[929] Oannes of Berosus is identified with Enki (otherwise Ea) by Langdon, _Poème Sumérien, etc._ (Paris, 1919), p. 17. Tradition generally makes the earliest founders or teachers of civilisation come from the sea. Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, the children of the sun god, rose, however, not from the sea, but from _Lake_ Titicaca, when they brought to the ancient Peruvians government, law, a moral code, art, and science. Their descendants styled themselves Incas. [930] See G. F. Hill, _Some Palestinian Cults in the Greek and Roman Age_, in _Proceedings of the British Academy_ (London, 1911-12), vol. V. p. 9. [931] Cf. Heuzey, _Sceau de Goudéa_ (Paris, 1909), p. 6; also W. Hayes Ward, _Seal Cylinders of Western Asia_ (Washington, 1910), figs. 288-289; see also figs. 199, 661. The large number of seals, almost entirely cylinder, which have been found in the excavations is probably owing to every Assyrian of any means always carrying one hung on him. The use to which they were put was precisely similar to that of our signet ring. An Assyrian, instead of signing a document, ran his cylinder over the damp clay tablet on which the deed he was attesting had been inscribed. No two cylinder seals were absolutely alike, and thus this method of signature worked very well. The work on the cylinders is always intaglio; the subjects represented are very various, including emblems of the gods, animals, fish, etc. [932] _Récherches Archéologiques_, vol. XIII. of _Délégation en Perse_, by Pottier, Paris, 1912, figs. 117, 204, etc. [933] L. Heuzey, _Revue d’Assyriologie_, VI. 57, and Hayes Ward, _op. cit._, p. 74, fig. 199. CHAPTER XXXIV THE LEGENDS OF ADAPA, AND OF THE FLOOD Ea (originally the primal deity of the Sumerian city of Eridu and eventually the god of the waters on and beneath the Earth) formed with Anu, the god of Heaven, and Enlil, the god of the Earth, from the earliest period the great triad at the head of the Babylonian pantheon. The representation of Ea took the form of a sea-monster with a body of a big fish, full of stars, and claws for the base of his feet.[934] Ea is ordinarily known from the pretty legend woven round his mortal son Adapa, and the command in obedience to which Adapa firmly but unconsciously made refusal of the gift of immortality. The latter, to supply his father’s household, went a-fishing in the sea one day—fish food was evidently not the “abomination” to the Sumerian that it was to the Egyptian gods—but suddenly Shūtu the South Wind came on to blow, upset his sailing boat, and ducked him under the water, or, as Adapa puts it, “made me descend to the house of my lord,” _i.e._ Ea, god of the Sea.[935] In anger Adapa caught the South Wind and broke her wings.[936] But for this assault he was haled to appear in heaven before Anu, who had noticed, or had learnt through his messenger,[937] that the South Wind had ceased, according to the earlier or Eridean account, to blow for seven days.