e world
(Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, xi, 174 ff.).

(3) Op. cit., p. 51; cf. also Jastrow, _Heb. and Bab.
Trad._, p. 346.

So far from Berossus having missed the original significance of the
narrative he relates, I think it can be shown that he reproduces
very accurately the sense of our Sumerian text; and that the apparent
discrepancies in the Semitic Version, and the puzzling references to
a wall in both it and the Sumerian Version, are capable of a simple
explanation. There appears to me no justification for splitting the
Semitic narrative into the several versions suggested, since the
assumption that the direct warning and the dream-warning must be
distinguished is really based on a misunderstanding of the character of
Sumerian dreams by which important decisions of the gods in council were
communicated to mankind. We fortunately possess an instructive Sumerian
parallel to our passage. In it the will of the gods is revealed in
a dream, which is not only described in full but is furnished with a
detailed interpretation; and as it seems to clear up our difficulties,
it may be well to summarize its main features.

The occasion of the dream in this case was not a coming deluge but a
great dearth of water in the rivers, in consequence of which the crops
had suffered and the country was threatened with famine. This occurred
in the reign of Gudea, patesi of Lagash, who lived some centuries before
our Sumerian document was inscribed. In his own inscription(1) he
tells us that he was at a loss to know by what means he might restore
prosperity to his country, when one night he had a dream; and it was
in consequence of the dream that he eventually erected one of the most
sumptuously appointed of Sumerian temples and thereby restored his land
to prosperity. Before recounting his dream he describes how the gods
themselves took counsel. On the day in which destinies were fixed
in heaven and earth, Enlil, the chief of the gods, and Ningirsu, the
city-god of Lagash, held converse; and Enlil, turning to Ningirsu,
described the sad condition of Southern Babylonia, and remarked that
"the decrees of the temple Eninnu should be made glorious in heaven and
upon earth", or, in other words, that Ningirsu's city-temple must be
rebuilt. Thereupon Ningirsu did not communicate his orders directly to
Gudea, but conveyed the will of the gods to him by means of a dream.

(1) See Thureau-Dangin, _Les inscriptions de Sumer et