322 



T. G. PINCHES^ LL.D., M.E.A.S., ON VERSIONS 



11th tablet of the Gilgames and other legends, or the Zi-u-sucldu 

 of the very interesting version published by Poebel. Whatever 

 parallels with the Biblical account be found, we must, I think, 

 regard Professor Langdon's version as a thing apart. Whether 

 its completion — should that ever take place — will modify our 

 views of it in this respect, is impossible to say. Though found 

 at Nippur, it would seem to be the Creation-story of Tilmun, an 

 old Babylonian state on the shores of the Persian Gulf, from 

 whose waters, according to Berosus, the fish-gods of old came 

 forth to teach the Babylonians the arts and crafts of their 

 national life, of which they made such good use. Enki or Ea, 

 who is mentioned so often in Professor Langdon's text, was the 

 great Babylonian water-god — god of creation and most of those 

 arts and crafts — does this new text refer in some way to one or 

 more of the divine visits of which Berosus speaks ? 



Discussion. 



The Chairman said that he was sure that the Meeting would feel, 

 with him, that they were deeply indebted to Dr. Pinches for his very 

 interesting paper. The subject was one of the greatest importance, for 

 the documents which Dr. Pinches had described in the latter portion 

 of the paper were Sumerian, and came from the library of Xippur, 

 which had been destroyed before the birth of Abraham. The docu- 

 ments, therefore, were themselves very old ; they were not merely 

 copies or reproductions of older records. They are written in a pre- 

 Semitic language and so give us the myths and legends which lay 

 behind the Semitic traditions. This enables us to understand how 

 it is that some of the Semitic versions of a Babvlonian legend differ 

 considerably from others ; some had been translated literally from 

 the Sumerian ; others had been paraphrased ; and in some cases poems 

 of considerable literary merit had been based upon such paraphrases. 

 One such poem is the story of the Flood as given in the great Epic 

 of Gilgames, which was written by Sin-liki-unnini, Mho lived in 

 the Abrahamic age. Hence we find different versions of the stories 

 of the Creation and the Flood. In this way the difference in the 

 names assigned to the hero of the Flood-story can be explained ; 

 Berosus called him Xisuthros, which was equivalent to the Babylonian 

 Hasis-Atra, or Atra-Hasis, which meant " the very wise,'"' and it was 

 an epithet applied to other antediluvian patriarchs besides the Baby- 

 lonian Noah. The tablet discovered by Dr. Poebel, — who, it is stated, 



