As we saw was the case with the First Column of the text, the earliest part preserved of the Second Column contains the close of a speech by a deity, in which he proclaims an act he is about to perform. Here we may assume with some confidence that the speaker is Anu or Enlil, preferably the latter, since it would be natural to ascribe the political constitution of Babylonia, the foundation of which is foreshadowed, to the head of the Sumerian pantheon. It would appear that a beginning had already been made in the establishment of "the kingdom", and, before proceeding to his further work of founding the Antediluvian cities, he follows the example of the speaker in the First Column of the text and lays down the divine enactments by which his purpose was accomplished. The same refrain is repeated:

The text then relates the founding by the god of five cities, probably "in clean places", that is to say on hallowed ground. He calls each by its name and assigns it to its own divine patron or city-god:

The completion of the sentence, in the last two lines of the column, cannot be rendered with any certainty, but the passage appears to have related the creation of small rivers and pools. It will be noted that the lines which contain the names of the five cities and their patron gods(1) form a long explanatory parenthesis, the preceding line being repeated after their enumeration.

As the first of the series of five cities of Eridu, the seat of Nudimmud or Enki, who was the third of the creating deities, it has been urged that the upper part of the Second Column must have included an account of the founding of Erech, the city of Anu, and of Nippur, Enlil's city.(1) But the numbered sequence of the cities would be difficult to reconcile with the earlier creation of other cities in the text, and the mention of Eridu as the first city to be created would be quite in accord with its great age and peculiarly sacred character as a cult-centre. Moreover the evidence of the Sumerian Dynastic List is definitely against any claim of Erech to Antediluvian existence. For when the hegemony passed from the first Post-diluvian "kingdom" to the second, it went not to Erech but to the shrine Eanna, which gave its name to the second "kingdom"; and the city itself was apparently not founded before the reign of Enmerkar, the second occupant of the throne, who is the first to be given the title "King of Erech". This conclusion with regard to Erech incidentally disposes of the arguments for Nippur's Antediluvian rank in primitive Sumerian tradition, which have been founded on the order of the cities mentioned at the beginning of the later Sumerian myth of Creation.(2) The evidence we thus obtain that the early Sumerians themselves regarded Eridu as the first city in the world to be created, increases the hope that future excavation at Abu Shahrain may reveal Sumerian remains of periods which, from an archaeological standpoint, must still be regarded as prehistoric.

It is noteworthy that no human rulers are mentioned in connexion with Eridu and the other four Antediluvian cities; and Ziusudu, the hero of the story, is apparently the only mortal whose name occurred in our text. But its author's principal subject is the Deluge, and the preceding history of the world is clearly not given in detail, but is merely summarized. In view of the obviously abbreviated form of the narrative, of which we have already noted striking evidence in its account of the Creation, we may conclude that in the fuller form of the tradition the cities were also assigned human rulers, each one the representative of his city-god. These would correspond to the Antediluvian dynasty of Berossus, the last member of which was Xisuthros, the later counterpart of Ziusudu.

In support of the exclusion of Nippur and Erech from the myth, it will be noted that the second city in the list is not Adab,(1) which was probably the principal seat of the goddess Ninkharsagga, the fourth of the creating deities. The names of both deity and city in that line are strange to us. Larak, the third city in the series, is of greater interest, for it is clearly Larankha, which according to Berossus was the seat of the eighth and ninth of his Antediluvian kings. In commercial documents of the Persian period, which have been found during the excavations at Nippur, Larak is described as lying "on the bank of the old Tigris", a phrase which must be taken as referring to the Shatt el-Hai, in view of the situation of Lagash and other early cities upon it or in its immediate neighbourhood. The site of the city should perhaps be sought on the upper course of the stream, where it tends to approach Nippur. It would thus have lain in the neighbourhood of BismÂya, the site of Adab. Like Adab, Lagash, Shuruppak, and other early Sumerian cities, it was probably destroyed and deserted at a very early period, though it was reoccupied under its old name in Neo-Babylonian or Persian times. Its early disappearance from Babylonian history perhaps in part accounts for our own unfamiliarity with Pabilkharsag, its city-god, unless we may regard the name as a variant from of Pabilsag; but it is hardly likely that the two should be identified.

In Sibbar, the fourth of the Antediluvian cities in our series, we again have a parallel to Berossus. It has long been recognized that Pantibiblon, or Pantibiblia, from which the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh of his Antediluvian kings all came, was the city of Sippar in Northern Babylonia. For the seventh of these rulers, {Euedorakhos}, is clearly Enmeduranki, the mythical king of Sippar, who in Babylonian tradition was regarded as the founder of divination. In a fragmentary composition that has come down to us he is described, not only as king of Sippar, but as "beloved of Anu, Enlil, and Enki", the three creating gods of our text; and it is there recounted how the patron deities of divination, Shamash and Adad, themselves taught him to practise their art.(1) Moreover, Berossus directly implies the existence of Sippar before the Deluge, for in the summary of his version that has been preserved Xisuthros, under divine instruction, buries the sacred writings concerning the origin of the world in "Sispara", the city of the Sun-god, so that after the Deluge they might be dug up and transmitted to mankind. Ebabbar, the great Sun-temple, was at Sippar, and it is to the Sun-god that the city is naturally allotted in the new Sumerian Version.

The last of the five Antediluvian cities in our list is Shuruppak, in which dwelt Ut-napishtim, the hero of the Babylonian version of the Deluge. Its site has been identified with the mounds of FÂra, in the neighbourhood of the Shatt el-KÂr, the former bed of the Euphrates; and the excavations that were conducted there in 1902 have been most productive of remains dating from the prehistoric period of Sumerian culture.(1) Since our text is concerned mainly with the Deluge, it is natural to assume that the foundation of the city from which the Deluge-hero came would be recorded last, in order to lead up to the central episode of the text. The city of Ziusudu, the hero of the Sumerian story, is unfortunately not given in the Third Column, but, in view of Shuruppak's place in the list of Antediluvian cities, it is not improbable that on this point the Sumerian and Babylonian Versions agreed. In the Gilgamesh Epic Shuruppak is the only Antediluvian city referred to, while in the Hebrew accounts no city at all is mentioned in connexion with Noah. The city of Xisuthros, too, is not recorded, but as his father came from Larankha or Larak, we may regard that city as his in the Greek Version. Besides Larankha, the only Antediluvian cities according to Berossus were Babylon and Sippar, and the influence of Babylonian theology, of which we here have evidence, would be sufficient to account for a disturbance of the original traditions. At the same time it is not excluded that Larak was also the scene of the Deluge in our text, though, as we have noted, the position of Shuruppak at the close of the Sumerian list points to it as the more probable of the two. It may be added that we cannot yet read the name of the deity to whom Shuruppak was allotted, but as it is expressed by the city's name preceded by the divine determinative, the rendering "the God of Shuruppak" will meanwhile serve.

The creation of small rivers and pools, which seems to have followed the foundation of the five sacred cities, is best explained on the assumption that they were intended for the supply of water to the cities and to the temples of their five patron gods. The creation of the Euphrates and the Tigris, if recorded in our text at all, or in its logical order, must have occurred in the upper portion of the column. The fact that in the later Sumerian account their creation is related between that of mankind and the building of Nippur and Erech cannot be cited in support of this suggestion, in view of the absence of those cities from our text and of the process of editing to which the later version has been subjected, with a consequent disarrangement of its episodes.