r of its script. A
close examination of the writing suggests that it can hardly have been
inscribed as late as the Kassite Dynasty, since two or three signs
exhibit more archaic forms than occur on any tablets of that period;(2)
and such linguistic corruptions as have been noted in its text may
well be accounted for by the process of decay which must have already
affected the Sumerian language at the time of the later kings of Nisin.
Moreover, the tablet bears a close resemblance to one of the newly
published copies of the Sumerian Dynastic List from Nippur;(3) for both
are of the same shape and composed of the same reddish-brown clay, and
both show the same peculiarities of writing. The two tablets in fact
appear to have been written by the same hand, and as that copy of the
Dynastic List was probably drawn up before the latter half of the First
Dynasty of Babylon, we may assign the same approximate date for the
writing of our text. This of course only fixes a lower limit for the age
of the myth which it enshrines.

(1) The breadth of the tablet is 5 5/8 in., and it
originally measured about 7 in. in length from top to
bottom; but only about one-third of its inscribed surface is
preserved.

(2) Cf. Poebel, _Hist. Texts_, pp. 66 ff.

(3) No. 5.

That the composition is in the form of a poem may be seen at a glance
from the external appearance of the tablet, the division of many of the
lines and the blank spaces frequently left between the sign-groups being
due to the rhythmical character of the text. The style of the poetry
may be simple and abrupt, but it exhibits a familiar feature of both
Semitic-Babylonian and Hebrew poetry, in its constant employment of
partial repetition or paraphrase in parallel lines. The story it tells
is very primitive and in many respects unlike the Babylonian Versions
of the Deluge which we already possess. Perhaps its most striking
peculiarity is the setting of the story, which opens with a record of
the creation of man and animals, goes on to tell how the first cities
were built, and ends with a version of the Deluge, which is thus
recounted in its relation to the Sumerian history of the world. This
literary connexion between the Creation and Deluge narratives is of
unusual interest, in view of the age of our text. In the Babylonian
Versions hitherto known they are included in separate epics with
quite different contexts. Here they are recounted together