[376] Numbers 3, 4, and 5.
[377] Poebel reads the name Arpi, apparently because in another fragmentary tablet he thinks the name is Arbum, but both Poebel’s copy and the photograph of the tablet indicate that the reading was A-ri-pi. The writer has endeavored to settle the matter by collating both tablets, but both have unfortunately crumbled too much to make collation decisive.
[378] Sumerian words which begin with a vowel, when they are taken over into Hebrew, assume a guttural at the beginning. Thus the Sumerian AŠ-TAN, “one,” which became in Semitic Babylonian ištin, comes into Hebrew as ‘eštê with an Ayin at the beginning. (See Jer. 1:3 and elsewhere.) Ayin in Semitic phonetics frequently changes to Heth. (See Brockelmann’s Vergleichende Grammatik der Semitischen Sprachen, I, § 55, b, α.) In accordance with these facts AN-KU came into Hebrew as Ḫenok.
[379] He is mentioned in Zimmern’s Ritualtafeln für den Wahrsager, Leipzig, 1901, No. 24:1, ff., as the discoverer of the art of forecasting events by pouring oil on water.
[380] Poebel has shown, Historical Texts, 114, that EN-ME designates a hero or special kind of priest. Mutu in Semitic means both “man” and “a kind of priest”; cf. Muss-Arnolt, Assyrisch-Englisch-Deutsches Handwörterbuch, 619, 620, and Knudtzon, El-Amarna Tafeln, No. 55, 43. Mutu was a popular element in Semitic proper names about 2000 B. C., but later ceased to be employed.
[381] The sign kam Poebel failed to recognize. It is No. 364א of Barton’s Origin and Development of Babylonian Writing. It is sometimes employed in early texts instead of other signs which had the values ka or kam. Here it is used for sign No. 357 of the work referred to.
[382] Langdon makes the suggestion (Sumerian Epic of Paradise, the Flood, and the Fall of Man, Philadelphia, 1915, p. 56, note 7) that Lamech is the Sumerian LUMḪA, an epithet of the Babylonian god Ea as the patron of music. A more plausible theory would be that Lamech is a corruption of a king’s name, as suggested above, and after it was corrupted it was confused with the name of the Sumerian god LAMGA, the constructive god, whose emblem was the sign for carpenter. (See Barton, work cited, No. 503.)
[383] See Meissner, Seltene assyrische Ideogramme, No. 1139.
[384] See Barton, work cited, No. 275(5). IN is the Sumerian verb preformative.
[385] See Delitzsch, Sumerisches Glossar, p. 262, f.