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On this Utnapištim released all the animals; and, leaving the ship, offered a sacrifice:

"The gods smelt the savour, The gods smelt the goodly savour The gods gathered like flies over the sacrificer" (160 ff.).

The deities then begin to quarrel, Ištar and Ea reproaching Bel for his thoughtlessness in destroying mankind indiscriminately, and Bel accusing Ea of having connived at the escape of Utnapištim. Finally, Bel is appeased; and entering the ship blesses the hero and his wife:

"'Formerly Utnapištim was a man; But now shall Utnapištim and his wife be like to us the gods: Utnapištim shall dwell far hence at the mouth of the streams.' Then they took me, and far away at the mouth of the streams they made me dwell" (202 ff.).

3. The dependence of the biblical narrative on this ancient Babylonian legend hardly requires detailed proof. It is somewhat more obvious in the Yahwistic recension than in the Priestly; but there is enough in the common substratum of the two accounts to show that the Heb. tradition as a whole was derived from Babylonia. Thus both J and P agree with the Bab. story in the general conception of the Flood as a divine visitation, its universality (so far as the human race is concerned), the warnings conveyed to a favoured individual, and the final pacification of the deity who had caused the Deluge. J agrees with Bab. in the following particulars: the entry of the hero into the ark after the premonitory rain; the shutting of the door; the prominence of the number 7; the episode of the birds; the sacrifice; and the effect of its 'savour' on the gods. P has also its peculiar correspondences (though some of these may have been in J originally): e.g. the precise instructions for building the ark; the mention of bitumen (a distinctively Bab. touch); the grounding of the ark on a mountain; the blessing on the survivors. By the side of this close and marked parallelism, the material differences on which Nickel (p. 185) lays stress—viz. as to (a) the chronology, (b) the landing-place of the ark, (c) the details of the