Legends of Babylon and Egypt in Relation to Hebrew Tradition

by L. W. King

(1) See Poebel, Historical Texts, pp. 73 ff. and
Historical and Grammatical Texts, pl. ii-iv, Nos. 2-5. The
best preserved of the lists is No. 2; Nos. 3 and 4 are
comparatively small fragments; and of No. 5 the obverse only
is here published for the first time, the contents of the
reverse having been made known some years ago by Hilprecht
(cf. Mathematical, Metrological, and Chronological
Tablets, p. 46 f., pl. 30, No. 47). The fragments belong to
separate copies of the Sumerian dynastic record, and it
happens that the extant portions of their text in some
places cover the same period and are duplicates of one
another.
(2) Cf., e.g., two of the earliest kings of Kish, Galumum
and Zugagib. The former is probably the Semitic-Babylonian
word kalumum, "young animal, lamb," the latter
zukakîbum, "scorpion"; cf. Poebel, Hist. Texts, p. 111.
The occurrence of these names points to Semitic infiltration
into Northern Babylonia since the dawn of history, a state
of things we should naturally expect. It is improbable that
on this point Sumerian tradition should have merely
reflected the conditions of a later period.

It is clear that in native tradition, current among the Sumerians themselves before the close of the third millennium, their race was regarded as in possession of Babylonia since the dawn of history. This at any rate proves that their advent was not sudden nor comparatively recent, and it further suggests that Babylonia itself was the cradle of their civilization. It will be the province of future archaeological research to fill out the missing dynasties and to determine at what points in the list their strictly historical basis disappears. Some, which are fortunately preserved near the beginning, bear on their face their legendary character. But for our purpose they are none the worse for that.

In the first two dynasties, which had their seats at the cities of Kish and Erech, we see gods mingling with men upon the earth. Tammuz, the god of vegetation, for whose annual death Ezekiel saw women weeping beside the Temple at Jerusalem, is here an earthly monarch. He appears to be described as "a hunter", a phrase which recalls the death of Adonis in Greek mythology. According to our Sumerian text he reigned in Erech for a hundred years.

Another attractive Babylonian legend is that of Etana, the prototype of Icarus and hero of the earliest dream of human flight.(1) Clinging to the pinions of his friend the Eagle he beheld the world and its encircling stream recede beneath him; and he flew through the gate of heaven, only to fall headlong back to earth. He is here duly entered in the list, where we read that "Etana, the shepherd who ascended to heaven, who subdued all lands", ruled in the city of Kish for 635 years.

(1) The Egyptian conception of the deceased Pharaoh
ascending to heaven as a falcon and becoming merged into the
sun, which first occurs in the Pyramid texts (see Gardiner
in Cumont's Études Syriennes, pp. 109 ff.), belongs to a
different range of ideas. But it may well have been combined
with the Etana tradition to produce the funerary eagle
employed so commonly in Roman Syria in representations of
the emperor's apotheosis (cf. Cumont, op. cit., pp. 37 ff.,
115).

The god Lugal-banda is another hero of legend. When the hearts of the other gods failed them, he alone recovered the Tablets of Fate, stolen by the bird-god Zû from Enlil's palace. He is here recorded to have reigned in Erech for 1,200 years.

Tradition already told us that Erech was the native city of Gilgamesh, the hero of the national epic, to whom his ancestor Ut-napishtim related the story of the Flood. Gilgamesh too is in our list, as king of Erech for 126 years.

We have here in fact recovered traditions of Post-diluvian kings. Unfortunately our list goes no farther back than that, but it is probable that in its original form it presented a general correspondence to the system preserved from Berossus, which enumerates ten Antediluvian kings, the last of them Xisuthros, the hero of the Deluge. Indeed, for the dynastic period, the agreement of these old Sumerian lists with the chronological system of Berossus is striking. The latter, according to Syncellus, gives 34,090 or 34,080 years as the total duration of the historical period, apart from his preceding mythical ages, while the figure as preserved by Eusebius is 33,091 years.(1) The compiler of one of our new lists,(2) writing some 1,900 years earlier, reckons that the dynastic period in his day had lasted for 32,243 years. Of course all these figures are mythical, and even at the time of the Sumerian Dynasty of Nîsin variant traditions were current with regard to the number of historical and semi-mythical kings of Babylonia and the duration of their rule. For the earlier writer of another of our lists,(3) separated from the one already quoted by an interval of only sixty-seven years, gives 28,876(4) years as the total duration of the dynasties at his time. But in spite of these discrepancies, the general resemblance presented by the huge totals in the variant copies of the list to the alternative figures of Berossus, if we ignore his mythical period, is remarkable. They indicate a far closer correspondence of the Greek tradition with that of the early Sumerians themselves than was formerly suspected.

(1) The figure 34,090 is that given by Syncellus (ed.
Dindorf, p. 147); but it is 34,080 in the equivalent which
is added in "sars", &c. The discrepancy is explained by some
as due to an intentional omission of the units in the second
reckoning; others would regard 34,080 as the correct figure
(cf. Hist. of Bab., p. 114 f.). The reading of ninety
against eighty is supported by the 33,091 of Eusebius
(Chron. lib. pri., ed. Schoene, col. 25).
(2) No. 4.
(3) No. 2.
(4) The figures are broken, but the reading given may be
accepted with some confidence; see Poebel, Hist. Inscr.,
p. 103.

Further proof of this correspondence may be seen in the fact that the new Sumerian Version of the Deluge Story, which I propose to discuss in the second lecture, gives us a connected account of the world's history down to that point. The Deluge hero is there a Sumerian king named Ziusudu, ruling in one of the newly created cities of Babylonia and ministering at the shrine of his city-god. He is continually given the royal title, and the foundation of the Babylonian "kingdom" is treated as an essential part of Creation. We may therefore assume that an Antediluvian period existed in Sumerian tradition as in Berossus.(1) And I think Dr. Poebel is right in assuming that the Nippur copies of the Dynastic List begin with the Post-diluvian period.(2)