Page 40 - The Tigris Expedition

In Search of the Beginnings
archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania. In the general
area where the rivers meet they were excavating the enormous
Sumerian ziggurat of Nippur, one of the sun-oriented and stepped
pyramids with temple at the top which was the main feature of all
early Mesopotamian cities, when they hit upon another well-
stocked library. At the foot of the pyramid they found a collection
of 35,000 inscribed tablets, and one of them contained the original
Sumerian version of the Universal Deluge.
This Sumerian record, unlike the younger Assyrian, and the still
younger Hebrew writings, does not say that the survivors of the
flood landed on any inland mountain top, but that after the flood
mankind first settled in Dilmun, somewhere across the sea towards
the sunrise. Later the gods led them to their present abode at the
mouth of the rivers.
A clear indication that the Assyrian text was only borrowed from
this older Sumerian original is seen in the fact that both refer to the
Sumerian ocean-god Enki and give him the credit for having saved
mankind. Also in the Sumerian original Enki’s divine choice fell on
a pious, god-fearing and humble king of an unidentified kingdom,
but in the Sumerian language he was referred to as Ziusudra. Here,
too, the god ‘advised him to save himself by building a very large
boat’. The part of the tablet describing how Ziusudra built this large
boat is unfortunately destroyed, but at least it was big enough to
carry his livestock in addition to his family. Once they were all
aboard, the deluge raged over the surface of the earth for seven days
and seven nights. ‘And the huge boat had been tossed about on the
great waters’, when finally Utu, the Sumerian sun-god, came forth
and shed light on heaven and earth. Then Ziusudra ‘opened a
window of the huge boat’ and prostrated himself to the sun-god.
He then sacrificed an ox and a sheep, which indicates that he must
have had more than one pair of each kind on board, as distinct from
Noah. But then again he carried no wild beasts. In short, during the
millennia, the original version of survivors, who only carried their
domesticated animals on board, had been slightly embellished until
Noah also saved the beasts of the wilderness.
The essence of all three versions is their reference to big ships.
They all speak of domesticated animals and even refer to the
existence of cities and kingdoms before the flood, but none of them
suggests that a tall pyramid ar tower saved mankind and his herds
from the inundation. Five thousand years ago scribes put on record
what today is the oldest known attempt at written history. It begins
with families and livestock, after some catastrophic event, landing
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