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

[1] Possibly to be translated "mountain". The rendering of the proper name as that of Dilmun is very uncertain. For the
probable identification of Dilmun with the island of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf, cf. Rawlinson, /Journ. Roy. As. Soc./,
1880, pp. 20 ff.; and see further, Meissner, /Orient. Lit-Zeit./, XX. No. 7, col. 201 ff.
The first two lines of the column are probably part of the speech of some deity, who urges the necessity of invoking or
conjuring Anu and Enlil "by the Soul of Heaven, by the Soul of Earth", in order to secure their support or approval.
Now Anu and Enlil are the two great gods who had determined on mankind's destruction, and whose wrath at his own
escape from death Ziusudu must placate. It is an obvious inference that conjuring "by the Soul of Heaven" and "by the
Soul of Earth" is either the method by which Ziusudu has already succeeded in appeasing their anger, or the means by
which he is here enjoined to attain that end. Against the latter alternative it is to be noted that the god is addressing
more than one person; and, further, at Ziusudu is evidently already pardoned, for, so far from following the deity's
advice, he immediately prostrates himself before Anu and Enlil and receives immortality. We may conjecture that at
the close of the Fifth Column Ziusudu had already performed the invocation and thereby had appeased the divine
wrath; and that the lines at the beginning of the Sixth Column point the moral of the story by enjoining on Ziusudu and
his descendants, in other words on mankind, the advisability of employing this powerful incantation at their need. The
speaker may perhaps have been one of Ziusudu's divine helpers--the Sun-god to whom he had sacrificed, or Enki who
had saved him from the Flood. But it seems to me more probable that the words are uttered by Anu and Enlil
themselves.[1] For thereby they would be represented as giving their own sanction to the formula, and as guaranteeing
its magical efficacy. That the incantation, as addressed to Anu and Enlil, would be appropriate is obvious, since each
would be magically approached through his own sphere of control.
[1] One of them may have been the speaker on behalf of both.
It is significant that at another critical point of the story we have already met with a reference to conjuring "by the
Name of Heaven and Earth", the phrase occurring at the close of the Third Column after the reference to the dream or
dreams. There, as we saw, we might possibly explain the passage as illustrating one aspect of Ziusudu's piety: he may
have been represented as continually practising this class of divination, and in that case it would be natural enough that
in the final crisis of the story he should have propitiated the gods he conjured by the same means. Or, as a more
probable alternative, it was suggested that we might connect the line with Enki's warning, and assume that Ziusudu
interpreted the dream-revelation of Anu and Enlil's purpose by means of the magical incantation which was peculiarly
associated with them. On either alternative the phrase fits into the story itself, and there is no need to suppose that the
narrative is interrupted, either in the Third or in the Sixth Column, by an address to the hearers of the myth, urging
them to make the invocation on their own behalf.
On the other hand, it seems improbable that the lines in question formed part of the original myth; they may have been
inserted to weld the myth more closely to the magic. Both incantation and epic may have originally existed
independently, and, if so, their combination would have been suggested by their contents. For while the former is
addressed to Anu and Enlil, in the latter these same gods play the dominant parts: they are the two chief creators, it is
they who send the Flood, and it is their anger that must be appeased. If once combined, the further step of making the
incantation the actual means by which Ziusudu achieved his own rescue and immortality would be a natural
development. It may be added that the words would have been an equally appropriate addition if the incantation had
not existed independently, but had been suggested by, and developed from, the myth.
In the third and eleventh lines of the column we have further references to the mysterious object, the creation of which
appears to have been recorded in the First Column of the text between man's creation and that of animals. The second
sign of the group composing its name was not recognized by Dr. Poebel, but it is quite clearly written in two of the
passages, and has been correctly identified by Professor Barton.[1] The Sumerian word is, in fact, to be read /nig- gilma/,[2]
which, when preceded by the determinative for "pot", "jar", or "bowl", is given in a later syllabary as the
equivalent of the Semitic word /mashkhalu/. Evidence that the word /mashkhalu/ was actually employed to denote a jar
or vessel of some sort is furnished by one of the Tel el-Amarna letters which refers to "one silver /mashkhalu/" and
"one (or two) stone /mashkhalu/".[3] In our text the determinative is absent, and it is possible that the word is used in
another sense. Professor Barton, in both passages in the Sixth Column, gives it the meaning "curse"; he interprets the
lines as referring to the removal of a curse from the earth after the Flood, and he compares Gen. viii. 21, where
Yahweh declares he will not again "curse the ground for man's sake". But this translation ignores the occurrence of the