(1) Arab. kuffah, pl. kufaf; in addition to its common
     use for the Baghdad coracle, the word is also employed for a
     large basket.

     (2) Herodotus, I, 194.

(3) The kuffah is formed of wicker-work coated with bitumen.  Some of those represented on the Nineveh sculptures appear to be covered with skins; and Herodotus (I, 94) states that “the boats which come down the river to Babylon are circular and made of skins.”  But his further description shows that he is here referred to the kelek or skin-raft, with which he has combined a description of the kuffah.  The late Sir Henry Rawlinson has never seen or heard of a skin-covered kuffah on either the Tigris or Euphrates, and there can be little doubt that bitumen was employed for their construction in antiquity, as it is to-day.  These craft are often large enough to carry five or six horses and a dozen men.

We have no detailed description of Ziusudu’s “great boat”, beyond the fact that it was covered in and had an opening, or light-hole, which could be closed.  But the form of Ut-napishtim’s vessel was no doubt traditional, and we may picture that of Ziusudu as also of the kuffah type, though smaller and without its successor’s elaborate internal structure.  The gradual development of the huge coracle into a ship would have been encouraged by the Semitic use of the term “ship” to describe it; and the attempt to retain something of its original proportions resulted in producing the unwieldy ark of later tradition.(1)

(1) The description of the ark is not preserved from the earlier Hebrew Version (J), but the latter Hebrew Version (P), while increasing the length of the vessel, has considerably reduced its height and breadth.  Its measurements are there given (Gen. vi. 15) as 300 cubits in length, 50 cubits in breadth, and 30 cubits in height; taking the ordinary Hebrew cubit at about 18 in., this would give a length of about 450 ft., a breadth of about 75 ft., and a height of about 45 ft.  The interior stories are necessarily reduced to three.  The vessel in Berossus measures five stadia by two, and thus had a length of over three thousand feet and a breadth of more than twelve hundred.

We will now return to the text and resume the comparison we were making between it and the Gilgamesh Epic.  In the latter no direct reference is made to the appearance of the Sun-god after the storm, nor is Ut-napishtim represented as praying to him.  But the sequence of events in the Sumerian Version is very natural, and on that account alone, apart from other reasons, it may be held to represent the original form of the story.  For the Sun-god would naturally reappear after the darkness of the storm had passed, and it would be equally natural that Ziusudu should address himself to the great light-god.  Moreover, the Gilgamesh Epic still retains traces of the Sumerian Version, as will be seen from a comparison of their narratives,(1) the Semitic Version being quoted from the point where the hurricane ceased and the sea became still.