In both a flood is sent to destroy mankind, but in the first the intention of the gods is revealed in time to a pious Sumerian, possibly a priest king, Ziudsuddu, the Sumerian equivalent of the abbreviated Semitic name Utnapishti. He escapes from the flood in a great boat, which floats away on the waters. When the storm after seven days[942] has abated and the sun at last struggled out, Ziudsuddu makes a thanksgiving sacrifice of an ox and a sheep. We find him in the end reconciled with the great gods, who, as in the Babylonian version, give him immortality. From the incompleteness of the text it is impossible to determine whether in the Sumerian version the episode of the birds occurs; the probability is that it did not. As is but natural, the earlier story is simpler and more primitive in style than the Babylonian.[943] In the Gilgamesh account of the Flood, which in general resembles the story as given by Berosus, the absence of the raven, in the Bible the return of the dove with an olive leaf in her mouth, proclaims the abating of the waters, while the Algonkins allot the _rôle_, on the failure of the raven, to the muskrat. But, in the Indian legend it is a _fish_, not a god, which not only conveys to Manu the beneficent warning of the coming deluge but also saves him eventually by drawing his ship to a northern mountain.[944] FOOTNOTES: [934] Cf. Langdon, _op. cit._, 72. Ea or “Enki est généralement représenté sous la forme d’un animal ayant la tête, le cou, et les épaules d’un bélier, et qui rampe sur les pattes de devant: le reste du corps est celui d’un poisson.” [935] See the _Nippur Poem_, _op. cit._, p. 84, note 3. [936] From Karl Frank, _Babylonische Beschwörtunge Reliefs_, p. 80. The South Wind was specially dreaded, because it caused destructive floods in the low-lying regions of the Euphrates valley. In Langdon’s _Sumerian Epic of Paradise_ (_op. cit._, 1915), p. 41, we find that “Adapa sailed to catch fish, _the trade of Eridu_,” a pretty and simple touch identifying the god with his worshippers, and his pursuit with their trade; and one which supports the theory that to the Babylonian his god, in early times, was a being very similar to himself, if more powerful. [937] See the _Nippur Poem_. [938] Ea’s command sprang from the fear of losing the worship, etc. of his devotee, when once he had acquired immortality by eating and drinking of the Bread and Water of Life. [939] Adapa stands out as a pathetic and cruelly-punished figure. In this, one of the prettiest of the clumsy legends by which mankind tried to explain the loss of eternal life, Ea forbids for selfish reasons his eating or drinking of _the Bread or Water of Life_, while Anu’s offer of immortality springs from his desire to deprive Ea, whom he suspects of having betrayed to Adapa the celestial secrets of magical science, of his devotee and fish-gatherer.