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Updated: June 16, 2025
Let the gods come to the offering, but let not Enlil come to the offering, since he took not counsel but sent the deluge and surrendered my people to destruction." The lament of the goddess is followed by a brief account of the action taken by the other chief figures in the drama.
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.
But in the former there is no attempt to explain how the universe itself had come into being, and the existence of the earth is presupposed at the moment when Anu, Enlil, Enki, and Ninkharsagga undertake the creation of man.
Lugalzaggisi then goes on to describe the extent of his dominion, and he says: "When the god Enlil, the lord of the countries, bestowed upon Lugalzaggisi the kingdom of the world, and granted unto him success in the sight of the world, when he filled the lands with his power, and conquered them from the rising of the sun unto the setting of the same, at that time he made straight his path from the Lower Sea of the Tigris and Euphrates unto the Upper Sea, and he granted him dominion over all from the rising of the sun unto the setting of the same, so that he caused the lands to dwell in peace."
On the day in which destinies were fixed in heaven and earth, Enlil, the chief of the gods, and Ningirsu, the city-god of Lagash, held converse; and Enlil, turning to Ningirsu, described the sad condition of Southern Babylonia, and remarked that "the decrees of the temple Eninnû should be made glorious in heaven and upon earth", or, in other words, that Ningirsu's city-temple must be rebuilt.
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.
This Sumerian myth, though it reaches us only in an extract or summary in a Neo-Babylonian schoolboy's exercise, may well date from a comparatively early period, but probably from a time when the "Ways" of Anu, Enlil, and Enki had already been fixed in heaven and their later astrological characters had crystallized. I, pp. 124 ff.
On the other hand, in Bêlit-ili's later speech in the Epic, after Ut-napishtim's sacrifice upon the mountain, she appears to subscribe the decision to Enlil alone.
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. 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.
He records that on the day on which the destinies were fixed in heaven and upon earth, Enlil, the chief of the gods, and Ningirsu, the city-god of Shirpurla, held converse. And Enlil, turning to Ningirsu, said: "In my city that which is fitting is not done. The stream doth not rise. The stream of Enlil doth not rise. The high waters shine not, neither do they show their splendour.
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