(1) For detailed lists of the points of agreement presentedby the Hebrew Versions J and P to the account in theGilgamesh Epic, see Skinner, op. cit., p. 177 f.; Driver,Genesis, p. 106 f.; and Gordon,Early Traditions ofGenesis(1907), pp. 38 ff.
Thus, viewed from a purely literary standpoint, we are now enabled to trace back to a primitive age the ancestry of the traditions, which, under a very different aspect, eventually found their way into Hebrew literature. And in the process we may note the changes they underwent as they passed from one race to another. The result of such literary analysis and comparison, so far from discrediting the narratives in Genesis, throws into still stronger relief the moral grandeur of the Hebrew text.
We come then to the question, at what periods and by what process did the Hebrews become acquainted with Babylonian ideas? The tendency of the purely literary school of critics has been to explain the process by the direct use of Babylonian documents wholly within exilic times. If the Creation and Deluge narratives stood alone, a case might perhaps be made out for confining Babylonian influence to this late period. It is true that during the Captivity the Jews were directly exposed to such influence. They had the life and civilization of their captors immediately before their eyes, and it would have been only natural for the more learned among the Hebrew scribes and priests to interest themselves in the ancient literature of their new home. And any previous familiarity with the myths of Babylonia would undoubtedly have been increased by actual residence in the country. We may perhaps see a result of such acquaintance with Babylonian literature, after Jehoiachin's deportation, in an interesting literary parallel that has been pointed out between Ezek. xiv. 12-20 and a speech in the Babylonian account of the Deluge in the Gilgamesh Epic, XI, ii. 180-194.(1) The passage in Ezekiel occurs within chaps. i-xxiv, which correspond to the prophet's first period and consist in the main of his utterances in exile before the fall of Jerusalem. It forms, in fact, the introduction to the prophet's announcement of the coming of "four sore judgements upon Jerusalem", from which there "shall be left a remnant that shall be carried forth".(2) But in consequence, here and there, of traces of a later point of view, it is generally admitted that many of the chapters in this section may have been considerably amplified and altered by Ezekiel himself in the course of writing. And if we may regard the literary parallel that has been pointed out as anything more than fortuitous, it is open to us to assume that chap. xiv may have been worked up by Ezekiel many years after his prophetic call at Tel-abib.
(1) See Daiches, "Ezekiel and the Babylonian Account of theDeluge", in theJewish Quarterly Review, April 1905. Ithas of course long been recognized that Ezekiel, inannouncing the punishment of the king of Egypt in xxxii. 2ff., uses imagery which strongly recalls the BabylonianCreation myth. For he compares Pharaoh to a sea-monster overwhom Yahweh will throw his net (as Marduk had thrown hisover Tiamat); cf. Loisy,Les mythes babyloniens et lespremiers chaptires de la Genèse(1901), p. 87.(2) Ezek. xiv. 21 f.
In the passage of the Babylonian Epic, Enlil had already sent the Flood and had destroyed the good with the wicked. Ea thereupon remonstrates with him, and he urges that in future the sinner only should be made to suffer for his sin; and, instead of again causing a flood, let there be discrimination in the divine punishments sent on men or lands. While the flood made the escape of the deserving impossible, other forms of punishment would affect the guilty only. In Ezekiel the subject is the same, but the point of view is different. The land the prophet has in his mind in verse 13 is evidently Judah, and his desire is to explain why it will suffer although not all its inhabitants deserved to share its fate. The discrimination, which Ea urges, Ezekiel asserts will be made; but the sinner must bear his own sin, and the righteous, however eminent, can only save themselves by their righteousness. The general principle propounded in the Epic is here applied to a special case. But the parallelism between the passages lies not only in the general principle but also in the literary setting. This will best be brought out by printing the passages in parallel columns.
Gilg. Epic, XI, 180-194 Ezek. xiv. 12-20Ea opened his mouth and spake, And the word of the Lord cameHe said to the warrior Enlil; unto me, saying,Thou director of the gods! O Son of man, when a land sinnethwarrior! against me by committing aWhy didst thou not take counsel trespass, and I stretch outbut didst cause a flood? mine hand upon it, and breakOn the transgressor lay his the staff of the breadtransgression! thereof, and sendfamineBe merciful, so that (all) be not upon it, and cut off from itdestroyed! Have patience, so man and beast; though thesethat (all) be not (cut off)! three men, Noah, Daniel, andInstead of causing a flood, Job, were in it, they shouldLetlions(1) come and diminish deliver but their own souls bymankind! their righteousness, saith theInstead of causing a flood, Lord God.Letleopards(1) come and If I causenoisome beaststodiminish mankind! pass through the land, andInstead of causing a flood, they spoil it, so that it beLetfaminebe caused and let it desolate, that no man may passsmite the land! through because of the beasts;Instead of causing a flood, though these three men were inLet thePlague-godcome and it, as I live, saith the Lord(slay) mankind! God, they shall deliverneither sons nor daughters;they only shall be delivered,but the land shall bedesolate.Or if I bring asworduponthat land, and say, Sword, gothrough the land; so that Icut off from it man and beast;though these three men were init, as I live, saith the LordGod, they shall deliverneither sons nor daughters,but they only shall bedelivered themselves.Or if I send apestilenceintothat land, and pour out myfury upon it in blood, to cutoff from it man and beast;though Noah, Daniel, and Job,were in it, as I live, saiththe Lord God, they shalldeliver neither son nordaughter; they shall butdeliver their own souls bytheir righteousness.(1) Both Babylonian words are in the singular, but probablyused collectively, as is the case with their Hebrewequivalent in Ezek. xiv. 15.
It will be seen that, of the four kinds of divine punishment mentioned, three accurately correspond in both compositions. Famine and pestilence occur in both, while the lions and leopards of the Epic find an equivalent in "noisome beasts". The sword is not referred to in the Epic, but as this had already threatened Jerusalem at the time of the prophecy's utterance its inclusion by Ezekiel was inevitable. Moreover, the fact that Noah should be named in the refrain, as the first of the three proverbial examples of righteousness, shows that Ezekiel had the Deluge in his mind, and increases the significance of the underlying parallel between his argument and that of the Babylonian poet.(1) It may be added that Ezekiel has thrown his prophecy into poetical form, and the metre of the two passages in the Babylonian and Hebrew is, as Dr. Daiches points out, not dissimilar.
(1) This suggestion is in some measure confirmed by theBiblical Antiquities of Philo, ascribed by Dr. James tothe closing years of the first century A.D.; for its writer,in his account of the Flood, has actually used Ezek. xiv. 12ff. in order to elaborate the divine speech in Gen. viii. 21f. This will be seen from the following extract, in whichthe passage interpolated between verses 21 and 22 of Gen.viii is enclosed within brackets: "And God said: I will notagain curse the earth for man's sake, for the guise of man'sheart hath left off (sic) from his youth. And therefore Iwill not again destroy together all living as I have done.(But it shall be, when the dwellers upon earth have sinned,I will judge them byfamineor by theswordor by fireor bypestilence(lit. death), and there shall beearthquakes, and they shall be scattered into places notinhabited (or, the places of their habitation shall bescattered). But I will not again spoil the earth with thewater of a flood, and) in all the days of the earth seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and autumn, day andnight shall not cease . . ."; see James,The BiblicalAntiquities of Philo, p. 81, iii. 9. Here wild beasts areomitted, and fire, earthquakes, and exile are added; butfamine, sword, and pestilence are prominent, and the wholepassage is clearly suggested by Ezekiel. As a result of thecombination, we have in theBiblical Antiquitiesacomplete parallel to the passage in the Gilgamesh Epic.
It may of course be urged that wild beasts, famine, and pestilence are such obvious forms of divine punishment that their enumeration by both writers is merely due to chance. But the parallelism should be considered with the other possible points of connexion, namely, the fact that each writer is dealing with discrimination in divine punishments of a wholesale character, and that while the one is inspired by the Babylonian tradition of the Flood, the other takes the hero of the Hebrew Flood story as the first of his selected types of righteousness. It is possible that Ezekiel may have heard the Babylonian Version recited after his arrival on the Chebar. And assuming that some form of the story had long been a cherished tradition of the Hebrews themselves, we could understand his intense interest in finding it confirmed by the Babylonians, who would show him where their Flood had taken place. To a man of his temperament, the one passage in the Babylonian poem that would have made a special appeal would have been that quoted above, where the poet urges that divine vengeance should be combined with mercy, and that all, righteous and wicked alike, should not again be destroyed. A problem continually in Ezekiel's thoughts was this very question of wholesale divine punishment, as exemplified in the case of Judah; and it would not have been unlikely that the literary structure of the Babylonian extract may have influenced the form in which he embodied his own conclusions.
But even if we regard this suggestion as unproved or improbable, Ezekiel's reference to Noah surely presupposes that at least some version of the Flood story was familiar to the Hebrews before the Captivity. And this conclusion is confirmed by other Babylonian parallels in the early chapters of Genesis, in which oral tradition rather than documentary borrowing must have played the leading part.(1) Thus Babylonian parallels may be cited for many features in the story of Paradise,(2) though no equivalent of the story itself has been recovered. In the legend of Adapa, for example, wisdom and immortality are the prerogative of the gods, and the winning of immortality by man is bound up with eating the Food of Life and drinking the Water of Life; here too man is left with the gift of wisdom, but immortality is withheld. And the association of winged guardians with the Sacred Tree in Babylonian art is at least suggestive of the Cherubim and the Tree of Life. The very side of Eden has now been identified in Southern Babylonia by means of an old boundary-stone acquired by the British Museum a year or two ago.(3)
(1) See Loisy,Les mythes babyloniens, pp. 10 ff., and cf.S. Reinach,Cultes, Mythes et Religions, t. II, pp. 386ff.(2) Cf. especially Skinner,Genesis, pp. 90 ff. For thelatest discussion of the Serpent and the Tree of Life,suggested by Dr. Skinner's summary of the evidence, seeFrazer inEssays and Studies presented to William Ridgeway(1913), pp. 413 ff.(3) SeeBabylonian Boundary Stones in the British Museum(1912), pp. 76 ff., and cf.Geographical Journal, Vol. XL,No. 2 (Aug., 1912), p. 147. For the latest review of theevidence relating to the site of Paradise, see Boissier, "Lasituation du paradis terrestre", inLe Globe, t. LV,Mémoires (Geneva, 1916).
But I need not now detain you by going over this familiar ground. Such possible echoes from Babylon seem to suggest pre-exilic influence rather than late borrowing, and they surely justify us in inquiring to what periods of direct or indirect contact, earlier than the Captivity, the resemblances between Hebrew and Babylonian ideas may be traced. One point, which we may regard as definitely settled by our new material, is that these stories of the Creation and of the early history of the world were not of Semitic origin. It is no longer possible to regard the Hebrew and Babylonian Versions as descended from common Semitic originals. For we have now recovered some of those originals, and they are not Semitic but Sumerian. The question thus resolves itself into an inquiry as to periods during which the Hebrews may have come into direct or indirect contact with Babylonia.
There are three pre-exilic periods at which it has been suggested the Hebrews, or the ancestors of the race, may have acquired a knowledge of Babylonian traditions. The earliest of these is the age of the patriarchs, the traditional ancestors of the Hebrew nation. The second period is that of the settlement in Canaan, which we may put from 1200 B.C. to the establishment of David's kingdom at about 1000 B.C. The third period is that of the later Judaean monarch, from 734 B.C. to 586 B.C., the date of the fall of Jerusalem; and in this last period there are two reigns of special importance in this connexion, those of Ahaz (734-720 B.C.) and Manasseh (693-638 B.C.).
With regard to the earliest of these periods, those who support the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch may quite consistently assume that Abraham heard the legends in Ur of the Chaldees. And a simple retention of the traditional view seems to me a far preferable attitude to any elaborate attempt at rationalizing it. It is admitted that Arabia was the cradle of the Semitic race; and the most natural line of advance from Arabia to Aram and thence to Palestine would be up the Euphrates Valley. Some writers therefore assume that nomad tribes, personified in the traditional figure of Abraham, may have camped for a time in the neighbourhood of Ur and Babylon; and that they may have carried the Babylonian stories with them in their wanderings, and continued to preserve them during their long subsequent history. But, even granting that such nomads would have taken any interest in traditions of settled folk, this view hardly commends itself. For stories received from foreign sources become more and more transformed in the course of centuries.(1) The vivid Babylonian colouring of the Genesis narratives cannot be reconciled with this explanation of their source.
(1) This objection would not of course apply to M. Naville'ssuggested solution, that cuneiform tablets formed the mediumof transmission. But its author himself adds that he doesnot deny its conjectural character; seeThe Text of the OldTestament(Schweich Lectures, 1915), p. 32.
A far greater number of writers hold that it was after their arrival in Palestine that the Hebrew patriarchs came into contact with Babylonian culture. It is true that from an early period Syria was the scene of Babylonian invasions, and in the first lecture we noted some newly recovered evidence upon this point. Moreover, the dynasty to which Hammurabi belonged came originally from the north-eastern border of Canaan and Hammurabi himself exercised authority in the west. Thus a plausible case could be made out by exponents of this theory, especially as many parallels were noted between the Mosaic legislation and that contained in Hammurabi's Code. But it is now generally recognized that the features common to both the Hebrew and the Babylonian legal systems may be paralleled to-day in the Semitic East and elsewhere,(1) and cannot therefore be cited as evidence of cultural contact. Thus the hypothesis that the Hebrew patriarchs were subjects of Babylon in Palestine is not required as an explanation of the facts; and our first period still stands or falls by the question of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, which must be decided on quite other grounds. Those who do not accept the traditional view will probably be content to rule this first period out.
(1) See Cook,The Laws of Moses and the Code of Hammurabi,p. 281 f.; Driver,Genesis, p. xxxvi f.; and cf. Johns,The Laws of Babylonia and the Laws of the Hebrew Peoples(Schweich Lectures, 1912), pp. 50 ff.
During the second period, that of the settlement in Canaan, the Hebrews came into contact with a people who had used the Babylonian language as the common medium of communication throughout the Near East. It is an interesting fact that among the numerous letters found at Tell el-Amarna were two texts of quite a different character. These were legends, both in the form of school exercises, which had been written out for practice in the Babylonian tongue. One of them was the legend of Adapa, in which we noted just now a distant resemblance to the Hebrew story of Paradise. It seems to me we are here standing on rather firmer ground; and provisionally we might place the beginning of our process after the time of Hebrew contact with the Canaanites.
Under the earlier Hebrew monarchy there was no fresh influx of Babylonian culture into Palestine. That does not occur till our last main period, the later Judaean monarchy, when, in consequence of the westward advance of Assyria, the civilization of Babylon was once more carried among the petty Syrian states. Israel was first drawn into the circle of Assyrian influence, when Arab fought as the ally of Benhadad of Damascus at the battle of Karkar in 854 B.C.; and from that date onward the nation was menaced by the invading power. In 734 B.C., at the invitation of Ahaz of Judah, Tiglath-Pileser IV definitely intervened in the affairs of Israel. For Ahaz purchased his help against the allied armies of Israel and Syria in the Syro-Ephraimitish war. Tiglath-pileser threw his forces against Damascus and Israel, and Ahaz became his vassal.(1) To this period, when Ahaz, like Panammu II, "ran at the wheel of his lord, the king of Assyria", we may ascribe the first marked invasion of Assyrian influence over Judah. Traces of it may be seen in the altar which Ahaz caused to be erected in Jerusalem after the pattern of the Assyrian altar at Damascus.(2) We saw in the first lecture, in the monuments we have recovered of Panammu I and of Bar-rekub, how the life of another small Syrian state was inevitably changed and thrown into new channels by the presence of Tiglath-pileser and his armies in the West.
(1) 2 Kings xvi. 7 ff.(2) 2 Kings xvi. 10 ff.
Hezekiah's resistance checked the action of Assyrian influence on Judah for a time. But it was intensified under his son Manasseh, when Judah again became tributary to Assyria, and in the house of the Lord altars were built to all the host of heaven.(1) Towards the close of his long reign Manasseh himself was summoned by Ashur-bani-pal to Babylon.(2) So when in the year 586 B.C. the Jewish exiles came to Babylon they could not have found in its mythology an entirely new and unfamiliar subject. They must have recognized several of its stories as akin to those they had assimilated and now regarded as their own. And this would naturally have inclined them to further study and comparison.
(1) 2 Kings xxi. 5.(2) Cf. 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11 ff.
The answer I have outlined to this problem is the one that appears to me most probable, but I do not suggest that it is the only possible one that can be given. What I do suggest is that the Hebrews must have gained some acquaintance with the legends of Babylon in pre-exilic times. And it depends on our reading of the evidence into which of the three main periods the beginning of the process may be traced.
So much, then, for the influence of Babylon. We have seen that no similar problem arises with regard to the legends of Egypt. At first sight this may seem strange, for Egypt lay nearer than Babylon to Palestine, and political and commercial intercourse was at least as close. We have already noted how Egypt influenced Semitic art, and how she offered an ideal, on the material side of her existence, which was readily adopted by her smaller neighbours. Moreover, the Joseph traditions in Genesis give a remarkably accurate picture of ancient Egyptian life; and even the Egyptian proper names embedded in that narrative may be paralleled with native Egyptian names than that to which the traditions refer. Why then is it that the actual myths and legends of Egypt concerning the origin of the world and its civilization should have failed to impress the Hebrew mind, which, on the other hand, was so responsive to those of Babylon?
One obvious answer would be, that it was Nebuchadnezzar II, and not Necho, who carried the Jews captive. And we may readily admit that the Captivity must have tended to perpetuate and intensify the effects of any Babylonian influence that may have previously been felt. But I think there is a wider and in that sense a better answer than that.
I do not propose to embark at this late hour on what ethnologists know as the "Hamitic" problem. But it is a fact that many striking parallels to Egyptian religious belief and practice have been traced among races of the Sudan and East Africa. These are perhaps in part to be explained as the result of contact and cultural inheritance. But at the same time they are evidence of an African, but non-Negroid, substratum in the religion of ancient Egypt. In spite of his proto-Semitic strain, the ancient Egyptian himself never became a Semite. The Nile Valley, at any rate until the Moslem conquest, was stronger than its invaders; it received and moulded them to its own ideal. This quality was shared in some degree by the Euphrates Valley. But Babylonia was not endowed with Egypt's isolation; she was always open on the south and west to the Arabian nomad, who at a far earlier period sealed her Semitic type.
To such racial division and affinity I think we may confidently trace the influence exerted by Egypt and Babylon respectively upon Hebrew tradition.
APPENDIX ICOMPARATIVE TABLE OF THE SUMERIAN, SEMITIC-BABYLONIAN,HELLENISTIC, AND HEBREW VERSIONS OF CREATION,ANTEDILUVIAN HISTORY, AND THE DELUGEN.B.—Parallels with the new Sumerian Version are in upper-case.Sumerian Version. Seven Tablets Gilgamesh Epic, XI Berossus('Damscius) Earlier Heb. (J) Later Heb. (P)(No heaven or earth No heaven or earth Darkness and water Creation of earth Earth without formFirst Creation from Primaeval water- (Primaeval water- and heaven and void; darknessprimaeval water gods: Apsû-Tiamat, gods: {'Apason- No plant or herb on face oftehôm,without conflict; Mummu Tauthe}, {Moumis} Ground watered by the primaeval watercf. Later Sum. Ver. Generation of: Generation of: mist (or flood) Divine spirit movingLakhmu-Lakhamu {Lakhos-Lakhe} (cf. Sumerian (hovering, brooding)Anshar-Kishar {'Assoros-Kissare} irrigation myth of upon face of watersCreation)The great gods: Birth of great gods: Birth of great gods:ANU, ENLIL, ENKI, ANU, Nudimmud (=EA) {'Anos, 'Illinos,and Ninkharsagga, Apsû and Tiamat 'Aos, 'Aois-Lauke,creating deities revolt Belos)Conquest of Tiamat Conquest of {'Omorka}, Creation of lightby Marduk as Sun- or {Thamte}, bygod {Belos}Creation of covering Creation of heaven and Creation of firmament,for heaven from earth from two halves or heaven, to dividehalf of Tiamat's of body of Thamte waters; followed bybody, to keep her emergence of landwaters in place Creation of vegetationCreation of luminaries Creation of luminaries Creation of luminaries(Creation of (probable order) Creation of animalsvegetation)REASON FOR MAN'S REASON FOR MAN'SCREATION: worship of CREATION: worship ofgods godsCreation of MAN Creation of MAN from Creation of MAN from Creation of MAN from Creation of MAN inCreator's blood and Creator's blood and dust and Creator's image of Creator, tofrom bone from earth breath of life have dominionCreation of ANIMALS (Creation of animals) Creation of ANIMALS Creation of vegetationHymn on Seventh Tablet able to bear the air ANIMALS, and woman Rest on Seventh DayCreation of KINGDOM 10 Antediluvian KINGS The line of Cain Antediluvian5 ANTEDILUVIAN CITIES: Antediluvian city: 3 ANTEDILUVIAN CITIES: The Nephilim (cf. patriarchs (cf.Eridu, Bad.., LARAK, SHURUPPAK Babylon, SIPPAR, Sumerian Dynastic Sumerian DynasticSIPPAR, SHURUPPAK LARANKHA List) List)Gods decree MANKIND'S Gods decree flood, Destruction of MAN Destruction of alldestruction by flood, goddess ISHTAR decreed, because of flesh decreed, becauseNINTU protesting protesting his wickedness of its corruptionZIUSUDU, hero of UT-NAPISHTIM, hero {Xisouthros} Noah, hero of Deluge Noah, hero of DelugeDeluge, KING and of Deluge (=Khasisatra), heropriest of Deluge, KINGZiusudu's PIETY Noah's FAVOUR Noah's RIGHTEOUSNESSWARNING of Ziusudu by WARNING of Ut-nap- WARNING of Xisuthros WARNING of Noah, andEnki in DREAM ishtim by Ea in DREAM by Kronos in DREAM instructions for arkZiusudu's vessel a SHIP: 120x120x120 Size of SHIP: 5x2 Instructions to enter Size of ARK: 300x50x30HUGE SHIP cubits; 7 stories; 9 stadia ark cubits; 3 storiesdivisionsAll kinds of animals All kinds of animals 7(x2) clean, 2 unclean 2 of all animalsFlood and STORM for 7 FLOOD from heavy rain FLOOD FLOOD from rain for 40 FLOOD; founts. of deepdays and STORM for 6 days days and rain, 150 daysShip on Mt. Nisir Ark on AraratAbatement of waters Abatement of waters Abatement of waters Abatement of waterstested by birds tested by birds tested by birds through drying windSACRIFICE to Sun-god SACRIFICE with sweet SACRIFICE to gods, SACRIFICE with sweet Landing from ark (afterin ship savour on mountain after landing and savour after landing year (+10 days))paying adoration toEARTHAnu and Enlil appeased Ea's protest to ENLIL APOTHEOSIS of X., Divine promise to Noah Divine covenant not(by "Heaven and Earth") IMMORTALITY of Ut-nap- wife, daughter, and not again to curse again to destroy EARTHIMMORTALITY of Ziusudu ishtim and his wife pilot the GROUND by flood; bow as sign
APPENDIX IITHE ANTEDILUVIAN KINGS OF BEROSSUS ANDTHE SUMERIAN DYNASTIC LIST
It may be of assistance to the reader to repeat in tabular form theequivalents to the mythical kings of Berossus which are brieflydiscussed in Lecture I. In the following table the two new equations,obtained from the earliest section of the Sumerian Dynastic List, are inupper-case.(1) The established equations to other names are in normalcase, while those for which we should possibly seek other equivalentsare enclosed within brackets.(2) Aruru has not been included as apossible equivalent for {'Aloros}.(3)1. {'Aloros}2. {'Alaparos (? 'Adaparos)},Alaporus,Alapaurus(Adapa)3. {'Amelon, 'Amillaros},Almelon(Amêlu)4. {'Ammenon} ENMENUNNA5. {Megalaros, Megalanos},Amegalarus6. {Daonos, Daos} ETANA7. {Euedorakhos, Euedoreskhos},EdoranchusEnmeduranki8. {'Amemphinos},Amemphsinus(Amêl-Sin)9. {'Otiartes (? 'Opartes)} (Ubar-Tutu)10. {Xisouthros, Sisouthros, Sisithros} Khasisatra, Atrakhasis(4)
(1) For the royal names of Berossus, seeEuseb. chron. lib.pri., ed. Schoene, cols. 7 f., 31 ff. The latinizedvariants correspond to forms in the Armenian translation ofEusebius.(2) For the principal discussions of equivalents, seeHommel,Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch., Vol. XV (1893), pp. 243ff., andDie altorientalischen Denkmäler und das AlteTestament(1902), pp. 23 ff.; Zimmern,Die Keilinschriftenund das Alte Testament, 3rd ed. (1902), pp. 531 ff.; andcf. Lenormant,Les origines de l'histoire, I (1880), pp.214 ff. See also Driver,Genesis, 10th ed. (1916), p. 80f.; Skinner,Genesis, p. 137 f.; Ball,Genesis, p. 50;and Gordon,Early Traditions of Genesis, pp. 46 ff.(3) There is a suggested equation of Lal-ur-alimma with{'Aloros}.(4) The hundred and twenty "sars", or 432,000 years assignedby Berossus for the duration of the Antediluvian dynasty,are distributed as follows among the ten kings; the numbersare given below first in "sars", followed by theirequivalents in years within brackets: 1. Ten "sars"(36,000); 2. Three (10,800); 3. Thirteen (46,800); 4. Twelve(43,200); 5. Eighteen (64,800); 6. Ten (36,000); 7. Eighteen(64,800); 8. Ten (36,000); 9. Eight (28,800); 10. Eighteen(64,800).
For comparison with Berossus it may be useful to abstract from theSumerian Dynastic List the royal names occurring in the earliestextant dynasties. They are given below with variant forms fromduplicate copies of the list, and against each is added the number ofyears its owner is recorded to have ruled. The figures giving thetotal duration of each dynasty, either in the summaries or under theseparate reigns, are sometimes not completely preserved; in such casesan x is added to the total of the figures still legible. Except inthose cases referred to in the foot-notes, all the names are writtenin the Sumerian lists without the determinative for "god".KINGDOM OF KISH(23 kings; 18,000 + x years, 3 months, 3 days). . .(1)8. (. . .) 900(?) years9. Galumum, Kalumum 900 "10. Zugagib, Zugakib 830 "11. Arpi, Arpiu, Arbum 720 "12. Etana(2) 635 (or 625) years13. Pili . . .(3) 410 years14. Enmenunna, Enmennunna(4) 611 "15. Melamkish 900 "16. Barsalnunna 1,200 "17. Mesza(. . .) (. . .) ". . .(5)22. . . . 900 years23. . . . 625 "KINGDOM OF EANNA (ERECH)(6)(About 10-12 kings; 2,171 + x years)1. Meskingasher 325 years2. Enmerkar 420 "3. Lugalbanda(7) 1,200 "4. Dumuzi(8) (i.e. Tammuz) 100 "5. Gishbilgames(9) (i.e. Gilgamesh) 126 (or 186) years6. (. . .)lugal (. . .) years. . .(10)KINGDOM OF UR(4 kings; 171 years)1. Mesannipada 80 years2. Meskiagnunna 30 "3. Elu(. . .) 25 "4. Balu(. . .) 36 "KINGDOM OF AWAN(3 kings; 356 years). . .(11)
(1) Gap of seven, or possibly eight, names.(2) The name Etana is written in the lists with and withoutthe determinative for "god".(3) The reading of the last sign in the name is unknown. Avariant form of the name possibly begins with Bali.(4) This form is given on a fragment of a late Assyrian copyof the list; cf.Studies in Eastern History, Vol. III, p.143.(5) Gap of four, or possibly three, names.(6) Eanna was the great temple of Erech. In the SecondColumn of the list "the kingdom" is recorded to have passedfrom Kish to Eanna, but the latter name does not occur inthe summary.(7) The name Lugalbanda is written in the lists with andwithout the determinative for "god".(8) The name Dumuzi is written in the list with thedeterminative for "god".(9) The name Gishbilgames is written in the list with thedeterminative for "god".(10) Gap of about four, five, or six kings.(11) Wanting.
At this point a great gap occurs in our principal list. The names of some of the missing "kingdoms" may be inferred from the summaries, but their relative order is uncertain. Of two of them we know the duration, a second Kingdom of Ur containing four kings and lasting for a hundred and eight years, and another kingdom, the name of which is not preserved, consisting of only one king who ruled for seven years. The dynastic succession only again becomes assured with the opening of the Dynastic chronicle published by Père Scheil and recently acquired by the British Museum. It will be noted that with the Kingdom of Ur the separate reigns last for decades and not hundreds of years each, so that we here seem to approach genuine tradition, though the Kingdom of Awan makes a partial reversion to myth so far as its duration is concerned. The two suggested equations with Antediluvian kings of Berossus both occur in the earliest Kingdom of Kish and lie well within the Sumerian mythical period. The second of the rulers concerned, Enmenunna (Ammenon), is placed in Sumerian tradition several thousand years before the reputed succession of the gods Lugalbanda and Tammuz and of the national hero Gilgamesh to the throne of Erech. In the first lecture some remarkable points of general resemblance have already been pointed out between Hebrew and Sumerian traditions of these early ages of the world.