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

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[1] Cf. l. 121 f., "Since I commanded evil in the assembly of the gods, (and) commanded battle for the destruction of my people". [2] Cf. ll. 165 ff., "Ye gods that are here! So long as I forget not the (jewels of) lapis lazuli upon my neck, I will keep these days in my memory, never will I forget them! Let the gods come to the offering, but let not Enlil come to the offering, since he took not counsel but sent the deluge and surrendered my people to destruction." The lament of the goddess is followed by a brief account of the action taken by the other chief figures in the drama. Enki holds counsel with his own heart, evidently devising the project, which he afterwards carried into effect, of preserving the seed of mankind from destruction. Since the verb in the following line is wanting, we do not know what action is there recorded of the four creating deities; but the fact that the gods of heaven and earth invoked the name of Anu and Enlil suggests that it was their will which had been forced upon the other gods. We shall see that throughout the text Anu and Enlil are the ultimate rulers of both gods and men. The narrative then introduces the human hero of the Deluge story: At that time Ziusudu, the king, . . . priest of the god [. . .], Made a very great . . ., [. . .]. In humility he prostrates himself, in reverence [. . .], Daily he stands in attendance [. . .]. A dream,[1] such as had not been before, comes forth[2] . . . [. . .], By the Name of Heaven and Earth he conjures [. . .]. [1] The word may also be rendered "dreams". [2] For this rendering of the verb /e-de/, for which Dr. Poebel does not hazard a translation, see Rawlinson, /W.A.I./, IV, pl. 26, l. 24 f.(a), /nu-e-de/ = Sem. /la us-su-u/ (Pres.); and cf. Brünnow, /Classified List/, p. 327. An alternative rendering "is created" is also possible, and would give equally good sense; cf. /nu-e-de/ = Sem. /la šu-pu-u/, /W.A.I./, IV, pl. 2, l. 5 (a), and Brünnow, op. cit., p. 328. The name of the hero, Ziusudu, is the fuller Sumerian equivalent of Ut-napishtim (or Uta-napishtim), the abbreviated Semitic form which we find in the Gilgamesh Epic. For not only are the first two elements of the Sumerian name identical with those of the Semitic Ut-napishtim, but the names themselves are equated in a later Babylonian syllabary or explanatory list of words.[1] We there find "Ut-napishte" given as the equivalent of the Sumerian "Zisuda", evidently an abbreviated form of the name Ziusudu;[2] and it is significant that the names occur in the syllabary between those of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, evidently in consequence of the association of the Deluge story by the Babylonians with their national epic of Gilgamesh. The name Ziusudu may be rendered "He who lengthened the day of life" or "He who made life long of days",[3] which in the Semitic form is abbreviated by the omission of the verb. The reference is probably to the immortality bestowed upon Ziusudu at the close of the story, and not to the prolongation of mankind's existence in which he was instrumental. It is scarcely necessary to add that the name has no linguistic connexion with the Hebrew name Noah, to which it also presents no parallel in meaning. [1] Cf. /Cun. Texts in the Brit. Mus./, Pt. XVIII, pl. 30, l. 9 (a). [2] The name in the Sumerian Version is read by Dr. Poebel as Ziugiddu, but there is much in favour of Prof. Zimmern's suggestion, based on the form Zisuda, that the third syllable of the name should be read as /su/. On a fragment of another Nippur text, No. 4611, Dr. Langdon reads the name as /Zi-u-sud-du/ (cf. Univ. of Penns. Mus. Publ., Bab. Sec., Vol. X, No. 1, p. 90, pl. iv a); the presence of the phonetic complement /du/ may be cited in favour of this reading, but it does not appear to be supported by the photographic reproductions of the name in the Sumerian Deluge Version given by Dr. Poebel (/Hist. and Gramm. Texts/, pl. lxxxviii f.). It may be added that, on either alternative, the meaning of the name is the same. [3] The meaning of the Sumerian element /u/ in the name, rendered as /utu/ in the Semitic form, is rather obscure, and Dr. Poebel left it unexplained. It is very probable, as suggested by Dr. Langdon (cf. /Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch./, XXXVI, 1914, p. 190), that we should connect it with the Semitic /uddu/; in that case, in place of "breath", the rending he suggests, I should be inclined to render it here as "day", for /uddu/ as the meaning "dawn" and the sign UD is employed both for /urru/, "day-light", and /ûmu/, "day".
It is an interesting fact that Ziusudu should be described simply as "the king", without any indication of the city or area he ruled; and in three of the five other passages in the text in which his name is mentioned it is followed by the same title without qualification. In most cases Berossus tells us the cities from which his Antediluvian rulers came; and if the end of the line had been preserved it might have been possible to determine definitely Ziusudu's city, and incidentally the scene of the Deluge in the Sumerian Version, by the name of the deity in whose service he acted as priest. We have already noted some grounds for believing that his city may have been Shuruppak, as in the Babylonian Version; and if that were so, the divine name reads as "the God of Shurrupak" should probably be restored at the end of the line.[1] [1] The remains that are preserved of the determinative, which is not combined with the sign EN, proves that Enki's name is not to be restored. Hence Ziusudu was not priest of Enki, and his city was probably not Eridu, the seat of his divine friend and counsellor, and the first of the Antediluvian cities. Sufficient reason for Enki's intervention on Ziusudu's behalf is furnished by the fact that, as God of the Deep, he was concerned in the proposed method of man's destruction. His rivalry of Enlil, the God of the Earth, is implied in the Babylonian Version (cf. Gilg. Epic. XI, ll. 39- 42), and in the Sumerian Version this would naturally extend to Anu, the God of Heaven. The employment of the royal title by itself accords with the tradition from Berossus that before the Deluge, as in later periods, the land was governed by a succession of supreme rulers, and that the hero of the Deluge was the last of them. In the Gilgamesh Epic, on the other hand, Ut-napishtim is given no royal nor any other title. He is merely referred to as a "man of Shuruppak, son of Ubar-Tutu", and he appears in the guise of an ancient hero or patriarch not invested with royal power. On this point Berossus evidently preserves the original Sumerian traditions, while the Hebrew Versions resemble the Semitic- Babylonian narrative. The Sumerian conception of a series of supreme Antediluvian rulers is of course merely a reflection from the historical period, when the hegemony in Babylonia was contested among the city-states. The growth of the tradition may have been encouraged by the early use of /lugal/, "king", which, though always a term of secular character, was not very sharply distinguished from that of /patesi/ and other religious titles, until, in accordance with political development, it was required to connote a wider dominion. In Sumer, at the time of the composition of our text, Ziusudu was still only one in a long line of Babylonian rulers, mainly historical but gradually receding into the realms of legend and myth. At the time of the later Semites there had been more than one complete break in the tradition and the historical setting of the old story had become dim. The fact that Hebrew tradition should range itself in this matter with Babylon rather than with Sumer is important as a clue in tracing the literary history of our texts. The rest of the column may be taken as descriptive of Ziusudu's activities. One line records his making of some very great object or the erection of a huge building;[1] and since the following lines are concerned solely with religious activities, the reference is possibly to a temple or some other structure of a sacred character. Its foundation may have been recorded as striking evidence of his devotion to his god; or, since the verb in this sentence depends on the words "at that time" in the preceding line, we may perhaps regard his action as directly connected with the revelation to be made to him. His personal piety is then described: daily he occupied himself in his god's service, prostrating himself in humility and constant in his attendance at the shrine. A dream (or possibly dreams), "such as had not been before", appears to him and he seems to be further described as conjuring "by the Name of Heaven and Earth"; but as the ends of all these lines are broken, the exact connexion of the phrases is not quite certain. [1] The element /gur-gur/, "very large" or "huge", which occurs in the name of this great object or building, /an-saggur-gur/, is employed later in the term for the "huge boat", /(gish)ma-gur- gur/, in which Ziusudu rode out the storm. There was, of course, even at this early period a natural tendency to picture on a superhuman scale the lives and deeds of remote predecessors, a tendency which increased in later times and led, as we shall see, to the elaboration of extravagant detail. It is difficult not to associate the reference to a dream, or possibly to dream-divination, with the warning in which Enki reveals the purpose of the gods. For the later versions prepare us for a reference to a dream. If we take the line as describing Ziusudu's practice of dream-divination in general, "such as had not been before", he may have been represented as the first diviner of dreams, as Enmeduranki was held to be the first practitioner of divination in general. But it seems to me more probable that the reference is to a particular dream, by means of which he obtained knowledge of the gods' intentions. On the rendering of this passage depends our interpretation of the whole of the
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Page 3 and 4: L. W. KING. LECTURE I EGYPT, BABYLO
Page 5 and 6: Palestine ran then as they do to-da
Page 7 and 8: interesting, for it is clearly the
Page 9 and 10: founded a Jewish colony beside a fl
Page 11 and 12: material effects upon the native po
Page 13 and 14: [3] Ezek. i. 1, 3; iii. 23; and cf.
Page 15 and 16: [1] See Breasted, /Anc. Rec./, I, p
Page 17 and 18: example, which preceded that of Nî
Page 19 and 20: may yet be accepted in a modified f
Page 21 and 22: and Enmerkar's father was high prie
Page 23 and 24: I may add that a parallel is provid
Page 25 and 26: Now the tablets from the Royal Libr
Page 27 and 28: including in addition to these two
Page 29 and 30: explicable only on that hypothesis.
Page 31 and 32: from it might well be referred to b
Page 33 and 34: [1] In Semitic-Babylonian the first
Page 35: after which the text continues: At
Page 39 and 40: employed for the flood both in the
Page 41 and 42: plan of the temple which he drew wa
Page 43 and 44: oth versions. We find an equally cl
Page 45 and 46: We will now return to the text and
Page 47 and 48: [1] Possibly to be translated "moun
Page 49 and 50: Gilgamesh Epic and in Berossus, tho
Page 51 and 52: evidence of a subsequent attempt to
Page 53 and 54: and up-stream of "Nimrod's Dam". Th
Page 55 and 56: terrestrial experience. To-day we w
Page 57 and 58: [1] This detail is not clearly pres
Page 59 and 60: God of Wisdom, he is not only the t
Page 61 and 62: [4] Cf. Tabl. VII, ll. 116 ff. [5]
Page 63 and 64: [4] i.e. the length of his pace was
Page 65 and 66: When in the height heaven was not n
Page 67 and 68: period when some progress in system
Page 69 and 70: First Dynasty, whose genius for met
Page 71 and 72: staff of the bread transgression! t
Page 73 and 74: in the first lecture we noted some
Page 75 and 76: of MAN Creation of MAN from Creatio
Page 77: [6] Eanna was the great temple of E

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