have already noted that, according to the traditions the records embody,
the Sumerians looked back to a time when gods lived upon the earth with
men, and we have seen such deities as Tammuz and Lugalbanda figuring as
rulers of cities in the dynastic sequence. As in later periods, their
names are there preceded by the determinative for divinity. But more
significant still is the fact that we read of two Sumerian heroes, also
rulers of cities, who were divine on the father's or mother's side
but not on both. Meskingasher is entered in the list as "son of the
Sun-god",(2) and no divine parentage is recorded on the mother's side.
On the other hand, the human father of Gilgamesh is described as the
high priest of Kullab, and we know from other sources that his mother
was the goddess Ninsun.(3) That this is not a fanciful interpretation is
proved by a passage in the Gilgamesh Epic itself,(4) in which its
hero is described as two-thirds god and one-third man. We again find
ourselves back in the same stratum of tradition with which the Hebrew
narratives have made us so familiar.

(1) Gen. vi. 1-4 (J).

(2) The phrase recalls the familiar Egyptian royal
designation "son of the Sun," and it is possible that we may
connect with this same idea the Palermo Stele's inclusion of
the mother's and omission of the father's name in its record
of the early dynastic Pharaohs. This suggestion does not
exclude the possibility of the prevalence of matrilineal
(and perhaps originally also of matrilocal and
matripotestal) conditions among the earliest inhabitants of
Egypt. Indeed the early existence of some form of mother-
right may have originated, and would certainly have
encouraged, the growth of a tradition of solar parentage for