Chapter VI, lines 202-205.[406] Indeed there is reason to believe that the

two accounts of the flood are divergent versions of the same story. In addition to the likenesses already mentioned, the names of the two heroes, though they appear so different, are the same in meaning. Utnapishtim (or Unapishtim) means “day of life,” or “day-life,” while Ziugiddu means “Life-day prolonged.”

=2. Comparison with the Other Version.=

Although this tablet is much broken, so that we have not the whole of the story, it is clear from the parts that we have that in this version preserved at Nippur the story was much shorter than in the form translated in Chapter VI, which was preserved in the library of Ashurbanipal. It was also combined with a briefer account of the creation than that translated in Chapter I from Ashurbanipal’s library.

Of this Nippurian version of the creation story we have in this tablet only the small fragments preserved in Columns I and II. It is, however, probable that the Nippurian version of the creation was in its main features similar to that preserved in the library at Nineveh, only more brief.

If this be so, the conquest of the dragon Tiâmat is here attributed to Enlil of Nippur, as in the other version it is attributed to Marduk of Babylon, and as in Psa. 74:13, 14, it is attributed to Jehovah. This older account from Nippur agrees in one respect more nearly with the Biblical account than the one from the library at Nineveh does, for it represents Ziugiddu as a very pious man, who was apparently saved from destruction on account of his piety, and in blessing him God removed the curse as Jehovah did in Gen. 8:21.