to also as Ninkurra, and finally with Ninkharsagga. This
text exhibits the process by which separate traditions with
regard to goddesses originally distinct were combined
together, with the result that their heroines were
subsequently often identified with one another. There the
myths that have not been subjected to a very severe process
of editing, and in consequence the welding is not so
complete as in the Sumerian Version of the Deluge.

(4) If Enlil's name should prove to be the first word of the
composition, we should naturally regard him as the speaker
here and as the protagonist of the gods throughout the text,
a _rôle_ he also plays in the Semitic-Babylonian Version.

This reference to the Deluge, which occurs so early in the text,
suggests the probability that the account of the Creation and of the
founding of Antediluvian cities, included in the first two columns, is
to be taken merely as summarizing the events that led up to the Deluge.
And an almost certain proof of this may be seen in the opening words
of the composition, which are preserved in its colophon or title on the
left-hand edge of the tablet. We have already noted that the first two
words are there to be read, either as the prefix "Incantation" followed
by the name "Enlil", or as the two divine names "Anu (and) Enlil". Now
the signs which follow the traces of Enlil's name are quite certain;
they represent "Ziusudu", which, as we shall see in the Third Column,
is the name of the Deluge hero in our Sumerian Version. He is thus
mentioned in the opening words of the text, in some relation to one or
both of the two chief gods of the subsequent narrative. But the natural
place for his first introduction into the story is in the Third Column,
where it is related that "at that time Ziusudu, the king" did so-and-so.