Doing the job of Councillors and Mayor temporarily. ENLIS:
Atrahasis II: Disease, Famine, and Flood
The gods' solution to their difficulties works well: men make new picks and spades and dig bigger canals to feed both themselves and the gods. But after 1200 years the population has increased so much that Enlil has trouble sleeping:
The country was as noisy as a bellowing bull
The God grew rest
less at their racket,
Enlil had to listen to their noise. He addressed the great gods,
'The noise of mankind has become too much,
I am losing sleep over their racket. Give the order that surrupu-disease shall break out.' (Dalley 18)
The plague breaks out, but the wise Atrahasis appeals to his god Enki for help. Enki advises Atrahasis to have the people stop praying to their personal gods and to start praying and offering sacrifices the plague god, Namtar. Namtar is so shamed by this show of attention that he wipes "away his hand" and the plague ends. After another 1200 years, mankind has again multiplied to the point where they are violating Enlil's noise ordinances. This time Enlil decides on a drought to reduce their numbers, and gets Adad, the thunder-rain god, to hold back the rains. Again Atrahasis appeals to Enki, and again he advises concentrating worship on the one god responsible. Adad is also embarrassed, and releases his rain. (The text does not explain how Atrahasis has been able to live for 1200 years, but many legendary Sumerian kings had incredibly long lives.) Another 1200 years goes by and the noise becomes tremendous. This time, Enlil wants to make sure that no one god can weaken his/her resolve, so he declares "a general embargo of all nature's gifts. Anu and Adad were to guard heaven, Enlil the earth, and Enki the waters, to see that no means of nourishment reach the human race" (Jacobsen 119). In addition, Enlil decrees infertility: "Let the womb be too tight to let the baby out" (Dalley 25). Things get pretty bad:
When the second year arrived
They had depleted the storehouse. When the third year arrived
The people's looks were changed by starvation. When the fourth year arrived
Their upstanding bearing bowed,
Their well-set shoulders slouched,
The people went out in public hunched over. When the fifth year arrived,
A daughter would eye her mother coming in;
A mother would not even open her door to her daughter. . . . When the sixth year arrived
They served up a daughter for a meal,
Served up a son for food. (Dalley 25-26)
Though the tablets are broken and the text is fragmentary here, it seems that Enki foils the complete starvation plan by letting loose large quantities of fish to feed the starving people. Enlil is furious with Enki for breaking ranks with the rest of the gods and going against a plan that all had agreed to. Determined to wipe out mankind, Enlil decides on two things: Enki will create a flood to wipe them out and he will be forced to swear an oath not to interfere with the destruction. Enki resists creating the flood ("Why should I use my power against my people? . . . / This is Enlil's kind of work!"[Dalley 29]), but apparently he does take the oath. After another break, the text resumes with Enki addressing Atrahasis (still alive after all these years!) to warn him of the impending flood. Actually, Enki speaks to the walls of Atrahasis' reed hut so as not break the letter of his oath:
Wall, listen constantly to me! Reed hut, make sure you attend to all my words! Dismantle the house, build a boat, . . . Roof it like the Apsu
So the sun cannot see inside it! Make upper decks and lower decks,
The tackle must be very strong,
The bitumen [a kind of tar] strong . . . (Dalley 29-30)
Atrahasis gathers the elders of Shuruppak and makes up an excuse to leave town: he says that Enki and Enlil are angry with each other and that Enki has commanded him to go down to the water's edge. Which he does, and there he builds his boat and fills it with every type of animal (the text is fragmentary here) and his family. Adad begins to thunder, and sick with impending doom ("his heart was breaking and he was vomiting bile"), Atrahasis seals up the door of the boat with bitumen (Dalley 31). The storm and flood turn out to be more than the gods bargained for:
Like a wild ass screaming the winds howled
The darkness was total, there was no sun. . . . As for Nintu the Great Mistress,
Her lips became encrusted with rime. The great gods, the Annuna,
Stayed parched and famished. The goddess watched and wept . . . (Dalley 31-32)
The great mother goddess complains bitterly about Enlil and Anu's shortcomings as decision-makers, and she weeps for the dead humans who "clog the river like dragonflies." Also, "she longed for beer (in vain)." Now it is the gods' turn to go hungry: "like sheep, they could only fill their windpipes with bleating. / Thirsty as they were, their lips / Discharged only the rime of famine" (Dalley 33). After seven days and nights of rain, the flood subsides, and Atrahasis disembarks and offers a sacrifice. The hungry gods smell the fragrance and gather "like flies over the offering." In a mutilated passage, the great goddess swears by the flies in her necklace that she will remember the flood. Enlil spots the boat and is furious, knowing that only Enki could have been clever enough to come up with this new trick. Enki admits that he warned Atrahasis, "in defiance" of Enlil: "I made sure life was preserved" (Dalley 34). The text is fragmentary at this point, but apparently Enki persuades Enlil to adopt a more humane plan for dealing with the population and noise problem. Enki and the womb-goddess Nintu decide that henceforth one-third of the women will not give birth successfully: a pasittu demon will "snatch the baby from its mother's lap" (Dalley 35). They also create several classes of temple women who are not allowed to have children. After the Flood, various city-states and their dynasties of kings temporarily gained power over the others. The first king to unite the separate city-states was Etana, ruler of Kish (c. 2800 bce). Thereafter, Kish, Erech, Ur, and Lagash vied for ascendancy for hundreds of years, rendering Sumer vulnerable to external conquerors, first the Elamites (c. 2530–2450 bce) and later the Akkadians, led by their king Sargon (reigned 2334–2279 bce). Although Sargon’s dynasty lasted only about 100 years, it united the city-states and created a model of government that influenced all of Middle Eastern civilization. Sumer a country in lower IRAQ about 3300 bce. By the 3rd millennium bce the country was the site of at least 12 separate city-states: Kish, Erech (Uruk), Ur, Sippar, Akshak, Larak, Nippur, Adab, Umma, Lagash, Bad-tibira, and Larsa. Each of these states comprised a walled city and its surrounding villages and land, and each worshipped its own deity, whose temple was the central structure of the city. Political power originally belonged to the citizens, but, as rivalry between the various city-states increased, each adopted the institution of kingship.
