The inference we may obviously draw is that the Sumerian narrative continued in existence, in a literary form that closely resembled the original version, into the later historical periods. In this there would be nothing to surprise us, when we recall the careful preservation and study of ancient Sumerian religious texts by the later Semitic priesthood of the country. Each ancient cult-centre in Babylonia continued to cling to its own local traditions, and the Sumerian desire for their preservation, which was inherited by their Semitic guardians, was in great measure unaffected by political occurrences elsewhere. Hence it was that Ashur-bani-pal, when forming his library at Nineveh, was able to draw upon so rich a store of the more ancient literary texts of Babylonia. The Sumerian Version of the Deluge and of Antediluvian history may well have survived in a less epitomized form than that in which we have recovered it; and, like other ancient texts, it was probably provided with a Semitic translation. Indeed its literary study and reproduction may have continued without interruption in Babylon itself. But even if Sumerian tradition died out in the capital under the influence of the Babylonian priesthood, its re-introduction may well have taken place in Neo-Babylonian times. Perhaps the antiquarian researches of Nabonidus were characteristic of his period; and in any case the collection of his country's gods into the capital must have been accompanied by a renewed interest in the more ancient versions of the past with which their cults were peculiarly associated. In the extant summary from Berossus we may possibly see evidence of a subsequent attempt to combine with these more ancient traditions the continued religious dominance of Marduk and of Babylon.
Our conclusion, that the Sumerian form of the tradition did not die out, leaves the question as to the periods during which Babylonian influence may have acted upon Hebrew tradition in great measure unaffected; and we may therefore postpone its further consideration to the next lecture. To-day the only question that remains to be considered concerns the effect of our new evidence upon the wider problem of Deluge stories as a whole. What light does it throw on the general character of Deluge stories and their suggested Egyptian origin?
One thing that strikes me forcibly in reading this early text is the complete absence of any trace or indication of astrological motif. It is true that Ziusudu sacrifices to the Sun-god; but the episode is inherent in the story, the appearance of the Sun after the storm following the natural sequence of events and furnishing assurance to the king of his eventual survival. To identify the worshipper with his god and to transfer Ziusudu's material craft to the heavens is surely without justification from the simple narrative. We have here no prototype of Ra sailing the heavenly ocean. And the destructive flood itself is not only of an equally material and mundane character, but is in complete harmony with its Babylonian setting.
In the matter of floods the Tigris and Euphrates present a striking contrast to the Nile. It is true that the life-blood of each country is its river-water, but the conditions of its use are very different, and in Mesopotamia it becomes a curse when out of control. In both countries the river-water must be used for maturing the crops. But while the rains of Abyssinia cause the Nile to rise between August and October, thus securing both summer and winter crops, the melting snows of Armenia and the Taurus flood the Mesopotamian rivers between March and May. In Egypt the Nile flood is gentle; it is never abrupt, and the river gives ample warning of its rise and fall. It contains just enough sediment to enrich the land without choking the canals; and the water, after filling its historic basins, may when necessary be discharged into the falling river in November. Thus Egypt receives a full and regular supply of water, and there is no difficulty in disposing of any surplus. The growth in such a country of a legend of world-wide destruction by flood is inconceivable.
In Mesopotamia, on the other hand, the floods, which come too late for the winter crops, are followed by the rainless summer months; and not only must the flood-water be controlled, but some portion of it must be detained artificially, if it is to be of use during the burning months of July, August, and September, when the rivers are at their lowest. Moreover, heavy rain in April and a warm south wind melting the snow in the hills may bring down such floods that the channels cannot contain them; the dams are then breached and the country is laid waste. Here there is first too much water and then too little.
The great danger from flood in Babylonia, both in its range of action and in its destructive effect, is due to the strangely flat character of the Tigris and Euphrates delta.(1) Hence after a severe breach in the Tigris or Euphrates, the river after inundating the country may make itself a new channel miles away from the old one. To mitigate the danger, the floods may be dealt with in two ways—by a multiplication of canals to spread the water, and by providing escapes for it into depressions in the surrounding desert, which in their turn become centres of fertility. Both methods were employed in antiquity; and it may be added that in any scheme for the future prosperity of the country they must be employed again, of course with the increased efficiency of modern apparatus.(2) But while the Babylonians succeeded in controlling the Euphrates, the Tigris was never really tamed,(3) and whenever it burst its right bank the southern plains were devastated. We could not have more suitable soil for the growth of a Deluge story.
(1) Baghdad, though 300 miles by crow-fly from the sea and
500 by river, is only 120 ft. above sea-level.
(2) The Babylonians controlled the Euphrates, and at the
same time provided against its time of "low supply", by
escapes into two depressions in the western desert to the
NW. of Babylon, known to-day as the Habbânîyah and Abu Dîs
depressions, which lie S. of the modern town of Ramâdi and
N. of Kerbela. That these depressions were actually used as
reservoirs in antiquity is proved by the presence along
their edges of thick beds of Euphrates shells. In addition
to canals and escapes, the Babylonian system included well-
constructed dikes protected by brushwood. By cutting an
eight-mile channel through a low hill between the Habbânîyah
and Abu Dîs depressions and by building a short dam 50 ft.
high across the latter's narrow outlet, Sir William
Willcocks estimates that a reservoir could be obtained
holding eighteen milliards of tons of water. See his work
The Irrigations of Mesopotamia (E. and F. N. Spon, 1911),
Geographical Journal, Vol. XL, No. 2 (Aug., 1912), pp. 129
ff., and the articles in The Near East cited on p. 97, n.
1, and p. 98, n. 2. Sir William Willcocks's volume and
subsequent papers form the best introduction to the study of
Babylonian Deluge tradition on its material side.
(3) Their works carried out on the Tigris were effective for
irrigation; but the Babylonians never succeeded in
controlling its floods as they did those of the Euphrates. A
massive earthen dam, the remains of which are still known as
"Nimrod's Dam", was thrown across the Tigris above the point
where it entered its delta; this served to turn the river
over hard conglomerate rock and kept it at a high level so
that it could irrigate the country on both banks. Above the
dam were the heads of the later Nahrwân Canal, a great
stream 400 ft. wide and 17 ft. deep, which supplied the
country east of the river. The Nâr Sharri or "King's Canal",
the Nahar Malkha of the Greeks and the Nahr el-Malik of the
Arabs, protected the right bank of the Tigris by its own
high artificial banks, which can still be traced for
hundreds of miles; but it took its supply from the Euphrates
at Sippar, where the ground is some 25 ft. higher than on
the Tigris. The Tigris usually flooded its left bank; it was
the right bank which was protected, and a breach here meant
disaster. Cf. Willcocks, op. cit., and The Near East,
Sept. 29, 1916 (Vol. XI, No. 282), p. 522.
It was only by constant and unremitting attention that disaster from flood could be averted; and the difficulties of the problem were and are increased by the fact that the flood-water of the Mesopotamian rivers contains five times as much sediment as the Nile. In fact, one of the most pressing of the problems the Sumerian and early Babylonian engineers had to solve was the keeping of the canals free from silt.(1) What the floods, if left unchecked, may do in Mesopotamia, is well illustrated by the decay of the ancient canal-system, which has been the immediate cause of the country's present state of sordid desolation. That the decay was gradual was not the fault of the rivers, but was due to the sound principles on which the old system of control had been evolved through many centuries of labour. At the time of the Moslem conquest the system had already begun to fail. In the fifth century there had been bad floods; but worse came in A.D. 629, when both rivers burst their banks and played havoc with the dikes and embankments. It is related that the Sassanian king Parwiz, the contemporary of Mohammed, crucified in one day forty canal-workers at a certain breach, and yet was unable to master the flood.(2) All repairs were suspended during the anarchy of the Moslem invasion. As a consequence the Tigris left its old bed for the Shatt el-Hai at Kût, and pouring its own and its tributaries' waters into the Euphrates formed the Great Euphrates Swamp, two hundred miles long and fifty broad. But even then what was left of the old system was sufficient to support the splendour of the Eastern Caliphate.
(1) Cf. Letters of Hammurabi, Vol. III, pp. xxxvi ff.; it
was the duty of every village or town upon the banks of the
main canals in Babylonia to keep its own section clear of
silt, and of course it was also responsible for its own
smaller irrigation-channels. While the invention of the
system of basin-irrigation was practically forced on Egypt,
the extraordinary fertility of Babylonia was won in the
teeth of nature by the system of perennial irrigation, or
irrigation all the year round. In Babylonia the water was
led into small fields of two or three acres, while the Nile
valley was irrigated in great basins each containing some
thirty to forty thousand acres. The Babylonian method gives
far more profitable results, and Sir William Willcocks
points out that Egypt to-day is gradually abandoning its own
system and adopting that of its ancient rival; see The Near
East, Sept. 29, 1916, p. 521.
(2) See Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, p.
27.
The second great blow to the system followed the Mongol conquest, when the Nahrwân Canal, to the east of the Tigris, had its head swept away by flood and the area it had irrigated became desert. Then, in about the fifteenth century, the Tigris returned to its old course; the Shatt el-Hai shrank, and much of the Great Swamp dried up into the desert it is to-day.(1) Things became worse during the centuries of Turkish misrule. But the silting up of the Hillah, or main, branch of the Euphrates about 1865, and the transference of a great part of its stream into the Hindîyah Canal, caused even the Turks to take action. They constructed the old Hindîyah Barrage in 1890, but it gave way in 1903 and the state of things was even worse than before; for the Hillah branch then dried entirely.(2)