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The names of both deity and city in that line are strange to us. Larak, the third city in the series, is of greater interest, for it is clearly Larankha, which according to Berossus was the seat of the eighth and ninth of his Antediluvian kings.
In commercial documents of the Persian period, which have been found during the excavations at Nippur, Larak is described as lying "on the bank of the old Tigris", a phrase which must be taken as referring to the Shatt el-Hai, in view of the situation of Lagash and other early cities upon it or in its immediate neighbourhood.
In the Gilgamesh Epic Shuruppak is the only Antediluvian city referred to, while in the Hebrew accounts no city at all is mentioned in connexion with Noah. The city of Xisuthros, too, is not recorded, but as his father came from Larankha or Larak, we may regard that city as his in the Greek Version.
The text then relates the founding by the god of five cities, probably "in clean places", that is to say on hallowed ground. The . . . of these cities, Eridu, he gave to the leader, Nu- dimmud, Thirdly, Larak he gave to Pabilkharsag, Fourthly, Sippar he gave to the hero, the Sun-god, Fifthly, Shuruppak he gave to "the God of Shuruppak",
At the same time it is not excluded that Larak was also the scene of the Deluge in our text, though, as we have noted, the position of Shuruppak at the close of the Sumerian list points to it as the more probable of the two.
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