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 anda 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 earlier 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 olive leaf in 
her mouth, proclaims the abating of the waters, while the Algon- 
kins allot the véle, 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. 
1 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 Potme Sumérien, during which Tagtug is afloat, and to the one year and 
ten days which is the total duration in the Bible. 
2 See Poebel, Historical Texts (Publications of the Babylonian Section of 
the University of Pennsylvania), vol. IV., Part I., pp. 9 ff. In Langdon’s 
Le Potme Sumérien (Paris, 1919) is to be found much, which is not written 
in the later account of Adapa and of the Flood, and of Paradise, and many 
details which are different. In it there is no woman, no temptress, no serpent. 
But it does 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. 
3 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, 
Folklove in the Old Testament (London, 1918), 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, 1894), pp. 
164 ff. For various accounts of the Deluge, see Hastings, Encyclopedia of 
Religion and Ethics, article Deluge (Edinburgh, 1911). 
