In this column we have a fragment which relates some details similar to those told in lines 128, 129, and 136-138 of the account given in [Chapter VI].
Column VI
By the life of heaven and the life of earth ye shall conjure him,
That he may raise up from you;
Anu and Enlil by the soul of heaven and the soul of earth ye shall conjure,
That they may raise up from you
The curse that has come upon the land, that they may remove it.
Ziugiddu the king
Before Anu and Enlil bowed his face to the earth.
Life like a god’s he gave to him,
An immortal spirit like a god’s he brought to him.
Then Ziugiddu the king,
Of the seed that was cursed, lord of mankind he made;
In the fruitful land, the land of Dilmun .......... they made him dwell
.........................................
At this point the last column is hopelessly broken. It is clear, however, from the part which remains that Ziugiddu is in this narrative translated to the Isle of the Blest as was Utnapishtim in the account translated in [Chapter VI], lines 202-205.[406] Indeed there is reason to believe that the two accounts of the flood are divergent versions of the same story. In addition to the likenesses already mentioned, the names of the two heroes, though they appear so different, are the same in meaning. Utnapishtim (or Unapishtim) means “day of life,” or “day-life,” while Ziugiddu means “Life-day prolonged.”
2. Comparison with the Other Version.
Although this tablet is much broken, so that we have not the whole of the story, it is clear from the parts that we have that in this version preserved at Nippur the story was much shorter than in the form translated in [Chapter VI], which was preserved in the library of Ashurbanipal. It was also combined with a briefer account of the creation than that translated in [Chapter I] from Ashurbanipal’s library.
Of this Nippurian version of the creation story we have in this tablet only the small fragments preserved in Columns I and II. It is, however, probable that the Nippurian version of the creation was in its main features similar to that preserved in the library at Nineveh, only more brief.
If this be so, the conquest of the dragon Tiâmat is here attributed to Enlil of Nippur, as in the other version it is attributed to Marduk of Babylon, and as in Psa. 74:13, 14, it is attributed to Jehovah. This older account from Nippur agrees in one respect more nearly with the Biblical account than the one from the library at Nineveh does, for it represents Ziugiddu as a very pious man, who was apparently saved from destruction on account of his piety, and in blessing him God removed the curse as Jehovah did in Gen. 8:21.