As this tablet is the most complete of the series, it may not be considered out of place to give here a description of the outward appearance of the document—or, rather, of the documents, for there are many copies. This description will serve, to a certain extent, for all the other tablets of the series, when in their complete state.
The size of the document which best shows the form is about 8-½ inches wide, by 5-7/8 inches high. It is rectangular in form, and is inscribed on both sides with three columns of writing (six in all). The total number of lines, as given in the text published in the second edition of the fourth vol. of the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, is 293, including the catch-line and colophon, but as many of these lines are, in reality, double ones (the scribes frequently squeezed two lines into the space of one, so as to economize space), the original number [pg 101] of the lines was probably nearer 326, or, with the catch-line and colophon, 330. It is probable that the other tablets of the series were not so closely written as this, and in these cases the number of lines is fewer.
The tablet opens with the continuation of the conversation between Gilgameš and “Pir-napištim the remote”—
With these words the second paragraph comes to an end, the total number of lost or greatly mutilated [pg 103] lines being about nine. Very little of the contents of these lines can be made out, as not much more than traces of words remain. Where the lines begin to become fairly complete, the text seems to refer to the building of the ship, upon which four days had already been spent, its form being laid down on the fifth day. The description of the building, which is somewhat minute, is exceedingly difficult to translate, and any rendering of it must therefore, at the present time, be regarded as tentative. Its bulwarks seem to have risen four measures, and a deck (apparently) is mentioned. Its interior was pitched with six šar of bitumen, and its outside with three šar of pitch, or bitumen of a different kind. The provisionment of the vessel is next described, but this part is mutilated. A quantity of oil for the crew and pilot is referred to, and oxen were also slaughtered, apparently as a propitiatory sacrifice on the completion of the vessel. Various kinds of drink were then brought on board, both intoxicating and otherwise, plentiful (this may be regarded as the word to be supplied here) “like the waters of a river.” After this we have references to the completion of certain details—holes for the cables above and below, etc., and with this the third paragraph comes to an end.
In the next paragraph Pir-napištim collects his goods and his family, and enters into the ark:—
Pir-napištim, in answer to this, tells Gilgameš what had been done to him, repeating the description of the preparation of his food in the same words as had been used to describe the ceremony (for such it apparently is), and ending by saying, “Suddenly I touched thee, (even) I, and thou awokest, (even) thou.” Thus putting beyond question the personality of the one who effected the transformation which was brought about, though he leaves out the word “man,” which hid from the hero the fact that a transformation had in consequence taken place in him. The ceremonies were not by any means finished, however, for the boatman or pilot had to take him to the place of lustration to be cleansed, and for the skin, with which he seems to have been covered, to fall off. The Babylonian patriarch then tells him of a wonderful plant which would make an old man young again, and Gilgameš gets possession of one of these. On his way to his own country in the company of the boatman or pilot, he stops to perform what seems to be a religious ceremony, at a well, when a serpent smells the plant,10 and, apparently in consequence of that, a lion comes and takes it away. Gilgameš greatly laments his loss, saying that he had not benefited by the possession of this wonderful plant, but the lion of the desert had gained the advantage. After [pg 110] a journey only varied by the religious festivals that they kept, they at length reached Erech, the walled. Here, after a reference to the dilapidation of the place, and a statement seemingly referring to the offerings to be made if repairs had not, during his absence, been effected, the eleventh and most important tablet of the Gilgameš series comes to an end.
Of the twelfth tablet but a small portion exists, though fragments of more than one copy have been found. In this we learn that Gilgameš still lamented for his friend Êa-banî, whom he had lost so long before. Wishing to know of his present state and how he fared, he called to the spirit of his friend thus—
Gilgameš then seems to invoke the goddess “Mother of Nin-a-zu,” seemingly asking her to restore his friend to him, but to all appearance without result. He then turned to the other deities—Bêl, Sin, and Ea, and the last-named seems to have interceded for Êa-banî with Nerigal, the god of the under-world, who, at last, opened the earth, “and the spirit of Êa-banî like mist arose (?).” His friend being thus restored to him, though probably only for a time, and not in bodily form, Gilgameš asks [pg 111] him to describe the appearance of the world from which he had just come. “If I tell thee the appearance of the land I have seen,” he answers, “... sit down, weep.” Gilgameš, however, still persists—“... let me sit down, let me weep,” he answers. Seeing that he would not be denied, Êa-banî complies with his request. It was a place where dwelt people who had sinned in their heart, where (the young) were old, and the worm devoured, a place filled with dust. This was the place of those who had not found favour with their god, who had met with a shameful death (as had apparently Êa-banî himself). The blessed, on the other hand—
And with this graphic description of the world of the dead the twelfth and concluding tablet of the Gilgameš series comes to an end.
With the Gilgameš series of tablets as a whole we have not here to concern ourselves, except to remark, that the story of the Flood is apparently inserted in it in order to bring greater glory to the hero, whom the writer desired to bring into connection with one who was regarded as the greatest and most renowned of old times, and who, on account of the favour that [pg 112] the gods had to him, had attained to immortality and to divinity. Except the great Merodach himself, no divine hero of past ages appealed to the Babylonian mind so strongly as Pir-napištim, who was called Atra-ḫasis, the hero of the Flood.
The reason of the coming of the Flood seems to have been regarded by the Babylonians as two-fold. In the first place, as Pir-napištim is made to say (see p. 100), “Always the river rises and brings a flood”—in other words, it was a natural phenomenon. But in the course of the narrative which he relates to Gilgameš, the true reason is implied, though it does not seem to be stated in words. And this reason is the same as that of the Old Testament, namely, the wickedness of the world. If it should again become needful to punish mankind with annihilation on account of their wickedness, the instrument was to be the lion, or the hyæna, or pestilence—not a flood. And we have not to go far to seek the reason for this. By a flood, the whole of mankind might—in fact, certainly would—be destroyed, whilst by the other means named some, in all probability, would escape. There was at least one of the gods who did not feel inclined to witness the complete destruction of the human race without a protest, and an attempt on his part to frustrate such a merciless design.
Little doubt exists that there is some motive in this statement on the part of the Babylonian author of the legend. It has been already noted that Merodach (the god who generally bears the title of Bêl, or “lord”) was, in Babylonian mythology, not one of the older gods, he having displaced his father Ea or Ae, in consequence of the predominance of Babylon, whose patron god Merodach was. Could it be that the Babylonians believed that the visitation of the flood was due to the vengeful anger of Merodach, aroused by the people's non-acceptance [pg 113] of his kingship? It seems unlikely. Pir-napištim was himself a worshipper of Ae, and on account of that circumstance, he is represented in the story as being under the special protection of that god. To all appearance, therefore, the reason which Pir-napištim is represented as having given, for the building of the ship, to his fellow-townsmen, was not intended to be altogether false. The god Ellila hated him, and therefore he was going to dwell with Ae, his lord—on the bosom of the deep which he ruled. An announcement of the impending doom is represented as having been made to the people by the patriarch, and it is therefore doubly unfortunate that the next paragraph is so mutilated, for it doubtless gave, when complete, some account of the way in which they received the notice of the destruction that was about to be rained down upon them.
It has been more than once suggested, and Prof. Hommel has stated the matter as his opinion, that the name of the god Aê or Ea, another possible reading of which is Aa, may be in some way connected with, and perhaps originated the Assyro-Babylonian divine name Ya'u, “God,” which is cognate with the Hebrew Yah or, as it is generally written, Jah. If this be the case, it would seem to imply that a large section of the people remained faithful to his worship, and the flood of the Babylonians may symbolize some persecution of them by the worshippers of the god Ellila, angry at the slight put upon him by their neglect or unwillingness to acknowledge him as the chief of the Pantheon. Some of the people may, indeed, have worshipped Ae or Aa alone, thus constituting a kind of monotheism. This, nevertheless, is very uncertain, and at present unprovable. It is worthy of note, however, that at a later date there was a tendency to identify all the deities of the Babylonian [pg 114] Pantheon with Merodach, and what in the “middle ages” of the Babylonians existed with regard to Merodach may very well have existed for the worship of Ae or Ea at an earlier date. The transfer, in the Semitic Babylonian Creation-story, of the name of Aê to his son Merodach may perhaps be a re-echo of the tendency to identify all the gods with Ae, when the latter was the supreme object of worship in the land. There is one thing that is certain, and that is, that the Chaldean Noah, Pir-napištim, was faithful in the worship of the older god, who therefore warned him, thus saving his life. Ae, the god who knew all things, knew also the design of his fellows to destroy mankind, and being “all and always eye,” to adopt a phrase used by John Bunyan, he bore, as a surname, that name Nin-igi-azaga, “Lord of the bright eye,” so well befitting one who, even among his divine peers, was the lord of unsearchable wisdom.
It is unfortunately a difficult thing to make a comparison of the ark as described in Genesis with a ship of the Babylonian story. It was thought, by the earlier translators of the Babylonian story of the Flood, that its size was indicated in the second paragraph of the story (p. 102, ll. 11, 12), but Dr. Haupt justly doubts that rendering. If the size of the vessel were indicated at all, it was probably in the next paragraph, where the building of the ship is described. This part, however, is so very mutilated, that very little clear sense can be made out of it. The Babylonian home-land of the story seems certainly to be indicated by the mention of two kinds of bitumen or pitch for caulking the vessel, Babylonia being the land of bitumen par excellence. Those who were to live on board were to sustain themselves with the flesh of oxen, and to all appearance they cheered the weary hours with the various kinds of drink of which they laid in store. They were not neglectful, [pg 115] either, of the oil that they used in preparing the various dishes, and with which they anointed their persons. All these points, though but little things in themselves, go to show that the story, in its Babylonian dress, was really written in the country of that luxury-loving people. The mention of holes for the cables, too, shows that the story is the production of maritime people, such as the Babylonians were.
Apparently the Babylonians found there was something inconsistent in the patriarch being saved without any of his relatives (except his sons), and the artificers who had helped him to build the ship which was to save him from the destruction that overwhelmed his countrymen and theirs. For this reason, and also because of the relationship that might be supposed to exist between master and servant, his relatives and the sons of the artificers11 are saved along with his own family, which, of course, would not only include his sons, but their wives also. On this point, therefore, the two accounts may be regarded as in agreement.
When all was ready, the Sun-god, called by the usual Semitic name of Šamaš, appointed the time for the coming of the catastrophe. This would seem to be another confirmation of the statement already made, that the Babylonians, like the Hebrews (see Gen. i. 14-18), regarded one of the uses of the sun as being to indicate seasons and times. It was a great and terrible time, such as caused terror to the beholder, and the patriarch was smitten with fear. Here, as in other parts of the Babylonian version, there is a human interest that is to a large extent wanting in the precise and detailed Hebrew account. Again the maritime [pg 116] nation is in evidence, where the consigning of the ship into the care of a pilot is referred to. Of course such an official could do but little more than prevent disastrous misfortune from the vessel being the plaything of the waves. In the description of the storm, the terror of the gods, Ištar's grief, and Maḫ's anger at the destruction of mankind, we see the production of a nation steeped in idolatry, but there are but few Assyro-Babylonian documents in which this fact is not made evident.
We have a return to the Biblical story in the sending forth of the birds, and the sacrifice of odoriferous herbs, when the gods smelled a sweet savour, and gathered like flies over the sacrificer. In the signets of Maḫ, “the lady of the gods,” by which she swears, we may, perhaps, see a reflection of the covenant by means of the rainbow, which the Babylonians possibly explained as being the necklace of the goddess. Instead of the promise that a similar visitation to destroy the whole of mankind should not occur again, there is simply a kind of exhortation on the part of the god Ae, addressed to Ellila, not to destroy the world by means of a flood again. To punish mankind for sins and misdeeds committed, other means were to be employed that did not involve the destruction of the whole human race.
Noah died at the age of 950 years (Gen. ix. 29), but his Babylonian representative was translated to the abode of the blessed “at the mouths of the rivers,” with his wife, to all appearance immediately after the Flood. In this the Babylonian account differs, and the ultimate fate of the patriarch resembles that of the Biblical Enoch, he who “was not, for God took him” (Gen. v. 24).