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

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