THE FALL OF MAN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11508, 2 October 1915, Page 8

THE FALL OF MAN.

From n remote epoch in the hrstory of a. race, c'\. i'\."-si KJ'X V years the writing o- tht* Tkok of <leno.-;is. comes a porci." •'cr-ioi! ni' the rO:l ' J dolu"e and Hie fn 1 , 1 . of mp,n, graven on an imperisluiblo tablet by Rome Sumrrian ,-T.ribo. This antique epic, in which the origin ill sin <:•' e citing the forbiddenr fruit is ascribed to man instead of woman, wittcn in the enigmatical language of a vanished people, was found in Lb? Nippur collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. And for its' derinlui'ment Hit world is indebted to th? profound scholarship and indef.vigablo efforts of Dr Rter>hen Lang(ldm, Prci'-'svor of A r -syriology at Jesus Cclloc, Cbd'ord.

Dr Lan<rdon copied the from a fragment of the tablet as long ago as the autumn of 1912, when visiting the university. Later, the museum authorities found other portions of this remarkable text, which, when added to the original fragment, virtually restored the six column tablet. From this bit of brownish clay, covered with writing utterly incomprehensible, to more th.au a handful of persons of this age, the scholar read a story in which the fall of man follows the'flood instead of coming many generations before that chastisement of sinful humanity. And in the person of Tagtug, who alone escaped the flood, but hter disoleased the gods' by eating of the forbidden cassia, the writer seems to have a character to whom befell the events which the Hebrew version ascribes to Adam and) Noah. THE EPIC. The synopsis given by Dr Langdort in his book " Sumerian Epio of Paradise, the Flood and the Fall of Man," just published by the university authorities, is as follows: " The theme which inspired this epio is the fall of man, and it will be generally admitted that this theme sug- | gests the most profound ideas and in- ' spires the deepest emotions of man. Enid, the water god, and his consort, Ninella or Damkina, ruled over mankind in Paradise, which the epic places) in Dilmiin. In that land there was no infirmity, no sin, and man grew not old. No beasts of prey disturbed the flocks, and storms raged not. In a long address to her consort, Ninellaglorifies the land of Dilmun. praising its peace and bliss. And all thingsi were so, "But For some reason which is all too briefly defined Einki, the god of wisdom, became dissatisfied with, mart and decided to overwhelm him withi his waters. This plan he revealed to Nintud, the earth, mother goddess, who, with the help of Enlil, the earth god, had (Treated man. According to Col. 11. 32, Nintud, under the title Ninharsag, assisted in the destruction) of humanity. For nine mouths the flood endured and man dissolved in the waters like tallow and fat. But Nintud had planned to save the king And certain pious ones.'. These she summoned to the river's bank, where they embarked in a boat. AFTER THE FLOOD. " After the flood Nintud is represented in conversation with the hero, who had escaped. He is here called'Tagtug, and dignified by the title of a god. He becomes a gardener, for whom Nintud intercedes with Enki and explains to this god how Tagtug escaped his plan of universal destruction. This, at any rate, is the natural inference to be made from the broken passage sat the end of Col. 111. of the obverse and the beginning of 001. I. of the reverse. Enki became reconciled with the gardener, called him to his temple and revealed to him secrets.

"After a break we find Tagtug instructed in regard to plants and trees whose fruits the gods permitted him to ea<t. But it seems that Nintud had forbidden him to eat of the cassia. Of this Bie and ate, whereupon Ninharsag afflicted him with bodily weakness. Life, that is, good health in Babylonian idiom, he should no longer see. He loses the longevity of the prediluvian age. MAN'S GREAT LOSS. " Such in the Sumeriau epic is the conception of the fall of man. His great loss consists in being deprived of extreme longevity and good health. The fall from primeval sinlessness is not mentioned here. But we infer from column two that sin had already entered into the souls of men before the flood had caused E'nki to send that great catastrophe. In a real sense, therefore, our epic contains both the fall from purity and the fall from longevity. The latter is brought about by the eating of the tree, and this was considered the greater disaster. _ We now find that man is fallen on toil and disease. Wherefore the gods send him patrons of healing, of plants and various arts to comfort him and aid him in his struggle for existence." MOTHER EARTH. Dr Langdon points out the fact that the poem refers to the creation of man only incidentally. According to Babylonian tradition, as reported in Berossus, ten kings ruled from the' creation of man until the flood, and these reigns covered a period of 432,000 years. In this connection the scholar says:"'Our compensation in regard to this long period, during which there was no sin and men grew not old, makes no reference to these ten kings who ruled in pre-diluvian times. In the description of the flood, however, our text says, that 'Nintud, mother of the land (of Sumer), had begotten mankind.' The verb employed here means ordina.rly ' to beget, give birth to,' and another passage is still more explicit. The mother goddess, under the title Ninbarsag, says to tiie earth god. Knlil.' ' I have begotten thee children/ And Enlil is also called ' the begetter.* or ' father begetter,' the same verb being employed as in the case of Ninharsag. " All these references to the direct descent of man from the earth god and the earth goddess we must interpret figuratively. Sumerian, Babylonian and Hebrew tradition agree in regarding man as a creature fashioned in some mysterious manner by the hands of the gods or a god. Uudoubiedlv the Sumcrians, whose greatest and most ancient diety was mother earth, attributed the creation of human hind exclusively to this virgin goddess." DILMUN, THE GARDEN OF EDEN. Tagtug, the hero of the Sumerian story, I>r Langdon identifies with Noah of the Biblical narrative. A.II known references to Dilmun—the "Eden" in which Tagtug dwelt in peace and plenty—-are satisfied by identifying it with a strip of land from about the 20 th degree of latitude southward along the eastern coast of the Persian Gulf, including the islands off the coast perhaps as far as the Strait of Ormuzz and the Arabian Sea. This location of the Sumerian paradise, according to Dr Langdon, will explain also the curious geographical boundary givou in the Hebrew tradition of the Garden of Eden. In Genoa's (Chapter ii, 10-lF) the Hebrew preserves a geographical description which is obviously derived from SumeroBabylonian cosmology, he says, 'and can bo understood only by comparing the description with a Babylonian map of the world as they understood it. He then compares the geography of Dil-

A REMARKABLE DOCUMENT FOUND. SUMERIAN SCRIBE PLACES THE BLAME ON NOAH. EVE AT LAST EXONERATED.

nv:n with that of the Biblical paradise, as it is given in Genesis, and finds the two in a substantial agreement. J)r Langdon's book contains a thorough comparative study of the important ancient versions of the. Hood and the fall of man, which will be of special interest to specialists, in this branch of learning. In the opening paragraph nf his work he alludes to the tablet translate,;! .by himself as containing ''a. Sumerinn version of ihe Flood and the Fall of Man antedating by at least a thousand years the Hebrew version." SUMERIAX CULTURE. The poem itself, he says, probably represents more nearly than any production yet discovered the national epic of the religious and cultured Sumerian people. In those days and in that part of the world Sumerian culture w;;s synonymous with world culture, and her great reh'<rinus traditions became universal traditions, adopted by the Semitic peoples. Some idea of the character of the poem may ho gained from the following lines, telling of the flood, from Dr Langdon's translation:— Doubly he Caulked the ship; torches he lighted. Enki devastated the fields. ■ Tho fields received the waters of Enki. It was the first day, whose month is the first. It was the second day, whose month is the second. It was the ninth day, whose month is the ninth; The month of the cessation of the waters.

t What effect the publication of the Sumerian version of the flood story ""'ill have upon ecclesiastical controversy over the origin of the Book of Genesis is a matter of conjecture. Writing of the Hebrew account of Adam and Eve- and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden because the latter ate of the forbidden apple and induced her husband to do likewise, Dr Langdon says:—

"Theologically this story is a masterly combination of the Eridu doctrine, known to us only in the Semitic legend of Adapa, and the doctrines of our Nippur tablet." Nippur, where the tablet translated by Dr Langdon was unearthed, was the _ capital of the kingdom of Sumeria, people by a race who dwelt in the valley of the Euphrates centuries before the Babylonians. Of this people almost nothing was known. Expeditions from the University of Pennsylvania, 1838-1910, uncovered the ancient c'ty and temple, which were found Tinder ninety feet of sand. In the temple was found a library dating from 2500 B.C. This library consisted of 17,000 <: books," or small clay tablets, which were removed to the university. A version of the flood resembling to some extent the Hebraic story was then given to the world by Professor Herman V. Hilprecht, who had conducted several of the expeditions to Nippur and made a few translations of tablets found there. The clay tablets, for the most part, however, remained in the university un deciphered until 1912, when Dr Arno Poebel devoted five months to the task of translating some of the tablets. Later he announced his discovery of an account of the citation of man. In this version man was created by a goddess, and the gods, becoming jealous, decided to kill him. She heard of the plot and set the Noah of the story.' with his family, aboard an ark and saved their lives: No mention of an original pair, corresponding to Adam and Eve, was contained in the tablet. THE HEBRAIC ACCOUNT. Following the announcement of Dr Langdon's translation of the first fragment of the Nippur tablet, with its indication of a, kinship betxveen the Sumerian and Hebraic accounts of. the flood and man's fall, Judge Sulzberger, an authority on the Semitic languages; and historv," was incliend to deny that the Jews "of Palestine built their religion on Babylonian or other traditions. "The fact is," he said at the time, | "that the Jews and Babylonians and others in the Orient were all members of the same Semitic race. They all, no doubt, had the some Tundamentai traditions. After they broke into sop* urate nations these traditions were preserved, no doubt, by all, the Babylonians having their version and the Jews theirs. I am not surprised at the details of early Babylonian civilisation gleaned from the tablets. It lias been known that the Babylonians had a period of education and art."