The Babylonian Legends of the Creation | Page 2

edition. The exhaustive preparatory search which
he made through the collections of tablets in the British Museum
resulted in the discovery of many unpublished fragments of the
Creation Legends, and in the identification of a fragment which,
although used by George Smith, had been lost sight of for about
twenty-five years. He ascertained also that, according to the Ninevite
scribes, the Tablets of the Creation Series were seven in number, and
what several versions of the Legend of the Creation, the works of
Babylonian and Assyrian editors of different periods, must have existed
in early Mesopotamian Libraries. King's edition of the Creation Texts
appeared in "Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British
Museum,"

Part XIII, London, 1901. As the scope of this
work did not permit the inclusion of his translations, and commentary
and notes, he published these in a private work entitled, "The Seven
Tablets of Creation, or the Babylonian and Assyrian Legends
concerning the creation of the world and of mankind," London, 1902,
8vo. A supplementary volume contained much new material which had
been found by him since the appearance of the official edition of the
texts, and in fact doubled the number of Creation Texts known hitherto.
[Illustration: Babylonian map of the world, showing the ocean
surrounding the world and making the position of Babylon on the
Euphrates as its centre. It shows also the mountains as the source of the
river, the land of Assyria, Bît-Iakinu, and the swamps at the mouth of
the Euphrates. [No. 92,687.]]

THE OBJECT OF THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF THE

CREATION.
A perusal of the texts of the Seven Tablets of Creation, which King was
enabled, through the information contained in them, to arrange for the
first time in their proper sequence, shows that the main object of the
Legend was the glorification of the god Marduk, the son of Ea (Enki),
as the conqueror of the dragon Tiâmat, and not the narration of the
story of the creation of the heavens, and earth and man. The Creation
properly speaking, is only mentioned as an exploit of Marduk in the
Sixth Tablet, and the Seventh Tablet is devoted wholly to the
enumeration of the honorific titles of Marduk. It is probable that every
great city in Babylonia, whilst accepting the general form of the
Creation Legend, made the greatest of its local gods the hero of it. It
has long been surmised that the prominence of Marduk in the Legend
was due to the political importance of the city of Babylon. And we now
know from the fragments of tablets which have been excavated in
recent years by German Assyriologists at Kal'at Sharkât (or Shargat, or
Shar'at), that in the city of Ashur, the god Ashur, the national god of
Assyria, actually occupied in texts[1] of the Legend in use there the
position which Marduk held in four of the Legends current in
Babylonia. There is reason for thinking that the original hero of the
Legend was Enlil (Bel), the great god of Nippur (the Nafar, or Nufar of
the Arab writers), and that when Babylon rose into power under the
First Dynasty (about B.C. 2300), his position in the Legend was
usurped at Babylon by Marduk.
[Footnote 1: See the duplicate fragments described in the Index to
Ebeling, Keilschrifttexte aus Assur, Leipzig, 1919 fol.]
[Illustration: Excavations in Babylonia and Assyria.]

VARIANT FORMS OF THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF THE
CREATION.
The views about the Creation which are described in the Seven Tablets
mentioned above were not the only ones current in Mesopotamia, and

certainly they were not necessarily the most orthodox. Though in the
version of the Legend already referred to the great god of creation was
Enlil, or Marduk, or Ashur, we know that in the Legend of Gilgamish
(Second Tablet) it was the goddess Aruru who created Enkidu (Eabani)
from a piece of clay moistened with her own spittle. And in the
so-called "bilingual" version[1] of the Legend, we find that this
goddess assisted Marduk as an equal in the work of creating the seed of
mankind. This version, although Marduk holds the position of
pre-eminence, differs in many particulars from that given by the Seven
Tablets, and as it is the most important of all the texts which deal
directly with the creation of the heavens and the earth, a rendering of it
is here given.
[Footnote 1: The text is found on a tablet from Abû Habbah, Brit. Mus.,
No. 93,014 (82-5-22, 1048).]

THE "BILINGUAL" VERSION OF THE CREATION LEGEND.
1. "The holy house, the house of the gods in the holy place had not yet
been made.
2. "No reed had sprung up, no tree had been made.
3. "No brick had been laid, no structure of brick had been erected.
4. "No