1

Eninnu. The sun which arose from the world is thy god Gishzida; like the sun from the world he arose for thee. The maiden who . . . made, who in her hand held the sacred stylus, who possessed the tablet of the favorable stars, who counseled with herself, verily it is my sister Nidaba.

COLUMN VI

"By the bright star she announced unto thee the building of the temple. In the second place there is the strong man who held in his hand a plate of lapis lazuli; it is the god Nindub. He fixes for thee the plan of the temple. The sacred head basket which was placed before thee, the sacred mold which was arranged, the brick of fate which was in the mold, verily, the holy brick of Eninnu it is. As for the holy placed before thee in which the bird . . . brings the light of dawn to men, it means pleasant things shall not prevent thee from building the temple.

As for the ass which crouched at the side of my lord, it is thee; in Eninnu, like . . . thou crouchest. May mason provide my purification. In Girsu, in the sanctuary of the land of Lagash, thou shalt set thy foot. In thy treasure-house change the tablets of accounts, remove therefrom wood. For thy king prepare a chariot. The ass yoke thereto. The sacred chariot with lapis lazuli adorn. The quiver like daylight shall shine. The divine sword of heroism adorn.

"His sacred emblem make, thy name write thereon. His beloved lyre, the usumgal of the land, instrument which has a sweet sound, which gives counsel, unto the hero who loves gifts,

COLUMN VII

Thy King, the lord Ningirsu, in Eninnu, of the glorious storm-bird, cause to be brought in. Thy little words as great words he has received. Inasmuch as he whose heart is as profound as heaven, Ningirsu, the son of Enlil, appeases thee with his word, and reveals unto thee the plan of his temple; the hero whose decrees are great has blessed thee."

THE DESTRUCTION OF URUK1

(A LAMENT)

Until when, oh lady,

Shall the ungodly enemy ravage thy land?

In thy queen city, Uruk,
Destruction is complete.

5 In Eulbar, thy temple,

Blood has flowed as water.

O'er all thy lands the foe has poured out flame;
It hangs over them like smoke.

Oh lady, it is hard for me

10 To bend my neck to the yoke of misfortune!
Oh lady, thou hast let me suffer,
Thou hast plunged me in sorrow!

The mighty evil foe

Broke me as a reed;

15 I know not what to resolve;
I trust not in myself.

Like a thicket of waving reeds

I moan low, day and night.

I bow my head before thee!

20 I am thy servant!

1 The chief gods of the ancient world, including the idols of Anu and Nana at Uruk, of Ea at Eridu, and a score of others, were carried away to Elam, where, for upward of a thousand years, they were held like State prisoners in the temples of Susa, placed in humble servitude at the feet of the Elamite gods.

Some poet of Uruk, lamenting this destruction, wrote to his lost goddess Nana a plea which has been preserved to us. The above is a free, rather than a close, translation, by the editor.

THE OLDEST CREATION-STORY

1

(WITH A PRELIMINARY EXPLANATION BY DR. ARNO POEBEL)

[Our text is a poem, as may be seen from the mere external appearance of the tablet, namely, the arrangement of the lines and the frequent blank spaces between the various groups of signs due to the rhythmical character of the text. Readers of the Bible, moreover, will easily recognize the quaint principle of partial repetition or paraphrase in parallel lines, which is so characteristic a feature of Hebrew poetry.

At the beginning of the preserved portion of the first column we find the goddess Nintur, or Nin-harsagga, speaking of the destruction of mankind which she calls hers, because she was one of its creators, as we shall presently see. It is not clear, however, whether in this passage she promises to protect human kind from destruction, or whether she declares her intention to destroy human kind. The answer to this question would definitely establish the relation between the first two columns of our tablet and the rest of the text, the point at issue being whether the former present an independent account of the creation or simply a retrospective description of the origin of what was to perish in the flood, namely, all living beings and the cities which man had built. Unfortunately it will be impossible to give a definite answer to this important question as long as the upper portion of the tablet is missing.

Be this as it may, in line 11 we read that the creating deity fixes the commandments concerning man, i.e., defines his duties and his rights, one of which is, e.g., the building of cities and temples in a "clean spot," i.e., in hallowed places.

The last lines of the first column refer to the creation of the animals, which, by this passage, are shown to have been

1 Reprinted, by permission, from the publications of the University of Pennsylvania.

created after man, just as in the second Biblical account of the creation in Genesis ii. The introductory lines 13 and 14, which form the transition from the account of the creation of man to that of the animals, fortunately give us the names of the four creators of mankind, namely, Anu, Enlil, Enki, and the goddess Nin-harsagga, the four highest deities of the Babylonian pantheon. It has hitherto been almost completely overlooked what an important part the last-named deity played in the earlier Babylonian period, especially in the southern section of the country; our passage, therefore, furnishes us a most welcome clue concerning the position of this deity. One of the sacred cities of this goddess, the city of Adab, has been made known to us by the excavations of the University of Chicago.

In the preserved portion of the second column we read of five prediluvian cities of Babylonia, which were founded and bestowed upon various deities evidently by the most powerful of the gods, namely, Enlil, the lord of all the lands. As the first of these cities, Eridu, is given to Enki, the lord of the ocean, who is the third of the gods in rank, it is possible that the now missing upper portion reported the founding of the sacred cities of the two highest gods, namely, Uruk, the city of Anu, god of Heaven, and Nippur, the city of Enlil himself, which has been partially excavated by the University of Pennsylvania, and where our own tablet was dug from the soil. In one of the two cities, moreover, one of the created men must have been established as the first king of Babylonia, but in our text we have preserved only an allusion to the creation of the insignia of this king in the broken lines at the begining of Column II.

The last lines of the column are not clear to me; possibly they treat of the creation of canals, etc., the water of which was indispensable for the existence of the Babylonian cities; for without it the land would turn into a sandy desert, as indeed it has in many places at the present day.

In the third column of our fragment we are already in the story of the flood. The gods have resolved to destroy mankind, but when it comes to the execution of the decision the

gods, and especially the goddesses Innanna and Nintu, are filled with terror, and the latter with repentance, for the great calamity which they have caused. But it is only Enki, the god of wisdom, who is able to devise a plan to save at least one of the doomed race, Ziugiddu, the tenth and last of the prediluvian kings, who, like Noah in the Bible, was a pious man; in Column IV we therefore read that Enki informs Ziugiddu of the resolution of the gods, and the missing part of the same column must have reported how Ziugiddu built his boat and placed in it his family and all kinds of artizans, as well as all sorts of animals.

In the fifth column the deluge itself is recounted. It is caused only by a strong rain or, in the Babylonian expression, the rain demon, not as in the later Biblical account also by the waters from underneath the earth. The duration of the rain is seven days and seven nights; in this our tablet differs from the previously known Babylonian account, which gives it as six days only; nevertheless, in this point our text stands much nearer to this other Babylonian account than to either Biblical tradition, the older of which makes the rain last forty days and nights, while according to the later tradition the flood continued to rise for five months.

After the rain has ceased the Sun-god appears from behind the clouds and is the first to observe Ziugiddu in his boat, which is floating on the waters. Our hero prostrates himself before the god and, by offering up sacrifices, evidently wins his favor. In the sixth and last column, after an obscure passage, he prostrates himself before Enlil, who had been chiefly responsible for the resolution of the gods to destroy mankind. But he, too, is now appeased, and shows his favor by making Ziugiddu a god. In the last of the preserved lines the gods take Ziugiddu to a distant land, probably the country of Dilmun, somewhere on the shore of the Persian Gulf, where he lives thenceforth as a god.]