brother,
Men care not for another. In the heavens,
Even the gods are terrified at the storm.
They take refuge in the heaven of Anu.[965]
The gods cowered like dogs at the edge of the heavens.

With this description the climax in the narrative is reached. The
reaction begins. Ishtar is the first to bewail the destruction that has
been brought about, and her example is followed by others of the gods.

Ishtar groans like a woman in throes,
The lofty goddess cries with loud voice,
The world of old has become a mass of clay.[966]

Ishtar appears here in the role of the mother of mankind. She feels that
she has none but herself to blame for the catastrophe, for, as one of
the great gods, she must have been present at the council when the storm
was decided on, and must have countenanced it. She therefore reproaches
herself:

That I should have assented[967] to this evil among the gods!
That when I assented to this evil,
I was for the destruction of my own creatures![968]
What I created, where is it?
Like so many fish, it[969] fills the sea.

From the words of Ishtar it would appear that the storm had assumed
larger dimensions than the gods, or at least than some of them, had
anticipated. At the beginning of the episode, Shurippak alone is
mentioned, and Ishtar apparently wishes to say that when she agreed to
the bringing on of the storm, she was not aware that she was decreeing
the destruction of all mankind. It is evident that two distinct
traditions have been welded together in the present form of the
Babylonian document, one recalling the destruction of a single city, the
other embodying in mythological form the destructive rains of Babylonia
that were wont to annually flood the entire country before the canal
system was perfected.

Some particularly destructive season may have formed an additional
factor in the combination of the traditions. At all events, the storm
appears to have got beyond the control of the gods, and none but Bel
approves of the widespread havoc that has been wrought. It is no unusual
phenomenon in ancient religions to find the gods powerless to control
occurrences that they themselves produced. The Anunnaki--even more
directly implicated than Ishtar in bringing on the catastrophe--join the
goddess in her lament at the complete destruction wrought.

The gods, together with the Anunnaki, wept with her.
The gods, in their depression, sat down to weep,
Pressed the