hout the text,
a _role_ he also plays in the Semitic-Babylonian Version.

This reference to the Deluge, which occurs so early in the text,
suggests the probability that the account of the Creation and of the
founding of Antediluvian cities, included in the first two columns, is
to be taken merely as summarizing the events that led up to the Deluge.
And an almost certain proof of this may be seen in the opening words
of the composition, which are preserved in its colophon or title on the
left-hand edge of the tablet. We have already noted that the first two
words are there to be read, either as the prefix "Incantation" followed
by the name "Enlil", or as the two divine names "Anu (and) Enlil". Now
the signs which follow the traces of Enlil's name are quite certain;
they represent "Ziusudu", which, as we shall see in the Third Column,
is the name of the Deluge hero in our Sumerian Version. He is thus
mentioned in the opening words of the text, in some relation to one or
both of the two chief gods of the subsequent narrative. But the natural
place for his first introduction into the story is in the Third Column,
where it is related that "at that time Ziusudu, the king" did so-and-so.
The prominence given him at the beginning of the text, at nearly a
column's interval before the lines which record the creation of man, is
sufficient proof that the Deluge story is the writer's main interest,
and that preceding episodes are merely introductory to it.

What subject then may we conjecture was treated in the missing lines of
this column, which precede the account of Creation and close with the
speech of the chief creating deity? Now the Deluge narrative practically
ends with the last lines of the tablet that are preserved, and the lower
half of the Sixth Column is entirely wanting. We shall see reason
to believe that the missing end of the tablet was not left blank and
uninscribed, but contained an incantation, the magical efficacy of which
was ensured by the preceding recitation of the Deluge myth. If that were
so, it would be natural enough that the text should open with its main
subject. The cause of the catastrophe and the reason for man's rescue
from it might well be referred to by one of the creating deities in
virtue of the analogy these aspects of the myth would present to the
circumstances for which the incantation was designed. A brief account
of the Creation and of Antediluvian history would then form a natural
t