Legends of Babylon and Egypt in Relation to Hebrew Tradition.pdf

[1] In Semitic-Babylonian the first component of this city-name would read "Dûr".
The completion of the sentence, in the last two lines of the column, cannot be rendered with any certainty, but the
passage appears to have related the creation of small rivers and pools. It will be noted that the lines which contain the
names of the five cities and their patron gods[1] form a long explanatory parenthesis, the preceding line being repeated
after their enumeration.
[1] The precise meaning of the sign-group here provisionally rendered "divine ruler" is not yet ascertained.
As the first of the series of five cities of Eridu, the seat of Nudimmud or Enki, who was the third of the creating
deities, it has been urged that the upper part of the Second Column must have included an account of the founding of
Erech, the city of Anu, and of Nippur, Enlil's city.[1] But the numbered sequence of the cities would be difficult to
reconcile with the earlier creation of other cities in the text, and the mention of Eridu as the first city to be created
would be quite in accord with its great age and peculiarly sacred character as a cult-centre. Moreover the evidence of
the Sumerian Dynastic List is definitely against any claim of Erech to Antediluvian existence. For when the hegemony
passed from the first Post-diluvian "kingdom" to the second, it went not to Erech but to the shrine Eanna, which gave
its name to the second "kingdom"; and the city itself was apparently not founded before the reign of Enmerkar, the
second occupant of the throne, who is the first to be given the title "King of Erech". This conclusion with regard to
Erech incidentally disposes of the arguments for Nippur's Antediluvian rank in primitive Sumerian tradition, which
have been founded on the order of the cities mentioned at the beginning of the later Sumerian myth of Creation.[2] The
evidence we thus obtain that the early Sumerians themselves regarded Eridu as the first city in the world to be created,
increases the hope that future excavation at Abu Shahrain may reveal Sumerian remains of periods which, from an
archaeological standpoint, must still be regarded as prehistoric.
[1] Cf. Poebel, op. cit., p. 41.
[2] The city of Nippur does not occur among the first four "kingdoms" of the Sumerian Dynastic List; but we may
probably assume that it was the seat of at least one early "kingdom", in consequence of which Enlil, its city-god,
attained his later pre-eminent rank in the Sumerian pantheon.
It is noteworthy that no human rulers are mentioned in connexion with Eridu and the other four Antediluvian cities;
and Ziusudu, the hero of the story, is apparently the only mortal whose name occurred in our text. But its author's
principal subject is the Deluge, and the preceding history of the world is clearly not given in detail, but is merely
summarized. In view of the obviously abbreviated form of the narrative, of which we have already noted striking
evidence in its account of the Creation, we may conclude that in the fuller form of the tradition the cities were also
assigned human rulers, each one the representative of his city-god. These would correspond to the Antediluvian
dynasty of Berossus, the last member of which was Xisuthros, the later counterpart of Ziusudu.
In support of the exclusion of Nippur and Erech from the myth, it will be noted that the second city in the list is not
Adab,[1] which was probably the principal seat of the goddess Ninkharsagga, the fourth of the creating deities. The
names of both deity and city in that line are strange to us. Larak, the third city in the series, is of greater interest, for it
is clearly Larankha, which according to Berossus was the seat of the eighth and ninth of his Antediluvian kings. In
commercial documents of the Persian period, which have been found during the excavations at Nippur, Larak is
described as lying "on the bank of the old Tigris", a phrase which must be taken as referring to the Shatt el-Hai, in
view of the situation of Lagash and other early cities upon it or in its immediate neighbourhood. The site of the city
should perhaps be sought on the upper course of the stream, where it tends to approach Nippur. It would thus have lain
in the neighbourhood of Bismâya, the site of Adab. Like Adab, Lagash, Shuruppak, and other early Sumerian cities, it
was probably destroyed and deserted at a very early period, though it was reoccupied under its old name in Neo-
Babylonian or Persian times. Its early disappearance from Babylonian history perhaps in part accounts for our own
unfamiliarity with Pabilkharsag, its city-god, unless we may regard the name as a variant from of Pabilsag; but it is
hardly likely that the two should be identified.
[1] The site of Adab, now marked by the mounds of Bismâya, was partially excavated by an expedition sent out in
1903 by the University of Chicago, and has provided valuable material for the study of the earliest Sumerian period;
see /Reports of the Expedition of the Oriental Exploration Fund/ (Babylonian Section of the University of Chicago),