The Babylonian Legends of the Creation | Page 4

which assumed each other's shape and countenance. Of all which were preserved delineations in the temple of Belus at Babylon."
[Illustration: Babylonian Demon. [No. 93,089.]]
[THE SLAUGHTER OF THE QUEEN OF THE ABYSS.]
"The person, who presided over them, was a woman named OMUROCA; which in the Chaldean language is THALATTH; in Greek THALASSA, the sea; but which might equally be interpreted the Moon. All things being in this situation, Belus came, and cut the woman asunder: and of one half of her he formed the earth, and of the other half the heavens; and at the same time destroyed the animals within her. All this (he says) was an allegorical description of nature."
[THE CREATION OF MAN.]
"For, the whole universe consisting of moisture, and animals being generated therein, the deity above-mentioned[1] took off his own head: upon which the other gods mixed the blood, as it gushed out, with the earth; and from whence were formed men. On this account it is that they are rational and partake of divine knowledge."
[Footnote 1: The god whose head was taken off was not Belus, as is commonly thought, but the god who the cuneiform texts tell us was called "Kingu."]
[BELUS CREATES THE UNIVERSE.]
"This Belus, by whom they signify Jupiter, divided the darkness, and separated the Heavens from the Earth, and reduced the universe to order. But the animals not being able to bear the prevalence of light, died. Belus upon this, seeing a vast space unoccupied, though by nature fruitful, commanded one[1] of the gods to take off his head, and to mix the blood with the earth; and from thence to form other men and animals, which should be capable of bearing the air. Belus formed also the stars, and the sun, and the moon, and the five planets. Such, according to Polyhistor Alexander, is the account which Berosus gives in his first book." (See Cory, Ancient Fragments, London, 1832, pp. 24-26.)
[Footnote 1: The god whose head was taken off was not Belus, as is commonly thought, but the god who the cuneiform texts tell us was called "Kingu."]
In the sixth century of our era DAMASCIUS the SYRIAN, the last of the Neo-Platonic philosophers, wrote in Greek in a work on the Doubts and Solutions of the first Principles, in which he says: "But the Babylonians, like the rest of the Barbarians, pass over in silence the One principle of the Universe, and they conceive Two, TAUTHE and APASON; making APASON the husband of TAUTHE, and denominating her the mother of the gods. And from these proceeds an only-begotten son, MOYMIS, which I conceive is no other than the Intelligible World proceeding from the two principles. From these, also, another progeny is derived, DACHE and DACHUS; and again, a third, KISSARE and ASSORUS, from which last three others proceed, ANUS, and ILLINUS, and AUS. And of AUS and DAUCE is born a son called Belus, who, they say, is the fabricator of the world, the Demiurgus." (See Cory, Ancient Fragments, London, 1832, p. 318.)

THE SEVEN TABLETS OF CREATION. DESCRIPTION OF THEIR CONTENTS.
In the beginning nothing whatever existed except APS?, which may be described as a boundless, confused and disordered mass of watery matter; how it came into being is unknown. Out of this mass there were evolved two orders of beings, namely, demons and gods. The demons had hideous forms, even as Berosus said, which were part animal, part bird, part reptile and part human. The gods had wholly human forms, and they represented the three layers of the comprehensible world, that is to say, heaven or the sky, the atmosphere, and the underworld. The atmosphere and the underworld together formed the earth as opposed to the sky or heaven. The texts say that the first two gods to be created were LAKHMU and LAKHAMU. Their attributes cannot at present be described, but they seem to represent two forms of primitive matter. They appear to have had no existence in popular religion, and it has been thought that they may be described as theological conceptions containing the notions of matter and some of its attributes.
[Illustration: Terra-cotta figure of a Babylonian Demon. [No. 22,458.]]
After countless aeons had passed the gods ANSHAR and KISHAR came into being; the former represents the "hosts of heaven," and the latter the "hosts of earth."
After another long and indefinite period the independent gods of the Babylonian pantheon came into being, e.g., ANU, EA, who is here called NUDIMMUD, and others.
[Illustration: Bronze figure of a Babylonian Demon. [No. 93,078.]]
As soon as the gods appeared in the universe "order" came into being. When APS?, the personification of confusion and disorder of every kind, saw this "order," he took counsel with his female associate TI?MAT with the object of finding some means of destroying the "way" (_al-ka-at_) or "order" of the gods. Fortunately