"Mu-sheri-ina-namari[37]—rose from the foundations of heaven in a black cloud;—Ramman[38] thundered in the midst of the cloud—and Nabon and Sharru marched before;—they marched, devastating the mountain and the plain;—Nergal[39] the powerful, dragged chastisements after him;—Adar[40] advanced, overthrowing before him;—the Archangels of the abyss brought destruction—in their terrors they agitated the earth.—The inundation of Ramman swelled up to the sky—and [the earth] became without lustre, was changed into a desert.
"They broke ... of the surface of the earth like ...;—[they destroyed] the living beings of the surface of the earth.—The terrible [Deluge] on men swelled up to [heaven].—The brother no longer saw his brother; men no longer knew each other. In heaven—the gods became afraid of the water-spout, and—sought a refuge; they mounted up to the heaven of Anu.[41]—The gods were stretched out motionless, pressing one against another like dogs.—Ishtar wailed like a child,—the great goddess pronounced her discourse:—'Here is humanity returned into mud, and—this is the misfortune that I have announced in the presence of the gods.—So I announced the misfortune in the presence of the gods,—for the evil I announced the terrible [chastisement] of men who are mine.—I am the mother who gave birth to men, and—like to the race of fishes, there they are filling the sea;—and the gods by reason of that—which the archangels of the abyss are doing, weep with me.'—The gods on their seats were seated in tears—and they held their lips closed, [revolving] future things.
"Six days and as many nights passed; the wind, the water-spout, and the diluvian rain were in all their strength. At the approach of the seventh day the diluvian rain grew weaker, the terrible water-spout—which had assailed after the fashion of an earthquake—grew calm, the sea inclined to dry up, and the wind and the water-spout came to an end. I looked at the sea, attentively observing—and the whole of humanity had returned to mud; like unto seaweeds the corpses floated. I opened the window, and the light smote on my face. I was seized with sadness; I sat down and I wept;—and my tears came over my face.
"I looked at the regions bounding the sea; towards the twelve points of the horizon; not any continent.—The vessel was borne above the land of Nizir—the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over.—A day and a second day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over;—the third and fourth day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over;—the fifth and sixth day the mountain of Nizir arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over.—At the approach of the seventh day, I sent out and loosed a dove. The dove went, turned, and—found no place to light on, and it came back. I sent out and loosed a swallow; the swallow went, turned, and—found no place to light on, and it came back. I sent out and loosed a raven; the raven went and saw the corpses on the waters; it ate, rested, turned and came not back.
"I then sent out (what was in the vessel) towards the four winds, and I offered a sacrifice. I raised the pile of my burnt offering on the peak of the mountain; seven by seven I disposed the measured vases,[42]—and beneath I spread rushes, cedar, and juniper wood. The gods were seized with the desire of it—the gods were seized with a benevolent desire of it;—and the gods assembled like flies above the master of the sacrifice. From afar, in approaching, the great goddess raised the great zones that Anu has made for their glory (the gods).[43] These gods, luminous crystal before me, I will never leave them; in that day I prayed that I might never leave them. 'Let the gods come to my sacrificial pile!—but never may Bel come to my sacrificial pile! for he did not master himself, and he has made the water-spout for the Deluge, and he has numbered my men for the pit.'
"From far, in drawing near, Bel—saw the vessel, and Bel stopped;—he was filled with anger against the gods and the celestial archangels:—
"'No one shall come out alive! No man shall be preserved from the abyss!'—Adar opened his mouth and said; he said to the warrior Bel:—'What other than Êa should have formed this resolution?—for Êa possesses knowledge and [he foresees] all.'—Êa opened his mouth and spake; he said to the warrior Bel:—'O thou, herald of the gods, warrior,—as thou didst not master thyself, thou hast made the water-spout of the deluge.—Let the sinner carry the weight of his sins, the blasphemer the weight of his blasphemy.—Please thyself with this good pleasure and it shall never be infringed; faith in it never [shall be violated.]—Instead of thy making a new deluge, let lions appear and reduce the number of men; instead of thy making a new deluge, let hyenas appear and reduce the number of men;—instead of thy making a new deluge, let there be famine and let the earth be [devastated];—instead of thy making a new deluge, let Dibbara[44] appear, and let men be [mown down]. I have not revealed the decision of the great gods;—it is Khasisatra who interpreted a dream and comprehended what the gods had decided.'
"Then, when his resolve was arrested, Bel entered into the vessel.—He took my hand and made me rise.—He made my wife rise and made her place herself at my side.—He turned around us and stopped short; he approached our group.—'Until now Khasisatra has made part of perishable humanity;—but lo, now, Khasisatra and his wife are going to be carried away to live like the gods,—and Khasisatra will reside afar at the mouth of the rivers.'—They carried me away and established me in a remote place at the mouth of the streams."
This narrative follows with great exactness the same course as that, or rather as those of Genesis, and the analogies are on both sides striking. It is well known, and has long been critically demonstrated, that chapters vi., vii., viii. and ix. of Genesis contain two different narratives of the Deluge, the one taken from the Elohist document, the other from the Jehovist, both being skilfully combined by the final editor. Reverencing their text, which he evidently considered sacred, he omitted no fact given by either, so that we have the whole story twice narrated in different terms; and, in spite of the way the verses are mixed up, it is easy so to disentangle the two versions as that each should form a continuous and unbroken narrative. Some critics have recently pretended that, with regard to the stories of the Creation and Deluge, both cuneiform documents disproved the distinction between the two sources of Genesis, and proved the primitive unity of its composition; that the same repetitions, in effect, were to be found there. This was a premature conclusion, drawn from translations very imperfect as yet, and requiring thorough revision; and, indeed, confining ourselves to the story of the Deluge, such revision, carried on according to strict philological principles, does away with the arguments that had been based on the version of George Smith. None of the repetitions of the final text of Genesis are observable in the Chaldean poem; which, on the contrary, decisively confirms the distinction made between the two narratives, the Elohist and Jehovist, interwoven by the last compiler of the Pentateuch. It is with each of these separately—when disentangled and compared—that the Chaldean narrative coincides in its order—it is not with the result of their combination. And nothing could be easier than to demonstrate this by a synoptic table, in which the three narratives were collated.
Such a table would at once show their agreement and their difference, what the three records have in common, and what each has added of its own to the primitive outline. They are certainly three versions of the same traditional history, and with the Chaldeo-Babylonians on the one hand, and the Hebrews on the other, we have two parallel streams proceeding from one source. Nevertheless, we must note on both sides divergences of certain importance which prove the bifurcation of the two traditions to have taken place at a very remote era, and the one of which the Bible affords us the expression to be not merely an edition of that preserved by the Chaldean priesthood, expurgated from a severely monotheistic point of view.