Mythology

The sick-eyed says not ‘I am sick-eyed’, The sick-headed says not ‘I am sick-headed’, Its (Dilmun’s) old woman says not ‘I am an old woman’, Its old man says not ‘I am an old man’, Unbathed is the maid, no sparkling water is poured in the city, Who crosses the river (of death?) utters no . . . The wailing priests walk not about him, The singer utters no wail, By the side of the city he utters no lament. Later, in the Semitic editing of the Sumerian myths, Dilmun became the dwelling of the immortals, where Utnapishtim and his wife were allowed to live after the Flood. It was apparently located at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. According to the Sumerian myth the only thing which Dilmun lacked was fresh water; the god Enki (or Ea) ordered Utu, the sun-god, to bring up fresh water from the earth to water the garden. Here we may have the source of the mysterious ‘ed of which the Yahwist speaks as coming up from the ground to water the garden. In the myth of Enki and Ninhursag it is related that the mother-goddess Ninhursag caused eight plants to grow in the garden of the gods. Enki desired to eat these plants and sent his messenger Isimud to fetch them. Enki ate them one by one, and Ninhursag in her rage pronounced the curse of death upon Enki. As the result of the curse eight of Enki’s bodily organs were attacked by disease and he was at the point of death. The great gods were in dismay and Enlil was powerless to help. Ninhursag was induced to return and deal with the situation. She created eight goddesses of healing who, proceeded to heal each of the diseased parts of Enki’s body. One of these parts was the god’s rib, and the goddess who was created to deal with the rib was named Ninti, which means ‘the lady of the rib’. But the Sumerian word ti has the double meaning of ‘life’ as well as ‘rib’, so that Ninti could also mean ‘the lady of life’. We have seen that in the Hebrew myth the woman who was fashioned from Adam’s rib was named by him Hawwah, meaning ‘Life’. Hence one of the most curious features of the Hebrew myth of Paradise clearly has its origin in this somewhat crude Sumerian myth. Other elements in the Yahwist’s form of the Paradise myth have striking parallels in various Akkadian myths. The importance of the possession of knowledge, which is always magical knowledge, is a recurring theme. We have seen that the myth of Adapa and the Gilgamesh Epic are both concerned with the search for immortality and the problem of death and the existence of disease. These and other examples which we have cited will serve to illustrate the point that the Akkadian myths were concerned with the themes which appear in the Yahwist’s Paradise story. The inhabitants of the Tigris-Euphrates valley were confronted by various natural phenomena. There were the destructive floods, the necessity of unremitting labour in the fields in order to wring from the reluctant soil the means of subsistence, there was the, mystery of childbirth, the mystery of life and death, disease and pain, and the secret ways of the serpent. Hence nothing was so important as to have knowledge about these things, not in order to satisfy curiosity about origins, but in order to control or propitiate the mysterious powers behind these things. Knowledge of good and evil was not moral knowledge, but the knowledge of friendly and hostile forces, the knowledge of powerful incantations and rituals by which these forces might

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