Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/139

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Chapter VII.

THE SIN OF THE GOD ZU.

God Zu.—Obscurity of legend.—Translation.—Sin of Zu.—Anger of the gods.—Speeches of Anu to Vul.—Vul's answer.—Speech of Anu to Nebo.—Answer of Nebo.—Sarturda.—Changes to a bird.—The Zu bird.—Bird of prey.—Sarturda lord of Amarda.

AMONG the legends of the gods, companion stories to the accounts of the Creation and Deluge, one of the most curious is the legend of the sin committed by the god Zu.

This legend stands alone among the stories, its incidents and its principal actor being otherwise almost unknown from cuneiform sources. I have at present only detected one copy of the story, and this is in so mutilated a condition that it cannot be connected with any other of the legends. From some similarity in style, I conjecture that it may form the first tablet of the series which I have termed the "Wars of the Gods." I have, however, no sufficient evidence to connect the two, and for this reason