is made to dwell on Dilmun, an island in the Gulf itself.  The fact that Gilgamesh in the Epic has to cross the sea to reach Ut-napishtim may be cited in favour of the reading “Dilmun”; and the description of the sea as “the Waters of Death”, if it implies more than the great danger of their passage, was probably a later development associated with Ut-napishtim’s immortality.  It may be added that in neither Hebrew version do we find any parallel to the concluding details of the original story, the Hebrew narratives being brought to an end with the blessing of Noah and the divine promise to, or covenant with, mankind.

Such then are the contents of our Sumerian document, and from the details which have been given it will have been seen that its story, so far as concerns the Deluge, is in essentials the same as that we already find in the Gilgamesh Epic.  It is true that this earlier version has reached us in a magical setting, and to some extent in an abbreviated form.  In the next lecture I shall have occasion to refer to another early mythological text from Nippur, which was thought by its first interpreter to include a second Sumerian Version of the Deluge legend.  That suggestion has not been substantiated, though we shall see that the contents of the document are of a very interesting character.  But in view of the discussion that has taken place in the United States over the interpretation of the second text, and of the doubts that have subsequently been expressed in some quarters as to the recent discovery of any new form of the Deluge legend, it may be well to formulate briefly the proof that in the inscription published by Dr. Poebel an early Sumerian Version of the Deluge story has actually been recovered.  Any one who has followed the detailed analysis of the new text which has been attempted in the preceding paragraphs will, I venture to think, agree that the following conclusions may be drawn: 

(i) The points of general resemblance presented by the narrative to that in the Gilgamesh Epic are sufficiently close in themselves to show that we are dealing with a Sumerian Version of that story.  And this conclusion is further supported (a) by the occurrence throughout the text of the attested Sumerian equivalent of the Semitic word, employed in the Babylonian Versions, for the “Flood” or “Deluge”, and (b) by the use of precisely the same term for the hero’s “great boat”, which is already familiar to us from an early Babylonian Version.

(ii) The close correspondence in language between portions of the Sumerian legend and the Gilgamesh Epic suggest that the one version was ultimately derived from the other.  And this conclusion in its turn is confirmed (a) by the identity in meaning of the Sumerian and Babylonian names for the Deluge hero, which are actually found equated in a late explanatory text, and (b) by small points of difference in the Babylonian form of the story which correspond to later political and religious developments and suggest the work of Semitic redactors.