e expanse".
But the Semitic version in l. 18 reads _itti ami_, "beside
the _a._", not _ina ami_, "on the _a._"; and in any case
there does not seem much significance in the act of pouring
out specially created dust on or beside land already formed.
The Sumerian word translated by _amu_ is written _gi-dir_,
with the element _gi_, "reed", in l. 17, and though in the
following line it is written under its variant form _a-dir_
without _gi_, the equation _gi-a-dir_ = _amu_ is elsewhere
attested (cf. Delitzsch, _Handwoerterbuch_, p. 77). In favour
of regarding _amu_ as some sort of reed, here used
collectively, it may be pointed out that the Sumerian verb
in l. 17 is _kesda_, "to bind", accurately rendered by
_rakasu_ in the Semitic version. Assuming that l. 34 belongs
to the same account, the creation of reeds in general beside
trees, after dry land is formed, would not of course be at
variance with the god's use of some sort of reed in his
first act of creation. He creates the reed-bundles, as he
creates the soil, both of which go to form the first dike;
the reed-beds, like the other vegetation, spring up from the
ground when it appears.

(6) The Semitic version here reads "the lord Marduk"; the
corresponding name in the Sumerian text is not preserved.

(7) The line is restored from l. 2 o the obverse of the
text.

Here the Sumerian Creator is pictured as forming dry land from the
primaeval water in much the same way as the early cultivator in the
Euphrates Valley procured the rich fields for his crops. The existence
of the earth is here not really presupposed. All the world was sea until
the god created land out of the waters by the only practical method that
was possible in Mesopotamia.

In another Sumerian myth, which has been recovered on one of the early
tablets from Nippur, we have a rather different picture of beginnings.
For there, though water is the source of life, the existence of the
land is presupposed. But it is bare and desolate, as in the Mesopotamian
season of "low water". The underlying idea is suggestive of a period
when some progress in systematic irrigation had already been made, and
the filling of the dry canals and subsequent irrigation of the parched
ground by the rising flood of Enki was not dreaded but eagerly desired.
The myth is only one of several that have been combined