372 LEGENDS OF ADAPA AND OF THE FLOOD 



In both a flood is sent to destroy mankind, but in the first 

 the intention of the gods is revealed in time to a pious Sumerian, 

 possibly a priest king, Ziudsuddu, the Sumerian equivalent of 

 the abbreviated Semitic name Utnapishti. He escapes from 

 the flood in a great boat, which floats away on the waters. 

 When the storm after seven days ^ has abated and the sun at 

 last struggled out, Ziudsuddu makes a thanksgiving sacrifice 

 of an ox and a sheep. We find him in the end reconciled with 

 the great gods, who, as in the Babylonian version, give him 

 immortality. 



From the incompleteness of the text it is impossible to 

 determine whether in the Sumerian version the episode of the 

 birds occurs ; the probability is that it did not. As is but 

 natural, the earUer story is simpler and more primitive in style 

 than the Babylonian. 2 



In the Gilgamesh account of the Flood, which in general 

 resembles the story as given by Berosus, the absence of the 

 raven, in the Bible the return of the dove with an oHve leaf in 

 her mouth, proclaims the abating of the waters, while the Algon- 

 kins allot the rdle, on the failure of the raven, to the musk- 

 rat. But, in the Indian legend it is a fish, not a god, which 

 not only conveys to Manu the beneficent warning of the coming 

 deluge but also saves him eventually by drawing his ship to a 

 northern mountain. 3 



^ The length of the flood varies greatly from the above seven days, to eight 

 months and nine days of the Nippur Poem, to the nine months and nine days of 

 Le Po^me Sunierien, during which Tagtug is afloat, and to the one year and 

 ten days which is the total duration in the Bible. 



^ See Poebel, Historical Texts (Publications of the Babylonian Section of 

 the University of Pennsylvania), vol. IV., Part J., pp. 9 ff. In Langdon's 

 Le Pohne Sumerien (Paris, 1919) is to be found much, which is not written 

 in the later account of Adapa and of the Plood, and of Paradise, and many 

 details which are different. /« it there is no woman, no temptress, no serpent. 

 But it docs record that the survivor of the Flood was placed in a garden and 

 apparently forbidden to eat of the fruit of a tree, growing in the centre of the 

 garden. He does eat, however, and thereby loses immortality. 



■• The myth of the Deluge is practically world-wide, except in Africa 

 (including Egypt), " where native legends of a great flood are conspicuously 

 absent — indeed, no clear case of one has yet been reported." J. G. Frazer, 

 Folklore in the Old Testament (London, igr8), vol. I. p. 40. Maspero seems 

 quite wide of the mark in treating the semi-ritual myth of the Destruction 

 of Man as " a dry deluge myth," Dawn of Civilization (London, 1S94), pp. 

 164 fi. For various accounts of the Deluge, see Hastings, Encyclopadia of 

 Religion and Ethics, article Deluge (Edinburgh, 191 1). 



