n, seems at first sight a little obscure; but the word implies
a "drain" or "water-channel", not a current of the sea itself, and the
reference may be explained as suggested by the drainage of a flood-area.
No doubt the phrase was elaborated in the original myth, and it is
possible that what appears to be a second version of Creation later on
in the text is really part of the more detailed narrative of the
first myth. There the Creator himself is named. He is the Sumerian god
Gilimma, and in the Semitic translation Marduk's name is substituted. To
the following couplet, which describes Gilimma's method of creation,
is appended a further extract from a later portion of the text, there
evidently displaced, giving additional details of the Creator's work:

Gilimma bound reeds in the face of the waters,
He formed soil and poured it out beside the reeds.(5)
(He)(6) filled in a dike by the side of the sea,
(He . . .) a swamp, he formed a marsh.
(. . .), he brought into existence,
(Reeds he form)ed,(7) trees he created.

(1) The composite nature of the text is discussed by
Professor Jastrow in his _Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions_,
pp. 89 ff.; and in his paper in the _Journ. Amer. Or. Soc._,
Vol. XXXVI (1916), pp. 279 ff.; he has analysed it into two
main versions, which he suggests originated in Eridu and
Nippur respectively. The evidence of the text does not
appear to me to support the view that any reference to a
watery chaos preceding Creation must necessarily be of
Semitic origin. For the literature of the text (first
published by Pinches, _Journ. Roy. Asiat. Soc._, Vol. XXIII,
pp. 393 ff.), see _Sev. Tabl._, Vol. I, p. 130.

(2) Obv., ll. 5-12.

(3) Sum. _nigin-kur-kur-ra-ge_, Sem. _nap-har ma-ta-a-tu_,
lit. "all lands", i.e. Sumerian and Babylonian expressions
for "the world".

(4) Sum. _a-ab-ba_, "sea", is here rendered by _tamtum_, not
by its personified equivalent Tiamat.

(5) The suggestion has been made that _amu_, the word in the
Semitic version here translated "reeds", should be connected
with _ammatu_, the word used for "earth" or "dry land" in
the Babylonian Creation Series, Tabl. I, l. 2, and given
some such meaning as "expanse". The couplet is thus
explained to mean that the god made an expanse on the face
of the waters, and then poured out dust "on th