It is significant that at another critical point of the story we have already met with a reference to conjuring “by the Name of Heaven and Earth”, the phrase occurring at the close of the Third Column after the reference to the dream or dreams.  There, as we saw, we might possibly explain the passage as illustrating one aspect of Ziusudu’s piety:  he may have been represented as continually practising this class of divination, and in that case it would be natural enough that in the final crisis of the story he should have propitiated the gods he conjured by the same means.  Or, as a more probable alternative, it was suggested that we might connect the line with Enki’s warning, and assume that Ziusudu interpreted the dream-revelation of Anu and Enlil’s purpose by means of the magical incantation which was peculiarly associated with them.  On either alternative the phrase fits into the story itself, and there is no need to suppose that the narrative is interrupted, either in the Third or in the Sixth Column, by an address to the hearers of the myth, urging them to make the invocation on their own behalf.

On the other hand, it seems improbable that the lines in question formed part of the original myth; they may have been inserted to weld the myth more closely to the magic.  Both incantation and epic may have originally existed independently, and, if so, their combination would have been suggested by their contents.  For while the former is addressed to Anu and Enlil, in the latter these same gods play the dominant parts:  they are the two chief creators, it is they who send the Flood, and it is their anger that must be appeased.  If once combined, the further step of making the incantation the actual means by which Ziusudu achieved his own rescue and immortality would be a natural development.  It may be added that the words would have been an equally appropriate addition if the incantation had not existed independently, but had been suggested by, and developed from, the myth.

In the third and eleventh lines of the column we have further references to the mysterious object, the creation of which appears to have been recorded in the First Column of the text between man’s creation and that of animals.  The second sign of the group composing its name was not recognized by Dr. Poebel, but it is quite clearly written in two of the passages, and has been correctly identified by Professor Barton.(1) The Sumerian word is, in fact, to be read nig-gil-ma,(2) which, when preceded by the determinative for “pot”, “jar”, or “bowl”, is given in a later syllabary as the equivalent of the Semitic word mashkhalu.  Evidence that the word mashkhalu was actually employed to denote a jar or vessel of some sort is furnished by one of the Tel el-Amarna letters which refers to “one silver mashkhalu” and “one (or two) stone mashkhalu".(3) In our text the determinative is absent, and it is possible that the word is used