IV. The Dream-Warning.
V. The Deluge, the Escape of the Great Boat, and the Sacrifice to the Sun-god.
VI. The Propitiation of the Angry Gods, and Ziusudu's Immortality.
I. INTRODUCTION TO THE MYTH, AND ACCOUNT OF CREATION
The beginning of the text is wanting, and the earliest lines preserved of the First Column open with the closing sentences of a speech, probably by the chief of the four creating deities, who are later on referred to by name. In it there is a reference to a future destruction of mankind, but the context is broken; the lines in question begin:
"As for my human race, from (or in) its destruction will I
cause it to be (. . .),
For Nintu my creatures (. . .) will I (. . .)."
From the reference to "my human race" it is clear that the speaker is a creating deity; and since the expression is exactly parallel to the term "my people" used by Ishtar, or Bêlit-ili, "the Lady of the gods", in the Babylonian Version of the Deluge story when she bewails the destruction of mankind, Dr. Poebel assigns the speech to Ninkharsagga, or Nintu,(1) the goddess who later in the column is associated with Anu, Enlil, and Enki in man's creation. But the mention of Nintu in her own speech is hardly consistent with that supposition,(2) if we assume with Dr. Poebel, as we are probably justified in doing, that the title Nintu is employed here and elsewhere in the narrative merely as a synonym of Ninkharsagga.(3) It appears to me far more probable that one of the two supreme gods, Anu or Enlil, is the speaker,(4) and additional grounds will be cited later in support of this view. It is indeed possible, in spite of the verbs and suffixes in the singular, that the speech is to be assigned to both Anu and Enlil, for in the last column, as we shall see, we find verb in the singular following references to both these deities. In any case one of the two chief gods may be regarded as speaking and acting on behalf of both, though it may be that the inclusion of the second name in the narrative was not original but simply due to a combination of variant traditions. Such a conflate use of Anu-Enlil would present a striking parallel to the Hebrew combination Yahweh-Elohim, though of course in the case of the former pair the subsequent stage of identification was never attained. But the evidence furnished by the text is not conclusive, and it is preferable here and elsewhere in the narrative to regard either Anu or Enlil as speaking and acting both on his own behalf and as the other's representative.
(1) Op. cit., p. 21 f.; and cf. Jastrow, Hebrew and
Babylonian Traditions, p. 336.
(2) It necessitates the taking of (dingir) Nin-tu-ra as
a genitive, not a dative, and the very awkward rendering
"my, Nintu's, creations".
(3) Another of the recently published Sumerian mythological
compositions from Nippur includes a number of myths in which
Enki is associated first with Ninella, referred to also as
Nintu, "the Goddess of Birth", then with Ninshar, referred
to also as Ninkurra, and finally with Ninkharsagga. This
text exhibits the process by which separate traditions with
regard to goddesses originally distinct were combined
together, with the result that their heroines were
subsequently often identified with one another. There the
myths that have not been subjected to a very severe process
of editing, and in consequence the welding is not so
complete as in the Sumerian Version of the Deluge.
(4) If Enlil's name should prove to be the first word of the
composition, we should naturally regard him as the speaker
here and as the protagonist of the gods throughout the text,
a rôle he also plays in the Semitic-Babylonian Version.
This reference to the Deluge, which occurs so early in the text, suggests the probability that the account of the Creation and of the founding of Antediluvian cities, included in the first two columns, is to be taken merely as summarizing the events that led up to the Deluge. And an almost certain proof of this may be seen in the opening words of the composition, which are preserved in its colophon or title on the left-hand edge of the tablet. We have already noted that the first two words are there to be read, either as the prefix "Incantation" followed by the name "Enlil", or as the two divine names "Anu (and) Enlil". Now the signs which follow the traces of Enlil's name are quite certain; they represent "Ziusudu", which, as we shall see in the Third Column, is the name of the Deluge hero in our Sumerian Version. He is thus mentioned in the opening words of the text, in some relation to one or both of the two chief gods of the subsequent narrative. But the natural place for his first introduction into the story is in the Third Column, where it is related that "at that time Ziusudu, the king" did so-and-so. The prominence given him at the beginning of the text, at nearly a column's interval before the lines which record the creation of man, is sufficient proof that the Deluge story is the writer's main interest, and that preceding episodes are merely introductory to it.