The Babylonian Legends of the Creation

Babylonian Legends of the
Creation, The

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Title: The Babylonian Legends of the Creation
Author: British Museum
Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9914] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 31,
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BABYLONIAN LEGENDS ***

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THE BABYLONIAN LEGENDS OF THE CREATION
AND THE
FIGHT BETWEEN BEL AND THE DRAGON
TOLD BY ASSYRIAN TABLETS FROM NINEVEH

DISCOVERY OF THE TABLETS.
The baked clay tablets and portions of tablets which describe the views
and beliefs of the Babylonians and Assyrians about the Creation were
discovered by Mr. (later Sir) A.H. Layard, Mormuzd Rassam and
George Smith, Assistant in the Department of Oriental Antiquities in
the British Museum. They were found among the ruins of the Palace
and Library of Ashur-bani-pal (B.C. 668-626) at Kuyûnjik (Nineveh),
between the years 1848 and 1876. Between 1866 and 1870, the great
"find" of tablets and fragments, some 20,000 in number, which Rassam
made in 1852, was worked through by George Smith, who identified
many of the historical inscriptions of Shalmaneser II, Tiglath-Pileser III,
Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and other kings mentioned in the
Bible, and several literary compositions of a legendary character, fables,
etc. In the course of this work he discovered fragments of various

versions of the Babylonian Legend of the Deluge, and portions of
several texts belonging to a work which treated of the beginning of
things, and of the Creation. In 1870, Rawlinson and Smith noted
allusions to the Creation in the important tablet K.63, but the texts of
portions of tablets of the Creation Series at that time available for study
were so fragmentary that it was impossible for these scholars to find
their correct sequence. During the excavations which Smith carried out
at Kuyûnjik in 1873 and 1874 for the proprietors of the Daily
Telegraph and the Trustees of the British Museum, he was, he tells us,
fortunate enough to discover "several fragments of the Genesis
Legends." In January, 1875, he made an exhaustive search among the
tablets in the British Museum, and in the following March he published,
in the Daily Telegraph (March 4th), a summary of the contents of about
twenty fragments of the series of tablets describing the creation of the
heavens and the earth. In November of the same year he communicated
to the Society of Biblical Archaeology [1] copies of:--(1) the texts on
fragments of the First and Fifth Tablets of Creation; (2) a text
describing the fight between the "Gods and Chaos"; and (3) a
fragmentary text which, he believed, described the Fall of Man. In the
following year he published translations of all the known fragments of
the Babylonian Creation Legends in his "Chaldean Account of
Genesis" (London, 1876, 8vo, with photographs). In this volume were
included translations of the Exploits of Gizdubar (Gilgamish), and
some early Babylonian fables and legends of the gods.
[Footnote 1: See the Transactions, Vol. IV, Plates I-VI, London, 1876.]

PUBLICATION OF THE CREATION TABLETS.
The publication of the above-mentioned texts and translations proved
beyond all doubt the correctness of Rawlinson's assertion made in 1865,
that "certain portions of the Babylonian and Assyrian Legends of the
Creation resembled passages in the early chapters of the Book of
Genesis." During the next twenty years, the Creation texts were copied
and recopied by many Assyriologists, but no publication appeared in
which all the material available for reconstructing the Legend was

given in a collected form. In 1898, the Trustees of the British Museum
ordered the publication of all the Creation texts contained in the
Babylonian and Assyrian Collections, and the late Mr. L. W. King,
Assistant in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, was
directed to prepare an