bably before 2100 B.C. But the
composition itself, apart from the tablet on which it is inscribed, must
go back very much earlier than that. For instead of being composed
in Semitic Babylonian, the text is in Sumerian, the language of the
earliest known inhabitants of Babylonia, whom the Semites eventually
displaced. This people, it is now recognized, were the originators
of the Babylonian civilization, and we saw in the first lecture that,
according to their own traditions, they had occupied that country since
the dawn of history.

(1) The earlier of the two fragments is dated in the
eleventh year of Ammizaduga, the tenth king of Hammurabi's
dynasty, i.e. in 1967 B.C.; it was published by Scheil,
_Recueil de travaux_, Vol. XX, pp. 55 ff. Here the Deluge
story does not form part of the Gilgamesh Epic, but is
recounted in the second tablet of a different work; its hero
bears the name Atrakhasis, as in the variant version of the
Deluge from the Nineveh library. The other and smaller
fragment, which must be dated by its script, was published
by Hilprecht (_Babylonian Expedition_, series D, Vol. V,
Fasc. 1, pp. 33 ff.), who assigned it to about the same
period; but it is probably of a considerably later date. The
most convenient translations of the legends that were known
before the publication of the Nippur texts are those given
by Rogers, _Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament_
(Oxford, 1912), and Dhorme, _Choix de textes religieux
Assyro-Babyloniens_ (Paris, 1907).

The Semites as a ruling race came later, though the occurrence of
Semitic names in the Sumerian Dynastic List suggests very early
infiltration from Arabia. After a long struggle the immigrants succeeded
in dominating the settled race; and in the process they in turn became
civilized. They learnt and adopted the cuneiform writing, they took over
the Sumerian literature. Towards the close of the third millennium, when
our tablet was written, the Sumerians as a race had almost ceased
to exist. They had been absorbed in the Semitic population and their
language was no longer the general language of the country. But their
ancient literature and sacred texts were carefully preserved and
continued to be studied by the Semitic priests and scribes. So the fact
that the tablet is written in the old Sumerian tongue proves that the
story it tells had come down from a very much earl