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

employed for the flood both in the early Semitic version of the Atrakhasis story dated in Ammizaduga's reign and in
the Gilgamesh Epic. The word /abûbu/ is often conventionally rendered "deluge", but should be more accurately
translated "flood". It is true that the tempests of the Sumerian Version probably imply rain; and in the Gilgamesh Epic
heavy rain in the evening begins the flood and is followed at dawn by a thunderstorm and hurricane. But in itself the
term /abûbu/ implies flood, which could take place through a rise of the rivers unaccompanied by heavy local rain. The
annual rainfall in Babylonia to-day is on an average only about 8 in., and there have been years in succession when the
total rainfall has not exceeded 4 in.; and yet the /abûbu/ is not a thing of the past.
[4] The word here rendered "assembly" is the Semitic loan-word /buhrum/, in Babylonian /puhrum/, the term employed
for the "assembly" of the gods both in the Babylonian Creation Series and in the Gilgamesh Epic. Its employment in
the Sumerian Version, in place of its Sumerian equivalent /ukkin/, is an interesting example of Semitic influence. Its
occurrence does not necessarily imply the existence of a recognized Semitic Version at the period our text was
inscribed. The substitution of /buhrum/ for /ukkin/ in the text may well date from the period of Hammurabi, when we
may assume that the increased importance of the city-council was reflected in the general adoption of the Semitic term
(cf. Poebel, /Hist. Texts/, p. 53).
In the Semitic Version Ut-napishtim, who tells the story in the first person, then says that he "understood", and that,
after assuring Ea that he would carry out his commands, he asked how he was to explain his action to "the city, the
people, and the elders"; and the god told him what to say. Then follows an account of the building of the ship,
introduced by the words "As soon as the dawn began to break". In the Sumerian Version the close of the warning, in
which the ship was probably referred to, and the lines prescribing how Ziusudu carried out the divine instructions are
not preserved.
It will be seen that in the passage quoted from the Semitic Version there is no direct mention of a dream; the god is
represented at first as addressing his words to a "house of reeds" and a "wall", and then as speaking to Ut-napishtim
himself. But in a later passage in the Epic, when Ea seeks to excuse his action to Enlil, he says that the gods' decision
was revealed to Atrakhasis through a dream.[1] Dr. Poebel rightly compares the direct warning of Ut-napishtim by Ea
in the passage quoted above with the equally direct warning Ziusudu receives in the Sumerian Version. But he would
have us divorce the direct warning from the dream-warning, and he concludes that no less than three different versions
of the story have been worked together in the Gilgamesh Epic. In the first, corresponding to that in our text, Ea
communicates the gods' decision directly to Ut-napishtim; in the second he sends a dream from which Atrakhasis, "the
Very Wise one", guesses the impending peril; while in the third he relates the plan to a wall, taking care that Utnapishtim
overhears him.[2] The version of Berossus, that Kronos himself appears to Xisuthros in a dream and warns
him, is rejected by Dr. Poebel, who remarks that here the "original significance of the dream has already been
obliterated". Consequently there seems to him to be "no logical connexion" between the dreams or dream mentioned at
the close of the Third Column and the communication of the plan of the gods at the beginning of the Fourth Column of
our text.[3]
[1] Cf. l. 195 f.; "I did not divulge the decision of the great gods. I caused Atrakhasis to behold a dream and thus he
heard the decision of the gods."
[2] Cf. Poebel, /Hist. Texts/, p. 51 f. With the god's apparent subterfuge in the third of these supposed versions Sir
James Frazer (/Ancient Stories of a Great Flood/, p. 15) not inaptly compares the well-known story of King Midas's
servant, who, unable to keep the secret of the king's deformity to himself, whispered it into a hole in the ground, with
the result that the reeds which grew up there by their rustling in the wind proclaimed it to the world (Ovid,
/Metamorphoses/, xi, 174 ff.).
[3] Op. cit., p. 51; cf. also Jastrow, /Heb. and Bab. Trad./, p. 346.
So far from Berossus having missed the original significance of the narrative he relates, I think it can be shown that he
reproduces very accurately the sense of our Sumerian text; and that the apparent discrepancies in the Semitic Version,
and the puzzling references to a wall in both it and the Sumerian Version, are capable of a simple explanation. There
appears to me no justification for splitting the Semitic narrative into the several versions suggested, since the
assumption that the direct warning and the dream-warning must be distinguished is really based on a misunderstanding