He regarded He Who Found Life and spoke:

“I envisioned you as a god. But you seem a man like me. I had set my mind to battling you, yet now that I stand with you and see you for who you are, I could not challenge you. Something restrains me. Tell me, how did you—a mortal—overcome Death and join the eternal powers, granted the long life of a god?”

He Who Found Life answered:

“I will disclose a mystery, a secret of the gods. You know of Shuruppak, the ancient city on the Euphrates. I lived there, was king once, in an age past.

“When the eternal powers converged and decreed the Flood, five gods made the pact and swore secrecy: The Sky, The Wind Lord, The Earth Lord, The Heavenly Constable and Cosmos, who is the wisest of the gods, who sent the Seven Sages to bestow reason and wisdom upon man. He is my patron. Though he had taken the oath, I heard him whisper the secret near my house:

“‘Reed fence, reed fence, listen to my words. King of Shuruppak, quickly—ever so quickly—take apart your house and build with its timbers a great ship, abandoning your belongings. The ship must be square, with a roof, just as my Under Sea is vaulted over by the earth. [1] then gather examples of every living thing and take them on board.’

“I understood Cosmos’ words and said, ‘My god, I shall obey your command as spoken. But what shall I say to the people who ask of my constructing such a ship?’

“Cosmos said, ‘Tell them that the Wind Lord hates you, that you cannot walk the earth—which he rules over—or remain in the city, that it is your fate to go down into my Under Sea and live with your god Cosmos, and that Cosmos shall rain abundance upon them, that they shall have all they want and more.’

“I laid out the frame, drafted plans. At dawn’s first glow they came: carpenters with saws and axes, reed workers with their flattening stones, rope makers with their ropes, with children hauling the tar pots. The poor helped as well, according to their means, carrying timber, hammering nails, cutting wood.

“By the end of the fifth day the hull stood: two hundred feet high, divided by six decks of an acre each, so that the ship was divided into seven spaces, each deck divided into nine compartments. Plugs were driven into holes, spars and equipment brought aboard. Three thousand pots of tar were poured into the furnace to make as many pots of pitch, with a thousand needed for the initial caulking. Each day I slaughtered bulls and sheep for the workmen and satisfied their thirst with beer ale and wine. They drank a river.

“When the ship work was finished we feasted as though it were the first day of the New Year. At sunrise oil was brought for the rite, by sunset she was ready to launch, which proved difficult. We rolled her on logs, easing her into the river until two thirds was under water. I stocked her decks with everything precious of mine: silver, gold, my family, my kinfolk, all types of animals, wild and tame, craftsmen and artisans of every kind.

“The Sun declared that the time had come, ‘Enter your ship, seal the hatch,’ said The Sun.

"Gazing into the sky, I was terrified and entered the ship. To the Master Shipwright, the man who sealed the hatch, I gave my palace, with all its contents."

Cosmos or “Ea” god of wisdom, was steward of a subterranean aquifer which may have symbolized a well of knowledge or inspiration, explaining springs and making them places of meditative pilgrimage.