(1) The aspect of Enlil as the Creator of Vegetation is emphasized in Tablet VII of the Babylonian poem of Creation.  It is significant that his first title, Asara, should be interpreted as “Bestower of planting”, “Founder of sowing”, “Creator of grain and plants”, “He who caused the green herb to spring up” (cf. Seven Tablets, Vol.  I, p. 92 f.).  These opening phrases, by which the god is hailed, strike the key- note of the whole composition.  It is true that, as Sukh-kur, he is “Destroyer of the foe”; but the great majority of the titles and their Semitic glosses refer to creative activities, not to the Dragon myth.

Thus the dualism which is so characteristic a feature of the Semitic-Babylonian system, though absent from the earliest Sumerian ideas of Creation, was inherent in the nature of the local rivers, whose varied aspects gave rise to or coloured separate myths.  Its presence in the later mythology may be traced as a reflection of political development, at first probably among the warring cities of Sumer, but certainly later in the Semitic triumph at Babylon.  It was but to be expected that the conqueror, whether Sumerian or Semite, should represent his own god’s victory as the establishment of order out of chaos.  But this would be particularly in harmony with the character of the Semitic Babylonians of the First Dynasty, whose genius for method and organization produced alike Hammurabi’s Code of Laws and the straight streets of the capital.

We have thus been able to trace the various strands of the Semitic-Babylonian poem of Creation to Sumerian origins; and in the second lecture we arrived at a very similar conclusion with regard to the Semitic-Babylonian Version of the Deluge preserved in the Epic of Gilgamesh.  We there saw that the literary structure of the Sumerian Version, in which Creation and Deluge are combined, must have survived under some form into the Neo-Babylonian period, since it was reproduced by Berossus.  And we noted the fact that the same arrangement in Genesis did not therefore prove that the Hebrew accounts go back directly to early Sumerian originals.  In fact, the structural resemblance presented by Genesis can only be regarded as an additional proof that the Sumerian originals continued to be studied and translated by the Semitic priesthood, although they had long been superseded officially by their later descendants, the Semitic epics.  A detailed comparison of the Creation and Deluge narratives in the various versions at once discloses the fact that the connexion between those of the Semitic Babylonians and the Hebrews is far closer and more striking than that which can be traced when the latter are placed beside the Sumerian originals.  We may therefore regard it as certain that the Hebrews derived their knowledge of Sumerian tradition, not directly from the Sumerians themselves, but through Semitic channels from Babylon.