rian communities. The idea was
naturally not repugnant to the Semites, and it need not surprise us to
find the very words of the principal Sumerian Creator put into the mouth
of Marduk, the city-god of Babylon.

(1) It may be added that this is also the reason given for
man's creation in the introduction to a text which
celebrates the founding or rebuilding of a temple.

The deity's speech perhaps comes to an end with the declaration of his
purpose in creating mankind or in sanctioning their survival of the
Deluge; and the following three lines appear to relate his establishment
of the divine laws in accordance with which his intention was carried
out. The passage includes a refrain, which is repeated in the Second
Column:

The sublime decrees he made perfect for it.

It may probably be assumed that the refrain is employed in relation to
the same deity in both passages. In the Second Column it precedes
the foundation of the Babylonian kingdom and the building of the
Antediluvian cities. In that passage there can be little doubt that the
subject of the verb is the chief Sumerian deity, and we are therefore
the more inclined to assign to him also the opening speech of the First
Column, rather than to regard it as spoken by the Sumerian goddess whose
share in the creation would justify her in claiming mankind as her
own. In the last four lines of the column we have a brief record of the
Creation itself. It was carried out by the three greatest gods of the
Sumerian pantheon, Anu, Enlil and Enki, with the help of the goddess
Ninkharsagga; the passage reads:

When Anu, Enlil, Enki and Ninkharsagga
Created the blackheaded (i.e. mankind),
The _niggil(ma)_ of the earth they caused the earth to
produce(?),
The animals, the four-legged creatures of the field, they
artfully called into existence.

The interpretation of the third line is obscure, but there is no doubt
that it records the creation of something which is represented as having
taken place between the creation of mankind and that of animals. This
object, which is written as _nig-gil_ or _nig-gil-ma_, is referred to
again in the Sixth Column, where the Sumerian hero of the Deluge assigns
to it the honorific title, "Preserver of the Seed of Mankind". It must
therefore have played an important part in man's preservation from the
Flood; and the subsequent bestowal of the title may be paralleled in
the early Semitic D