in another sense.  Professor Barton, in both passages in the Sixth Column, gives it the meaning “curse”; he interprets the lines as referring to the removal of a curse from the earth after the Flood, and he compares Gen. viii. 21, where Yahweh declares he will not again “curse the ground for man’s sake”.  But this translation ignores the occurrence of the word in the First Column, where the creation of the niggilma is apparently recorded; and his rendering “the seed that was cursed” in l. 11 is not supported by the photographic reproduction of the text, which suggests that the first sign in the line is not that for “seed”, but is the sign for “name”, as correctly read by Dr. Poebel.  In that passage the niggilma appears to be given by Ziusudu the name “Preserver of the Seed of Mankind”, which we have already compared to the title bestowed on Uta-napishtim’s ship, “Preserver of Life”.  Like the ship, it must have played an important part in man’s preservation, which would account not only for the honorific title but for the special record of its creation.

     (1) See American Journal of Semitic Languages, Vol.  XXXI,
     April 1915, p. 226.

     (2) It is written nig-gil in the First Column.

(3) See Winckler, El-Amarna, pl. 35 f., No. 28, Obv., Col.  II, l. 45, Rev., Col.  I, l. 63, and Knudtzon, El-Am.  Taf., pp. 112, 122; the vessels were presents from Amenophis IV to Burnaburiash.

It we may connect the word with the magical colouring of the myth, we might perhaps retain its known meaning, “jar” or “bowl”, and regard it as employed in the magical ceremony which must have formed part of the invocation “by the Soul of Heaven, by the Soul of Earth”.  But the accompanying references to the ground, to its production from the ground, and to its springing up, if the phrases may be so rendered, suggest rather some kind of plant;(1) and this, from its employment in magical rites, may also have given its name to a bowl or vessel which held it.  A very similar plant was that found and lost by Gilgamesh, after his sojourn with Ut-napishtim; it too had potent magical power and bore a title descriptive of its peculiar virtue of transforming old age to youth.  Should this suggestion prove to be correct, the three passages mentioning the niggilma must be classed with those in which the invocation is referred to, as ensuring the sanction of the myth to further elements in the magic.  In accordance with this view, the fifth line in the Sixth Column is probably to be included in the divine speech, where a reference to the object employed in the ritual would not be out of place.  But it is to be hoped that light will be thrown on this puzzling word by further study, and perhaps by new fragments of the text; meanwhile it would be hazardous to suggest a more definite rendering.