The Old Testament In the Light of The Historical Records and Legends Part 11

The G.o.ds of the Anunnaki were weeping with her.

The G.o.ds had crouched down, seated in lamentation, Covered were their lips in (all) the a.s.semblies, Six days and nights The wind blew, the deluge and flood overwhelmed the land.

The seventh day, when it came, the storm ceased, the raging flood, Which had contended like a whirlwind, Quieted, the sea shrank back, and the evil wind and deluge ended.

I noticed the sea making a noise, And all mankind had turned to corruption.

Like palings the marsh-reeds appeared.

I opened my window, and the light fell upon my face, I fell back dazzled, I sat down, I wept, Over my face flowed my tears.

I noted the regions, the sh.o.r.e of the sea, For twelve measures the region arose.

The s.h.i.+p had stopped at the land of Ni??ir.

The mountain of Ni?ir seized the s.h.i.+p, and would not let it pa.s.s.

The first day and the second day the mountain of Ni?ir seized the s.h.i.+p, and would not let it pa.s.s, The third day and the fourth day the mountain of Ni?ir, etc., The fifth and sixth the mountain of Ni?ir, etc., The seventh day, when it came I sent forth a dove, and it left, The dove went, it turned about, But there was no resting-place, and it returned.

I sent forth a swallow, and it left, The swallow went, it turned about, But there was no resting-place, and it returned.

I sent forth a raven, and it left, The raven went, the rus.h.i.+ng of the waters it saw, It ate, it waded, it croaked, it did not return.

I sent forth (the animals) to the four winds, I poured out a libation, I made an offering on the peak of the mountain, Seven and seven I set incense-vases there, In their depths I poured cane, cedar, and rosewood (?).

The G.o.ds smelled a savour, The G.o.ds smelled a sweet savour, The G.o.ds gathered like flies over the sacrificer.

Then the G.o.ddess Ma?, when she came, Raised the great signets that Anu had made at her wish: 'These G.o.ds-by the lapis-stone of my neck-let me not forget, These days let me remember, nor forget them forever!

Let the G.o.ds come to the sacrifice, But let not Ellila come to the sacrifice, For he did not take counsel, and made a flood, And consigned my people to destruction.'

Then Ellila, when he came, Saw the s.h.i.+p. And Ellila was wroth, Filled with anger on account of the G.o.ds and the spirits of heaven.

'What, has a soul escaped?

Let not a man be saved from the destruction.'

Ninip opened his mouth and spake, He said to the warrior Ellila: 'Who but Ae has done the thing And Ae knows every event.'

Ae opened his mouth and spake, He said to the warrior Ellila: 'Thou sage of the G.o.ds, warrior, Verily thou hast not taken counsel, and hast made a flood.

The sinner has committed his sin, The evildoer has committed his misdeed, Be merciful-let him not be cut off-yield, let (him) not perish.

Why hast thou made a flood?

Let the lion come, and let men diminish.

Why hast thou made a flood?

Let the hyaena come, and let men diminish.

Why hast thou made a flood?

Let a famine happen, and let the land be destroyed (?).

Why hast thou made a flood?

Let Ura (pestilence) come, and let the land be devastated (?).

I did not reveal the decision of the great G.o.ds- I caused Atra-?asis to see a dream, and he heard the decision of the G.o.ds.'

When he had taken counsel (with himself), Ae went up into the midst of the s.h.i.+p, He took my hand and he led me up, even me He brought up and caused my woman to kneel (?) at my side; He touched us, and standing between us, he blessed us (saying): 'Formerly Pir-napitim was a man: Now (as for) Pir-napitim and his woman, let them be like unto the G.o.ds, (even) us, And let Pir-napitim dwell afar at the mouths of the rivers.'

He took me, and afar at the mouths of the rivers he caused me to dwell.

Now as for thee, who of the G.o.ds shall restore thee to health?

That thou see the life that thou seekest, even thou?

Well, lie not down to sleep six days and seven nights, Like one who is sitting down in the midst of his sorrow (?), Sleep like a dark cloud hovereth over him.

Pir-napitim then said to his wife: 'See, the hero who desireth life, Sleep like a dark cloud hovereth over him.'

His wife then said to Pir-napitim the remote: 'Touch him, and let him awake a man- Let him return in health by the road that he came, Let him return to his country by the great gate by which he came forth.'

Pir-napitim said to his wife: 'The suffering of men hurteth thee.

Come, cook his food, set it by his head.'

And the day that he lay down in the enclosure of his s.h.i.+p, She cooked his food, she set it by his head: And the day when he lay down in the enclosure of his cabin First his food was ground, Secondly it was sifted, Thirdly it was moistened, Fourthly she rolled out his dough, Fifthly she threw down a part, Sixthly it was cooked, Seventhly he (or she) touched him suddenly, and he awoke a man!

Gilgame said to him (even) to Pir-napitim the remote: 'That sleep quite overcame me Swiftly didst thou touch me, and didst awaken me, even thou.' "

Pir-napitim, in answer to this, tells Gilgame what had been done to him, repeating the description of the preparation of his food in the same words as had been used to describe the ceremony (for such it apparently is), and ending by saying, "Suddenly I touched thee, (even) I, and thou awokest, (even) thou." Thus putting beyond question the personality of the one who effected the transformation which was brought about, though he leaves out the word "man," which hid from the hero the fact that a transformation had in consequence taken place in him. The ceremonies were not by any means finished, however, for the boatman or pilot had to take him to the place of l.u.s.tration to be cleansed, and for the skin, with which he seems to have been covered, to fall off. The Babylonian patriarch then tells him of a wonderful plant which would make an old man young again, and Gilgame gets possession of one of these. On his way to his own country in the company of the boatman or pilot, he stops to perform what seems to be a religious ceremony, at a well, when a serpent smells the plant,(10) and, apparently in consequence of that, a lion comes and takes it away.

Gilgame greatly laments his loss, saying that he had not benefited by the possession of this wonderful plant, but the lion of the desert had gained the advantage. After a journey only varied by the religious festivals that they kept, they at length reached Erech, the walled. Here, after a reference to the dilapidation of the place, and a statement seemingly referring to the offerings to be made if repairs had not, during his absence, been effected, the eleventh and most important tablet of the Gilgame series comes to an end.

Of the twelfth tablet but a small portion exists, though fragments of more than one copy have been found. In this we learn that Gilgame still lamented for his friend ea-bani, whom he had lost so long before. Wis.h.i.+ng to know of his present state and how he fared, he called to the spirit of his friend thus-

"Thou restest not the bow upon the ground, What has been smitten by the bow surround thee.

The staff thou raisest not in thine hand, The spirits (of the slain) enclose thee.

Shoes upon thy feet thou dost not set, A cry upon earth thou dost not make: Thy wife whom thou lovest thou kissest not, Thy wife whom thou hatest thou smitest not; Thy child whom thou lovest thou kissest not, Thy child whom thou hatest thou smitest not.

The sorrowing earth hath taken thee."

Gilgame then seems to invoke the G.o.ddess "Mother of Nin-a-zu," seemingly asking her to restore his friend to him, but to all appearance without result. He then turned to the other deities-Bel, Sin, and Ea, and the last-named seems to have interceded for ea-bani with Nerigal, the G.o.d of the under-world, who, at last, opened the earth, "and the spirit of ea-bani like mist arose (?)." His friend being thus restored to him, though probably only for a time, and not in bodily form, Gilgame asks him to describe the appearance of the world from which he had just come. "If I tell thee the appearance of the land I have seen," he answers, "... sit down, weep." Gilgame, however, still persists-"... let me sit down, let me weep," he answers. Seeing that he would not be denied, ea-bani complies with his request. It was a place where dwelt people who had sinned in their heart, where (the young) were old, and the worm devoured, a place filled with dust. This was the place of those who had not found favour with their G.o.d, who had met with a shameful death (as had apparently ea-bani himself). The blessed, on the other hand-

"Whom thou sawest [die] the death (?) [of] . .[I see]- In the resting-place of .... reposing, pure water he drinketh.

Whom in the battle thou sawest killed, I see- His father and his mother support his head And his wife sitteth [? beside him].

Whose corpse thou hast seen thrown down on the plain, I see- His spirit on earth reposeth not.

Whose spirit thou sawest without a caretaker, I see- The leavings of the dish, the rejected of the food, Which in the street is thrown, he eateth."

And with this graphic description of the world of the dead the twelfth and concluding tablet of the Gilgame series comes to an end.

With the Gilgame series of tablets as a whole we have not here to concern ourselves, except to remark, that the story of the Flood is apparently inserted in it in order to bring greater glory to the hero, whom the writer desired to bring into connection with one who was regarded as the greatest and most renowned of old times, and who, on account of the favour that the G.o.ds had to him, had attained to immortality and to divinity.

Except the great Merodach himself, no divine hero of past ages appealed to the Babylonian mind so strongly as Pir-napitim, who was called Atra-?asis, the hero of the Flood.

The reason of the coming of the Flood seems to have been regarded by the Babylonians as two-fold. In the first place, as Pir-napitim is made to say (see p. 100), "Always the river rises and brings a flood"-in other words, it was a natural phenomenon. But in the course of the narrative which he relates to Gilgame, the true reason is implied, though it does not seem to be stated in words. And this reason is the same as that of the Old Testament, namely, the wickedness of the world. If it should again become needful to punish mankind with annihilation on account of their wickedness, the instrument was to be the lion, or the hyaena, or pestilence-not a flood. And we have not to go far to seek the reason for this. By a flood, the whole of mankind might-in fact, certainly would-be destroyed, whilst by the other means named some, in all probability, would escape. There was at least one of the G.o.ds who did not feel inclined to witness the complete destruction of the human race without a protest, and an attempt on his part to frustrate such a merciless design.

Little doubt exists that there is some motive in this statement on the part of the Babylonian author of the legend. It has been already noted that Merodach (the G.o.d who generally bears the t.i.tle of _Bel_, or "lord") was, in Babylonian mythology, not one of the older G.o.ds, he having displaced his father Ea or Ae, in consequence of the predominance of Babylon, whose patron G.o.d Merodach was. Could it be that the Babylonians believed that the visitation of the flood was due to the vengeful anger of Merodach, aroused by the people's non-acceptance of his kings.h.i.+p? It seems unlikely. Pir-napitim was himself a wors.h.i.+pper of Ae, and on account of that circ.u.mstance, he is represented in the story as being under the special protection of that G.o.d. To all appearance, therefore, the reason which Pir-napitim is represented as having given, for the building of the s.h.i.+p, to his fellow-townsmen, was not intended to be altogether false. The G.o.d Ellila hated him, and therefore he was going to dwell with Ae, his lord-on the bosom of the deep which he ruled. An announcement of the impending doom is represented as having been made to the people by the patriarch, and it is therefore doubly unfortunate that the next paragraph is so mutilated, for it doubtless gave, when complete, some account of the way in which they received the notice of the destruction that was about to be rained down upon them.

It has been more than once suggested, and Prof. Hommel has stated the matter as his opinion, that the name of the G.o.d Ae or Ea, another possible reading of which is Aa, may be in some way connected with, and perhaps originated the a.s.syro-Babylonian divine name Ya'u, "G.o.d," which is cognate with the Hebrew Yah or, as it is generally written, Jah. If this be the case, it would seem to imply that a large section of the people remained faithful to his wors.h.i.+p, and the flood of the Babylonians may symbolize some persecution of them by the wors.h.i.+ppers of the G.o.d Ellila, angry at the slight put upon him by their neglect or unwillingness to acknowledge him as the chief of the Pantheon. Some of the people may, indeed, have wors.h.i.+pped Ae or Aa alone, thus const.i.tuting a kind of monotheism. This, nevertheless, is very uncertain, and at present unprovable. It is worthy of note, however, that at a later date there was a tendency to identify all the deities of the Babylonian Pantheon with Merodach, and what in the "middle ages" of the Babylonians existed with regard to Merodach may very well have existed for the wors.h.i.+p of Ae or Ea at an earlier date. The transfer, in the Semitic Babylonian Creation-story, of the name of Ae to his son Merodach may perhaps be a re-echo of the tendency to identify all the G.o.ds with Ae, when the latter was the supreme object of wors.h.i.+p in the land. There is one thing that is certain, and that is, that the Chaldean Noah, Pir-napitim, was faithful in the wors.h.i.+p of the older G.o.d, who therefore warned him, thus saving his life. Ae, the G.o.d who knew all things, knew also the design of his fellows to destroy mankind, and being "all and always eye," to adopt a phrase used by John Bunyan, he bore, as a surname, that name Nin-igi-azaga, "Lord of the bright eye," so well befitting one who, even among his divine peers, was the lord of unsearchable wisdom.

It is unfortunately a difficult thing to make a comparison of the ark as described in Genesis with a s.h.i.+p of the Babylonian story. It was thought, by the earlier translators of the Babylonian story of the Flood, that its size was indicated in the second paragraph of the story (p. 102, ll. 11, 12), but Dr. Haupt justly doubts that rendering. If the size of the vessel were indicated at all, it was probably in the next paragraph, where the building of the s.h.i.+p is described. This part, however, is so very mutilated, that very little clear sense can be made out of it. The Babylonian home-land of the story seems certainly to be indicated by the mention of two kinds of bitumen or pitch for caulking the vessel, Babylonia being the land of bitumen _par excellence_. Those who were to live on board were to sustain themselves with the flesh of oxen, and to all appearance they cheered the weary hours with the various kinds of drink of which they laid in store. They were not neglectful, either, of the oil that they used in preparing the various dishes, and with which they anointed their persons. All these points, though but little things in themselves, go to show that the story, in its Babylonian dress, was really written in the country of that luxury-loving people. The mention of holes for the cables, too, shows that the story is the production of maritime people, such as the Babylonians were.

Apparently the Babylonians found there was something inconsistent in the patriarch being saved without any of his relatives (except his sons), and the artificers who had helped him to build the s.h.i.+p which was to save him from the destruction that overwhelmed his countrymen and theirs. For this reason, and also because of the relations.h.i.+p that might be supposed to exist between master and servant, his relatives and the sons of the artificers(11) are saved along with his own family, which, of course, would not only include his sons, but their wives also. On this point, therefore, the two accounts may be regarded as in agreement.

When all was ready, the Sun-G.o.d, called by the usual Semitic name of ama, appointed the time for the coming of the catastrophe. This would seem to be another confirmation of the statement already made, that the Babylonians, like the Hebrews (see Gen. i. 14-18), regarded one of the uses of the sun as being to indicate seasons and times. It was a great and terrible time, such as caused terror to the beholder, and the patriarch was smitten with fear. Here, as in other parts of the Babylonian version, there is a human interest that is to a large extent wanting in the precise and detailed Hebrew account. Again the maritime nation is in evidence, where the consigning of the s.h.i.+p into the care of a pilot is referred to.

Of course such an official could do but little more than prevent disastrous misfortune from the vessel being the plaything of the waves. In the description of the storm, the terror of the G.o.ds, Itar's grief, and Ma?'s anger at the destruction of mankind, we see the production of a nation steeped in idolatry, but there are but few a.s.syro-Babylonian doc.u.ments in which this fact is not made evident.

We have a return to the Biblical story in the sending forth of the birds, and the sacrifice of odoriferous herbs, when the G.o.ds smelled a sweet savour, and gathered like flies over the sacrificer. In the signets of Ma?, "the lady of the G.o.ds," by which she swears, we may, perhaps, see a reflection of the covenant by means of the rainbow, which the Babylonians possibly explained as being the necklace of the G.o.ddess. Instead of the promise that a similar visitation to destroy the whole of mankind should not occur again, there is simply a kind of exhortation on the part of the G.o.d Ae, addressed to Ellila, not to destroy the world by means of a flood again. To punish mankind for sins and misdeeds committed, other means were to be employed that did not involve the destruction of the whole human race.

Noah died at the age of 950 years (Gen. ix. 29), but his Babylonian representative was translated to the abode of the blessed "at the mouths of the rivers," with his wife, to all appearance immediately after the Flood. In this the Babylonian account differs, and the ultimate fate of the patriarch resembles that of the Biblical Enoch, he who "was not, for G.o.d took him" (Gen. v. 24).

Appendix. The Second Version Of The Flood-Story.

This was found by the late George Smith at Nineveh when excavating for the proprietors of the _Daily Telegraph_, and was at first supposed to belong to the text translated on pp. 101-109. This, however, is impossible, as the narrative is in the third person instead of the first, and in the form of a conversation between Atra-?asis (= Pir-napitim) and the G.o.d Ae-

Tablet D. T. 42.