their enumeration.

(1) The precise meaning of the sign-group here provisionally
rendered "divine ruler" is not yet ascertained.

As the first of the series of five cities of Eridu, the seat of Nudimmud
or Enki, who was the third of the creating deities, it has been urged
that the upper part of the Second Column must have included an account
of the founding of Erech, the city of Anu, and of Nippur, Enlil's
city.(1) But the numbered sequence of the cities would be difficult to
reconcile with the earlier creation of other cities in the text, and
the mention of Eridu as the first city to be created would be quite
in accord with its great age and peculiarly sacred character as a
cult-centre. Moreover the evidence of the Sumerian Dynastic List is
definitely against any claim of Erech to Antediluvian existence. For
when the hegemony passed from the first Post-diluvian "kingdom" to the
second, it went not to Erech but to the shrine Eanna, which gave its
name to the second "kingdom"; and the city itself was apparently not
founded before the reign of Enmerkar, the second occupant of the throne,
who is the first to be given the title "King of Erech". This conclusion
with regard to Erech incidentally disposes of the arguments for Nippur's
Antediluvian rank in primitive Sumerian tradition, which have been
founded on the order of the cities mentioned at the beginning of the
later Sumerian myth of Creation.(2) The evidence we thus obtain that the
early Sumerians themselves regarded Eridu as the first city in the world
to be created, increases the hope that future excavation at Abu Shahrain
may reveal Sumerian remains of periods which, from an archaeological
standpoint, must still be regarded as prehistoric.

(1) Cf. Poebel, op. cit., p. 41.

(2) The city of Nippur does not occur among the first four
"kingdoms" of the Sumerian Dynastic List; but we may
probably assume that it was the seat of at least one early
"kingdom", in consequence of which Enlil, its city-god,
attained his later pre-eminent rank in the Sumerian
pantheon.

It is noteworthy that no human rulers are mentioned in connexion with
Eridu and the other four Antediluvian cities; and Ziusudu, the hero
of the story, is apparently the only mortal whose name occurred in
our text. But its author's principal subject is the Deluge, and the
preceding history of the world is clearly not given in detail, but is
merely summarized. In