$Unique_ID{bob00798}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter I}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Foot Moore, George}
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$Subject{gods
marduk
ea
babylonia
gilgamesh
god
enlil
city
poem
anu}
$Date{1913}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of Babylonia And Assyria
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter I

     The Beginnings of Civilisation - The Sumerians and Their Cities - The
Gods - Anu, Enlil, and Ea - The Akkadians - Rise of Babylon - Religion of the
Semitic Babylonians - The Supremacy of Marduk - Myths: Bel and Tiamat;
Gilgamesh; The Deluge - Temples - Priesthood - Worship - Demonology and Magic
- Expiations - Divination - Astrology - Burials - The Nether World - Myth of
the Descent of Ishtar - Assyria - Relations with Babylonia - The National God
Assur - Other Deities - Temples and Worship - The Neobabylonian and Persian
Period - Babylonian Astrology and Divination in the West - Astronomy -
Influence of Babylonian Religion in Other Countries.

     The conditions under which at a very remote time civilisation developed
in Babylonia were in many ways similar to those in Egypt.  The lower course of
the Euphrates and the Tigris, like the valley of the Nile, has an alluvial
soil of inexhaustible fertility, and with its spontaneous products invited
early settlement by the promise of easy living.  As the population multiplied
under the favourable natural conditions, or poured in from the surrounding
regions to share them, it became necessary to regulate the waters, to reclaim
the marshes by building dikes, to dig canals and extend the expanse of
irrigation.  The construction and maintenance of these works demanded the
united and organised labours of the community, and thus conduced to the
establishment and consolidation of political order.

     In other respects Babylonia was very differently situated from Egypt.
While Egypt was by its position protected from the invasion of powerful
neighbours, and even isolated from the great main currents of history, so that
its civilisation was essentially homogeneous and developed its characteristic
type almost unaffected from without, Babylonia was exposed on one side to the
incursions of the desert tribes and on another to the attacks of the Elamites
and other habitants of the mountain country east of the valley, while to the
north it lay open without a natural barrier to invading armies or to the
influx of migrating nations set in motion by the great upheavals of population
in Syria and Asia Minor.  From a very early time two widely different races
disputed with each other the supremacy or peacefully mingled; and when the
older Semitic population of the north got the upper hand, it was to be
submerged in turn by fresh waves of migration or conquest.  But this
situation, which repeatedly subjected Babylonia to alien dominion, early
incited its rulers to enterprises of foreign conquest in the east and the
north.  In the third millennium B.C. Babylonian armies seem to have pushed
their way to the shores of the Mediterranean. Commerce, with its peaceful
penetration, reached even farther than arms and with more durable results.
Thus Babylonian civilisation and religion were both more influenced from
without and exerted a far wider influence in the ancient world than those of
Egypt.

     The inhabitants of southern Babylonia at the earliest time of which we
have any knowledge called their country Sumer, and in consequence we call them
Sumerians.  The ethnographical and linguistic relations of the Sumerians are
still an unsolved problem; they cannot, with our present light, be certainly
connected with any other stock.  There is some reason to think that they had
descended into the river plain from the high lands to the east; among their
gods such names as "ruler of the mountains" are not infrequent, and that for
the worship of Enlil - and eventually of many other gods - an artificial
mountain was erected in the midst of the plain seems to point in the same
direction.  It is probable that the Sumerians were not the only, nor perhaps
the earliest, inhabitants of this country. Semitic nomads from the Arabian
peninsula had doubtless roamed there ages before the beginnings of history,
and the oldest records of the Sumerians themselves seem to show traces of
Semitic mixture.  But there is no reason to doubt that the earliest
civilisation was the creation of the Sumerians. The first centres of culture
were in the south near the head of the Persian Gulf.  Ur and Eridu were near
the ancient mouth of the river; somewhat farther up the river lay Uruk, and
east of it, on another branch of the stream, Larsa; while still farther to the
north, on the main canal of the Euphrates, was Nippur; and approximately in
the latitude of the later Babylon, Kutha.  The northernmost seats of this
ancient civilisation were in the vicinity of the modern Bagdad - Opis, Kish,
Agade, and Sippar.

     In Babylonia, as in Egypt, the city with the territory about it was the
primitive state.  Each had its own god, who was before all things the
protector and patron of the city.  Around him were grouped many other deities
of various character and origin, some of whom had shrines of their own, while
others found a place in the temple of the chief god, constituting his family
or court.  The rulers, as the civil heads of the community, were also its
religious heads, the chief priests of the god, and the commonest title of
these rulers, patesi, is derived from these religious functions.  The French
excavations at Lagash (the modern Tello) give us a glimpse of the pantheon of
one such community in the twenty-fifth century B.C.

     The chief deity of the rulers of Lagash was Ningirsu, "the lord of
Girsu," one of the quarters of the city - perhaps the original settlement. By
his side was the goddess Bau, his consort, and around him a number of gods who
served him in various ways.  One had charge of his flock of goats, another of
the asses which drew his chariot; there is a third to look after the
fish-ponds, and another who is responsible for the irrigation canals and the
grain fields; there is an armourer, in whose keeping are the weapons of the
god; his musical instruments are in the care of another.  A divine vizier
receives the petitions of the people and lays them before Ningirsu; there is a
superintendent of the god's harem, and other gods with other functions, like
the officials of the king's court.  The great goddess Gatumdug also had a
shrine in the principal temple, while the goddesses Nina and Innina presided
each over her own quarter of the city.  Many other gods and temples are named
in the inscriptions, but it would serve no purpose to catalogue them here.

     Wars were frequent among these cities.  One of them subdued its
neighbours and ruled over them till they grew strong enough in turn to throw
off the yoke and establish themselves in power.  In this way the gods of one
city found a place in the pantheon of others; and to such political
vicissitudes the multiplication and distribution of gods is doubtless in part
to be ascribed.  In time the foundation of larger states brought the god of
the ruler to temporary precedence among the gods, but raised none to permanent
sovereignty.  Some of the gods were very early - if not from the beginning -
identified with heavenly bodies: the tutelary deity of Ur (Nannar), for
example, was the moon; Utu, or Babbar, of Larsa, was the sun; the great
goddess of Uruk was the planet Venus; but it does not appear that the religion
of these cities differed in any material way from that of their neighbours,
nor did the fact that the gods were thus visible in the heavenly bodies hinder
their being worshipped in their temples in idols of human form like the
others.

     The gods who stand at the head of the pantheon owe their prominence,
however, neither to the political fortunes of the cities whose patrons they
were nor to their connection with the heavenly bodies, but, so far as we can
judge, to the fact that their temples and priesthoods had a leading part in
the development of religion.  Thus, Ea of Eridu had through the whole history
the highest reputation for wisdom; it was he who knew, as no other did, the
rites and the potent charms by which evils of every kind could be averted, the
wiles of malevolent demons thwarted, the favour of offended deities recovered,
diseases cured, uncleanness purified; and by putting all his wisdom at the
service of those who sought his help he proved himself not only the wise god
but the friend of mankind.  The most probable explanation of Ea's "wisdom" is
that the priests of Eridu had at a remote time distinguished themselves in the
invention and employment of the arts and texts which for ever after remained
classical in their sphere.

     An even higher rank belonged to Enlil (or, with assimilation, Ellil) of
Nippur, who was plainly the head of the old Sumerian pantheon.  Great gods,
such as Sin of Ur and Ningirsu of Lagash, are called his sons; he is the king
of the lands, the father of the gods.  Kings of the cities which succeeded one
another in dominion claimed to rule jure divino because Enlil had raised them
to power; they rebuilt or restored his temple at Nippur, or deposited there
votive objects bearing their names.  This temple, Ekur, the "Mountain House,"
was the most famous of Babylonian sanctuaries; many gods of other cities had
shrines in it.  Inasmuch as Nippur, so far as we know, never had any
corresponding political hegemony, the most probable explanation of this
acknowledged religious precedence is that Nippur was the oldest settlement of
the Sumerians in Babylonia, where they first reared the artificial high place
for the worship of the deity of their native mountains.

     With these two is associated as third Anu, who was in high honour at
Uruk, where he was the father of Nana (Ishtar), but he is not known to have
been the patron deity of any city.  He is in mythology the sky god, and if
this was his original character it would account at once for his exalted place
in the pantheon as the head of the divine commonwealth, the father of the
gods, and for the fact that he has no corresponding prominence in religion.

     In very ancient inscriptions these three are named together; Anu, Enlil,
and Ea constitute the original divine triad.  Among them the rule of the
universe is partitioned: Anu presides in heaven, Enlil in the earth with the
circum-ambient air, and Ea in the waters - the subterranean ocean as well as
the ocean which surrounds the earth - an association probably suggested by the
situation of his city, Eridu, at the head of the Persian Gulf.  The supremacy
of this triad over the local gods is universally acknowledged; around them
chiefly the common mythology and religion of the Sumerians centres.

     In the north of Babylonia, in the region which, from the name of its
principal city, Agade, is called Akkad, the Semitic element in the population
was evidently much more numerous and compact than in the south. The Akkadians,
as we may call this first stratum of Semitic stock in Babylonia, appropriated
much from the civilisation of the Sumerians, and developed and improved it in
accordance with their own genius.  Their growing power is evinced by the rule
of Semitic kings in Kish whose power extended to southern Babylonia.  Here,
about 2500 B.C., Sargon founded the kingdom of Akkad, and in a series of
campaigns subjected all Sumer (southern Babylonia), waged successful war
against Elam, and in later expeditions not only extended his empire to the
upper valley of the Tigris, but subjugated the Amorites in northwestern Syria,
advancing to the Mediterranean seaboard.  His son, Naram-Sin, maintained and
even extended the dominion of his father; a stela of his, commemorating a
victory, has been discovered near Diarbekr; he not only subdued the warlike
tribes in the Zagros mountains, but conquered a considerable part of eastern
Arabia (Magan), and assumed the title "King of the Four Quarters." This first
great Semitic empire was, however, very short-lived; of the successors of
Naram-Sin nothing is known beyond a list of names.  Upon its ruins arose again
Sumerian states, and then, under kings of Ur in the far south, an extensive
Sumerian empire, the kingdom of Sumer and Akkad, which lasted for about three
centuries.

     The First Dynasty of Ur was succeeded by dynasties from Isin and Larsa,
whose latter days witnessed the decay and dissolution of the kingdom.  The
Elamites took advantage of its weakness to invade and subjugate the land, the
Assyrians made themselves independent, and a new Semitic kingdom arose in
northern Babylonia, which in turn expelled the Elamites and brought the whole
country under its sway.

     The rulers of this kingdom, the First Dynasty of Babylon, did not spring
from the old Semitic population of the region, but were newcomers from Syria.
The Amorites, whose principal seat was the region of the Lebanon and eastward
toward the Euphrates, seem in the last century of the kingdom of Sumer and
Akkad to have found their way in increasing numbers into Babylonia as traders,
settlers, or perhaps as mercenaries, and contributed to the steady
infiltration of Semitic elements into the Sumerian body politic which had long
been in progress.  Now, however, it would appear that they came as invaders,
and somewhere about 2060 B.C. one of their chiefs made himself king in
Babylon.  His successors established the kingdom on a firm basis, and the
sixth of the line, Hammurabi (1958-16), conquered the whole of Babylonia,
driving out the Elamites. Assyria and at least a part of Mesopotamia were
included in his empire, and he assumed, after the ancient fashion, the titles
not only of king of Sumer and Akkad, but of the four quarters of the earth.
The greatness of Hammurabi appears even more conspicuously in the organisation
and administration of his kingdom than in the wars by which it was established
and enlarged.  The code of laws discovered a few years ago at Susa and his
correspondence with administrative and judicial subordinates, as well as the
records of his efforts to increase the prosperity of the land by building
canals and irrigation works, show how many-sided and far-reaching were his
activities for the welfare of his people.  The zeal which he manifested in
rebuilding and enriching the temples of the gods had the same motive: the
fortunes of the nation in peace and war depended on their favour.

     The religion of the older Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia did not differ
essentially from that of their Sumerian neighbours, from whom they doubtless
borrowed much.  The gods whom they particularly affected were Sin, Shamash,
and Ishtar, who often appear together as the second triad. The Sumerian sun
and moon gods they recognised as their own Shamash and Sin under other names;
the goddesses they called indiscriminately Ishtar, and the one name thus
covered most diverse characters.  The Amorites worshipped a god Amurru, who
like Assur bore the same name as his people; but they were particularly
devoted to Adad, whose title Ramman ("the thunderer") and attributes indicate
that he was a god of storm as well as of battle.  He is often joined in a
triad with Sin and Shamash, displacing Ishtar, or is added as a fourth in the
group.  The new masters of the land behaved very differently from the Hyksos
conquerors of Egypt; from the beginning they appeared as the patrons and
protectors of the native gods, and rapidly assimilated the old Babylonian
culture and religion.

     The fact that the new dynasty made Babylon their residence greatly
increased the importance of that city, which hitherto had played no
conspicuous part in history, and with Hammurabi it became the capital of a
wide empire.  In this elevation Marduk, the god of the city, shared, and from
being an insignificant local deity he became the greatest of the gods, just as
Amon rose to the foremost rank among the gods of Egypt when Thebes became the
capital of the New Empire.  The prestige thus politically achieved did not,
however, content the priests, and they added a theological legitimation.  As
Amon, the ram of Thebes, was identified with Re, the great sun-god, so for
Marduk of Babylon the titles, myths, and functions of the venerable Enlil of
Nippur were appropriated.  Marduk was also discovered to be the son of Ea, and
that wisest of gods made over to him all his wisdom.  Combining the attributes
of the two most renowned deities of the old religion, Marduk was from this
time on the head of the Babylonian pantheon.  The religious texts which have
come down to us from the library of Assurbanipal show clearly that they were
in great part recast to adapt them to the supremacy of Marduk.  It is not to
be imagined that these politico-theological inventions made outright any great
change in the religion of the people, who worshipped as their fathers had done
from time immemorial at the temples of their own cities, or that the
priesthoods of Nippur and Eridu allowed Enlil and Ea to be thrust into the
background in their own sanctuaries by the new doctrine of Babylon; but in the
end neither the conservatism of the people nor the opposition of the priests
could prevent Enlil, the Bel of Nippur, from being overshadowed by Marduk, the
Bel of Babylon.  Nabu, the god of Borsippa, opposite Babylon, who in earlier
times had been of greater fame than Marduk, had to be content with the honour
of being Marduk's dear son and prophet.

     The Babylonians had an extensive mythology, which early received at the
hands of the priests a literary form.  Two or three mythological poems of
considerable length have been preserved, besides fragmentary remains of a
number of others.  Of the former the combat of Bel (Marduk) with the monster
Tiamat, entitled, from its first words, "Enuma elish," and often called by
modern scholars the Cosmogonic Epic, is from a religious point of view the
most important.  The Assyrian copy which we have was made in the middle of the
seventh century B.C. for the library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh, but it is
certain, on internal grounds, that the poem in its present form dates from the
times of the Semitic kingdom of Babylon, say the twentieth century B.C.  It
was written on seven tablets, of which the third and fourth are nearly entire,
while larger and smaller parts of the others have also been recovered.  The
missing portions of the earlier tablets can in the main be supplied, thanks to
the repetition of their contents in those better preserved.  The loss of the
last tablets is more serious, because - until further discoveries - it leaves
the conclusion, which apparently dealt with the establishment of the present
order in heaven and earth (creation), to arbitrary conjecture.

     The origin of all things was the primeval watery chaos, represented by
the pair Apsu and Tiamat, whose "waters were mingled together." With them the
cosmogonic theogony begins.  The next generation are Lahmu and Lahamu, then
Anshar and Kishar, the Above and Below of the as yet unordered universe; to
them were born, after a long time, Anu and Ea, and probably - the name is not
preserved - Bel (originally Enlil).  Apsu and Tiamat see their peace
threatened by these gods, and with Mummu, their son, plot to destroy them and
their new-fangled ways.  As their allies in the coming war they create a host
of monsters.  Tiamat appoints to the chief command Kingu, one of the gods on
her side, and hangs upon his breast the tablets of destiny, saying, "Thy order
shall not be in vain, and the word of thy mouth shall be established." Ea
learns what is brewing and brings word to Anshar, who thereupon despatches Anu
to restore order; but Anu turns back in dismay, and Ea himself has no better
success.  Then Marduk steps forth as the champion of the gods, and promises to
overcome Tiamat on condition that the gods formally confer on him the supreme
power.  A council is accordingly held, and after a feast at which they drink
till their courage is high the assembled gods solemnly bestow on Marduk the
sovereignty over the whole world, and give him the emblems of royalty - the
sceptre, throne, and ring.  Marduk then arms himself for the fray, and with
the thunderbolt in his hand, his mighty weapon, mounts his four-horse chariot
and rides out to meet the foe. ^1 At the sight of him Kingu is palsied with
fear, but Tiamat is of better mettle and stands her ground.  Marduk throws his
net over her, and as she opens her mouth wide, the winds he let loose strangle
her.  Marduk kills her with his spear and triumphantly bestrides her body. Her
allies try to save themselves by flight, but are caught and destroyed. From
Kingu the victor takes the tablets of destiny and lays them on his own breast.
Then he returns to Tiamat, and, after savagely mutilating her dead body amid
the rejoicing of the gods, finally splits her in halves, "like a flat fish,"
and of one half makes the firmament to restrain the waters of the celestial
ocean, and of the other half the earth as a lid above the subterranean ocean.
^1 Over against the Deep he sets the dwelling of Ea; he founds Eshara, and
causes Anu, Bel, and Ea to occupy their several provinces.

[Footnote 1: The steeds which drew Marduk's quadriga should probably be
imagined as mythical beasts rather than horses.]

[Footnote 1: So Berossos.]

     With this the fourth tablet ends.  The fifth begins by telling how Marduk
made the stations for the great gods, fixed the stars and the constellations,
ordered the astronomical calendar, and delivered to the moon god the laws he
must observe in the several phases of the moon.  Here the text breaks off.
From the opening of the next tablet it may be inferred that the fourth closed
with a complaint of the gods that there was no one to worship them.  Marduk
thereupon resolves to create man, and communicates his plan to Ea:

     "Blood will I take and bone will I [fashion],
     I will fashion man, that man may . . .
     I will create man, who shall inhabit [the earth],
     That the services of the gods may be established,
     And that their shrines [may be built]." ^2

[Footnote 2: King, Seven Tablets of Creation, p. 86.]

     This apparently corresponds to the account of the creation of man given
by Berossos: Bel commanded one of the gods to cut off his (Bel's) head, knead
earth with the flowing blood, and fashion men and animals which could stand
the air.  Probably, therefore, the first line quoted above from the tablet
should be rendered "my blood will I take." ^3 In the immediate sequel the
badly mutilated text lets us see only that Bel announced to Ea some further
plan about the gods, to which Ea replies in a long speech.  In the last lines
of the tablet the gods are again assembled to honour their avenger; and the
seventh tablet, if it be correctly identified, contains the homage of the gods
to Marduk, consisting principally of a recital of his fifty names, or honorary
titles, with their significance.

[Footnote 3: This singular way of making man has an exact parallel in a Maori
myth.  The New Zealand poet adds the obvious significance - man is part
divine, part earthly.]

     It will be seen from this summary that in the parts of the poem still
extant there is no account of the creation of the world nor of the production
of plants and animals; while for the creation of man an eminently hieratic
motive is given, namely, that there may be somebody to worship the gods and
build their temples.  It is indeed not improbable that the missing portions of
the later tablets may have referred to the creation of plants and animals, but
in any case this is not the main subject or purpose of the poem, and it is
only misleading to call it the "Epic of Creation."

     It is plain that Marduk was not the original hero in the great conflict
between the gods of the cosmic order and the monstrous powers of the primeval
chaos, and the usurpation of this role by Marduk has introduced numerous
inconsistencies and even contradictions into the tenor of the myth.  There can
be little doubt that in its older form the conqueror of Tiamat was Enlil,
while various indications in the earlier part of the poem point to a previous
victory of Ea over Apsu.  The poem in its present form thus represents a
combination of myths from different religious centres and different periods in
the history of the Babylonian religion, to which final literary shape was
given by the priesthood of Babylon somewhere about the age of Hammurabi.  The
motive of the recension is the legitimation of Marduk: the gods have solemnly
acknowledged him as supreme; they hymn his praises as an example to men.

     In view of the composite character of the poem the possibility must be
admitted that the conflict of Bel with Tiamat originally had a different
significance, but the interpretations which find in it the victory of light
over darkness or summer over winter are, like the corresponding
interpretations of the flood myth, anything but convincing.  They proceed from
the assumption that Marduk was from the beginning a sun god, specifically a
god of the early morning sun or of the sun in the spring of the year, and
sometimes display extraordinary ignorance of the climate of Babylonia.  The
question is without significance for the history of religion.

     Outside the poem "Enuma elish" there are various allusions to creation -
the creation of the domestic and wild animals by the gods in their assembly;
the ordinances of the moon and the sun established by the three great gods
Anu, Bel, and Ea; the creation of all things by the river which the great gods
dug out.  The most interesting of them is one in which creation is ascribed to
Marduk with the cooperation of the goddess Aruru:

     "Marduk laid a reed upon the face of the waters;
     He formed dust and poured it out beside the reed.
     That he might cause the gods to dwell in the habitation of their
     hearts' desire,
     He formed mankind.
     The goddess Aruru together with him created the seed of mankind;
     The beasts of the field and the living creatures in the field he
     formed.
     He created the Tigris and the Euphrates, and he set them in their
     place;
     Their names he declared in goodly fashion.
     The grass, the rush of the marsh, the reed, and the forest he created,
     The green herb of the field he created,
     The lands, the marshes, and the swamps;
     The wild cow and her young, the wild calf; the ewe and her young, the
     lamb of the fold;
     Plantations and forests,
     The he-goat and the mountain-goat . . ."

     In the sequel the fragmentary text narrates how Marduk built the cities
and the great temples of Babylon.  The whole text, it may be observed, is only
the preamble to an incantation.

     A poem in twelve books, or tablets, tells at considerable length the
adventures of the hero Gilgamesh.  Notwithstanding many longer or shorter gaps
in the text, the progress of the story can in general be followed, and parts
of it are in good preservation.  Gilgamesh is ruler of Uruk.  The people of
the city, groaning under his tyranny (?), beseech the goddess Aruru to make an
adversary for him; she creates Eabani, a wild man who makes his abode with the
beasts of the field.  By the seduction of a holy harlot Eabani is brought to
Uruk, where he makes friends with Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh and Eabani undertake an
expedition to the sacred cedar forest, the abode of the gods, the holy place
of the goddess Irnini, and - as must be supplied - overcome and slay Humbaba,
whom Bel has made guardian of the tallest cedar of all.  Ishtar, the goddess
of Uruk, offers herself to the returning hero, whose prowess has captivated
her, but he spurns her advances, throwing up to her the lamentable fate of her
whole catalogue of lovers, beginning with the youthful Tammuz: "Me, too, thou
lovest, and wilt serve me like them." The insulted goddess lays the iniuria
spretae formae before her father Anu, who at her importunity creates a mighty
bull to avenge her, but the two friends, after a desperate fight, slay the
bull. Ishtar, from the walls of Uruk, curses the slayer, to which Eabani
replies by flinging a quarter of the bull at her head, with the words: "If I
could only lay hands on you and serve you in the same way!" The victors,
having washed their hands in the Euphrates, enter Uruk in triumph amid the
acclaim of the multitude.  The following tablet, of which very little remains,
told how Eabani was stricken by disease and died - the working of Ishtar's
curse.  The ninth tablet shows us Gilgamesh, inconsolable for the loss of his
other self and fearing a like fate, wandering alone over plain and mountain in
search of the abode of his deified ancestor Utnapishtim. Through a pass
guarded by scorpion-men he enters the land of darkness, a rugged region thick
with perils, beyond which he arrives at a paradise whose trees bear precious
stones.  With the aid of an ancient mariner who had been with Utnapishtim
through the great flood, he is ferried over the waters of death to the shore,
where he finds the far-sought forefather.  In answer to Gilgamesh's questions,
Utnapishtim tells the story of the deluge, which thus forms an episode in the
poem (Tablet XI).

     Various means are employed to confer "life" (immortality) on Gilgamesh;
Utnapishtim's wife prepares him magical food, and he purifies himself in a
sacred bathing-place.  Utnapishtim tells him also of a plant with the
promising name, "The Grey-Haired Man Renews His Youth," growing on the bottom
of the sea.  Gilgamesh dives with a stone to the depths and gathers the plant,
but at the next landing-place, as he is washing himself in a fountain, a
serpent snatches the life-giving plant away.  Bitterly lamenting his loss,
Gilgamesh pursues his way afoot to Uruk.  The fragments of the last tablet
show that Ea accedes to the desire of Gilgamesh to see his friend Eabani once
more, and causes Nergal, the god of the nether world, to let Eabani's ghost
rise "like a vapour from the earth, and make known to his brother Gilgamesh
the law of the earth," i.e., of the abode of the dead.  Eabani's disclosure of
the secrets of his prison-house is lost, but the lack may be in part supplied
from the last lines of the tablet and from Eabani's dream in the second
tablet.

     The poem brings together myths and legends of diverse origin, to which it
gives unity by a plot which, if we understand it, is not devoid of ingenuity.
The main action of the poem centres about Uruk; the hero is a ruler of that
city, and its amorous goddess is the author of his undoing. The expedition
against Humbaba, also, the motive of which in the fragmentary state of the
text cannot be made out, may very well belong to the legends of Uruk; the name
Humbaba sounds Elamite, and the divine cedar forest was perhaps imagined to
lie in the mountains east of Babylonia.  The gods who appear in the poem,
besides Ishtar, are Anu and Ea; it was Bel who installed Humbaba as keeper of
the great cedar.

     Many scholars since Rawlinson have interpreted the story as a solar myth,
or at least imagine that it had its origin in a solar myth: Gilgamesh was,
they think, an ancient sun god, and his adventures reflect the course of the
sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac; the friendship of Gilgamesh and
Eabani points to the sign of the Twins; the fact that the flood story is on
the eleventh tablet is significant, for the eleventh sign of the zodiac is
Aquarius. ^1 The slaying of the bull is a favourite subject on seals;
Gilgamesh is commonly represented as a man with shaggy hair and beard, while
Eabani has the head, arms, and breast of a man, with the lower body and legs
of a bull.  It was formerly the fashion to see in the hero of this exploit the
prototype of the Biblical Nimrod, who was "a mighty hunter before the Lord."
George Smith thought that the name (written Gish-tu-bar) might be read Nimrod,
and though this conjecture has long since been laid away and the name
Gilgamesh established on good evidence, the title "Nimrod Epic" still clings
to the poem.

[Footnote 1: We have no proof that the zodiac was laid out into twelve signs
earlier than the Persian period.]

     The story of the great flood, as told by Utnapishtim to Gilgamesh, fills,
as we have seen, a large part of the eleventh tablet of the poem, but there is
no doubt that it was originally an independent myth.  In the present form
there are slight discrepancies in detail which point to different versions,
but it is not necessary to dwell upon them here.

     In a council of the gods it was determined, at the instance of Enlil -
who sometimes appears as the sole promoter of the catastrophe - to destroy the
city of Shurippak on the Euphrates by a flood. ^2 Ea, ever the friendly god,
warned Utnapishtim to build a ship in which to save himself; if his townsmen
asked why he was doing it, he should say Enlil was angry with him and he might
no longer abide in their city, which was on Enlil's earth, he must fare forth
upon the sea, Ea's domain.  The dimensions of the ship and details of the
construction follow.  When it was completed, he put on board all his
possessions, his family and household, cattle and beasts of the field, and
various craftsmen.  The handling of the vessel was intrusted to the
shipmaster, Puzur-Bel.  Then came a great storm; Adad thundered, the torches
of the Anunnaki were lighted up; Nabu and Marduk and Nergal did their part.
The mounting waters overwhelmed the earth, men perished, the gods themselves
in terror fled aloft to the heaven of Anu and cowered like dogs; the mistress
of the gods loudly lamented that she had given her consent to the destruction
of the race which she had created; the heavenly gods wept with her.

[Footnote 2: In the sequel all mankind seem to be involved in the ruin.]

     Six days and nights the tempest raged; on the seventh, when it ceased,
Utnapishtim looked out and saw that the world was one great sea, and all
mankind was turned to clay.  At length the waters subsided, and the ship
grounded on Mount Nisir.  After a week Utnapishtim sent out a dove, but it
found no resting-place and returned to the ship; a swallow did the same; then
he released a raven, which did not come back.  Knowing by this sign that the
waters were abated, Utnapishtim disembarked and offered sacrifice and incense
to the gods on the summit of the mountain.  The gods, smelling the sweet
odour, gathered like flies to the sacrifice, among them the mistress of the
gods.  When Enlil saw the ship, he was wroth that any men had escaped
destruction.  Ea reproached him for having caused the destruction: the guilty
should suffer for their sins; Enlil might send wild beasts or famine or
pestilence among men, but should not involve good and bad in one common ruin
by a flood.  Ea also defends himself against the charge of betraying the
secrets of the gods.  At last Enlil was appeased; bringing Utnapishtim and his
wife out of the ship, he made them kneel before him, and decreed that
henceforth they should be no more men but gods, and dwell afar at the mouth of
the rivers.  Thus they came to be in the distant abode where Gilgamesh found
them.

     With the main features of this story we were already acquainted through
Berossos, though he seems to have had before him a recension somewhat
different from that which is incorporated in the epic.  Several fragmentary
tablets have also been discovered, containing, as it appears, variants of the
myth, in one of which the flood seems to have been preceded by other
judgments, such as years of drought.

     Numerous other myths are more or less completely known.  One of these
tells of the flight of Etana to heaven on the back of an eagle and his fatal
fall - a story which, like the adventures of Gilgamesh, was transferred to
Alexander the Great.  Another is the story of Adapa, who on the advice of Ea
refused to eat the food set before him by Anu, a myth of a not uncommon type
explaining the failure to attain immortality; the same motive occurs in
Gilgamesh's loss of the plant which makes the grey-head young and in the
expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden in which the tree of life grew.