The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

404 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

was not its original cause. In the myth of Adapa, the first man,
we find Anu laying down that the mortal who has penetrated
into the secrets of the gods must receive the gift of immortality
and become as one of the gods himself, and it would seem that
the same idea inspired the belief in the translation of the second
father of mankind. Xisuthros too had learned the secret counsels
of the gods; with the help of Ea he had outwitted Bel, and it was
therefore needful that the gift of immortality should be conferred
on him, and that he should dwell like them in the land which
death cannot reach.
True to his primeval character, En-lil of Nippur was the author
of the Deluge. His ministers, Nin-ip, Nusku, and En-nugi,
[440] carry out his commands, while“the spirits of the earth lift up
their torches.”But the poet of the Epic has spoilt the primitive
symmetry of the picture by introducing the triad into it along
with the storm-god Hadad of later times, and so making the
destruction of mankind not the work of En-lil alone, but of the
gods generally in common council. The result has been a want
of coherence in the elements of the story; Istar^335 consents to
the death of the children she has borne, only to repent of it
subsequently when she sees them filling the sea“like fish,”and
to weep with the rest of the gods over the havoc that has been
wrought. Perhaps Professor Jastrow is right in his suggestion that
two separate versions of the story have been united together, in
one of which it was the single city of Surippak and its inhabitants
that were destroyed, while in the other the Deluge was universal.
However that may be, Ea disclosed the determination of En-lil
to his faithful servant,“the son of Ubara-Tutu.”According to
one part of the story, the disclosure was made through a dream;
according to another part, by a device similar to that which
gave the Phrygian Midas his ass's ears. The god whispered the
meditated deed of Bel and the means of escaping it to one of

(^335) Who here takes the place of Aruru.