, and
would give equally good sense; cf. _nu-e-de_ = Sem. _la u-
pu-u_, _W.A.I._, IV, pl. 2, l. 5 (a), and Brünnow, op. cit.,
p. 328.
The name of the hero, Ziusudu, is the fuller Sumerian equivalent of
Ut-napishtim (or Uta-napishtim), the abbreviated Semitic form which we
find in the Gilgamesh Epic. For not only are the first two elements of
the Sumerian name identical with those of the Semitic Ut-napishtim,
but the names themselves are equated in a later Babylonian syllabary or
explanatory list of words.(1) We there find "Ut-napishte" given as the
equivalent of the Sumerian "Zisuda", evidently an abbreviated form of
the name Ziusudu;(2) and it is significant that the names occur in
the syllabary between those of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, evidently in
consequence of the association of the Deluge story by the Babylonians
with their national epic of Gilgamesh. The name Ziusudu may be rendered
"He who lengthened the day of life" or "He who made life long of
days",(3) which in the Semitic form is abbreviated by the omission of
the verb. The reference is probably to the immortality bestowed upon
Ziusudu at the close of the story, and not to the prolongation of
mankind's existence in which he was instrumental. It is scarcely
necessary to add that the name has no linguistic connexion with the
Hebrew name Noah, to which it also presents no parallel in meaning.
(1) Cf. _Cun. Texts in the Brit. Mus._, Pt. XVIII, pl. 30,
l. 9 (a).
(2) The name in the Sumerian Version is read by Dr. Poebel
as Ziugiddu, but there is much in favour of Prof. Zimmern's
suggestion, based on the form Zisuda, that the third
syllable of the name should be read as _su_. On a fragment
of another Nippur text, No. 4611, Dr. Langdon reads the name
as _Zi-u-sud-du_ (cf. Univ. of Penns. Mus. Publ., Bab. Sec.,
Vol. X, No. 1, p. 90, pl. iv a); the presence of the
phonetic complement _du_ may be cited in favour of this
reading, but it does not appear to be supported by the
photographic reproductions of the name in the Sumerian
Deluge Version given by Dr. Poebel (_Hist. and Gramm.
Texts_, pl. lxxxviii f.). It may be added that, on either
alternative, the meaning of the name is the same.
(3) The meaning of the Sumerian element _u_ in the name,
rendered as _utu_ in the Semitic form, is rather obscure,
and Dr. Poebel left it unexplained. It is very probable, as
suggested by Dr. Langdon (cf. _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch._,
XXXVI, 1914, p. 190), that we should connect it with the
Semitic _uddu_; in that case, in place of "breath", the
rending he suggests, I should be inclined to render it here
as "day", for _uddu_ as the meaning "dawn" and the sign UD
is employed both for _urru_, "day-light", and _ûmu_, "day".
It is an interesting fact that Ziusudu should be described simply as
"the king", without any indication of the city or area he ruled; and
in three of the five other passages in the text in which his name is
mentioned it is followed by the same title without qualification. In
most cases Berossus tells us the cities from which his Antediluvian
rulers came; and if the end of the line had been preserved it might have
been possible to determine definitely Ziusudu's city, and incidentally
the scene of the Deluge in the Sumerian Version, by the name of the
deity in whose service he acted as priest. We have already noted some
grounds for believing that his city may have been Shuruppak, as in the
Babylonian Version; and if that were so, the divine name reads as "the
God of Shurrupak" should probably be restored at the end of the line.(1)
(1) The remains that are preserved of the determinative,
which is not combined with the sign EN, proves that Enki's
name is not to be restored. Hence Ziusudu was not priest of
Enki, and his city was probably not Eridu, the seat of his
divine friend and counsellor, and the first of the
Antediluvian cities. Sufficient reason for Enki's
intervention on Ziusudu's behalf is furnished by the fact
that, as God of the Deep, he was concerned in the proposed
method of man's destruction. His rivalry of Enlil, the God
of the Earth, is implied in the Babylonian Version (cf.
Gilg. Epic. XI, ll. 39-42), and in the Sumerian Version this
would naturally extend to Anu, the God of Heaven.
The employment of the royal title by itself accords with the tradition
from Berossus that before the Deluge, as in later periods, the land was
governed by a succession of supreme rulers, and that the hero of the
Deluge was the last of them. In the Gilgamesh Epic, on the other
hand, Ut-napishtim is given no royal nor any other title. He is merely
referred to as a "man of Shuruppak, son of Ubar-Tutu", and he appears in
the guise of an ancient hero or patriarch not invested with royal
power. On this point Berossus evidently preserves the original Sumerian
traditions, while the Hebrew Versions resemble the Semitic-Babylonian
narrative. The Sumerian conception of a series of supreme Antediluvian
rulers is of course merely a reflection from the historical period,
when the hegemony in Babylonia was contested among the city-states. The
growth of the tradition may have been encouraged by the early use of
_lugal_, "king", which, though always a term of secular character, was
not very sharply distinguished from that of _patesi_ and other religious
titles, until, in accordance with political development, it was required
to connote a wider dominion. In Sumer, at the time of the composition
of our text, Ziusudu was still only one in a long line of Babylonian
rulers, mainly historical but gradually receding into the realms of
legend and myth. At the time of the later Semites there had been more
than one complete break in the tradition and the historical setting
of the old story had become dim. The fact that Hebrew tradition should
range itself in this matter with Babylon rather than with Sumer is
important as a clue in tracing the literary history of our texts.
The rest of the column may be taken as descriptive of Ziusudu's
activities. One line records his making of some very great object or
the erection of a huge building;(1) and since the following lines are
concerned solely with religious activities, the reference is possibly to
a temple or some other structure of a sacred character. Its foundation
may have been recorded as striking evidence of his devotion to his god;
or, since the verb in this sentence depends on the words "at that time"
in the preceding line, we may perhaps regard his action as directly
connected with the revelation to be made to him. His personal piety
is then described: daily he occupied himself in his god's service,
prostrating himself in humility and constant in his attendance at the
shrine. A dream (or possibly dreams), "such as had not been before",
appears to him and he seems to be further described as conjuring "by
the Name of Heaven and Earth"; but as the ends of all these lines are
broken, the exact connexion of the phrases is not quite certain.
(1) The element _gur-gur_, "very large" or "huge", which occurs in the
name of this great object or building, _an- sag-gur-gur_, is employed
later in the term for the "huge boat", _(gish)ma-gur-gur_, in which
Ziusudu rode out the storm. There was, of course, even at this early
period a natural tendency to picture on a superhuman scale the lives and
deeds of remote predecessors, a tendency which increased in later times
and led, as we shall see, to the elaboration of extravagant detail.
It is difficult not to associate the reference to a dream, or possibly
to dream-divination, with the warning in which Enki reveals the purpose
of the gods. For the later versions prepare us for a reference to
a dream. If we take the line as describing Ziusudu's practice of
dream-divination in general, "such as had not been before", he may have
been represented as the first diviner of dreams, as Enmeduranki was held
to be the first practitioner of divination in general. But it seems to
me more probable that the reference is to a particular dream, by means
of which he obtained knowledge of the gods' intentions. On the rendering
of this passage depends our interpretation of the whole of the Fourth
Column, where the point will be further discussed. Meanwhile it may be
noted that the conjuring "by the Name of Heaven and Earth", which we may
assume is ascribed to Ziusudu, gains in significance if we may regard
the setting of the myth as a magical incantation, an inference in
support of which we shall note further evidence. For we are furnished
at once with the grounds for its magical employment. If Ziusudu, through
conjuring by the Name of Heaven and earth, could profit by the warning
sent him and so escape the impending fate of mankind, the application of
such a myth to the special needs of a Sumerian in peril or distress will
be obvious. For should he, too, conjure by the Name of Heaven and Earth,
he might look for a similar deliverance; and his recital of the myth
itself would tend to clinch the magical effect of his own incantation.
The description of Ziusudu has also great interest in furnishing us with
a close parallel to the piety of Noah in the Hebrew Versions. For in the
Gilgamesh Epic and in Berossus this feature of the story is completely
absent. We are there given no reason why Ut-napishtim was selected by
Ea, nor Xisuthros by Kronos. For all that those versions tell us, the
favour of each deity might have been conferred arbitrarily, and not in
recognition of, or in response to, any particular quality or action
on the part of its recipient. The Sumerian Version now restores the
original setting of the story and incidentally proves that, in this
particular, the Hebrew Versions have not embroidered a simpler narrative
for the purpose of edification, but have faithfully reproduced an
original strand of the tradition.