The Babylonian Legends of the Creation | Page 5

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 APSÛ, the personification of confusion and disorder of every
kind, saw this "order," he took counsel with his female associate
TIÂMAT with the object of finding some means of destroying the
"way" (_al-ka-at_) or "order" of the gods. Fortunately the Babylonians
and Assyrians have supplied us with representations of Tiâmat, and
these show us what form ancient tradition assigned to her. She is
depicted as a ferocious monster with wings and scales and terrible
claws, and her body is sometimes that of a huge serpent, and sometimes
that of an animal. In the popular imagination she represented all that
was physically terrifying, and foul, and abominable; she was
nevertheless the mother of everything, [1] and was the possessor of the

DUP SHIMATI or "TABLET OF DESTINIES". No description of this
Tablet or its contents is available, but from its name we may assume
that it was a sort of Babylonian Book of Fate.[2] Theologically, Tiâmat
represented to the Babylonians the same state in the development of the
universe as did _tôhû wâ-bhôhû_ (Genesis i. 2), i.e., formlessness and
voidness, of primeval matter, to the Hebrews She is depicted both on
bas-reliefs and on cylinder seals in a form which associates her with
LABARTU, [3] a female devil that prowled about the desert at night
suckling wild animals but killing men. And it is tolerably certain that
she was the type, and symbol, and head of the whole community of
fiends, demons and devils.
[Footnote 1: Muallidat gimrishun.]
[Footnote 2: It is probable that the idea of this Tablet is perpetuated in
the "Preserved Tablet" of the Kur'ân (Surah x, 62), on which the
destiny of every man was written at or before the creation of the world.
Nothing that is written (_maktûb_) there can be erased, or altered, or
fail to take effect.]
[Footnote 3: (_Cun. Texts_,

Part XXIV, Plate 44, l. 142).]
[Illustration: Terra-cotta plaque with a Typhonic animal in relief. [No.
103,381.]]
In the consultation which took place between APSÛ and TIÂMAT,
their messenger MU-UM-MU took part; of the history and attributes of
this last-named god nothing is known. The result of the consultation
was that a long struggle began between the demons and the gods, and it
is clear that the object of the powers of darkness was to destroy the
light. The whole story of this struggle is the subject of the Seven
Tablets of Creation. The gods are deifications of the sun, moon, planets
and other stars, and APSÛ, or CHAOS, and his companions the

demons, are personifications of darkness, night and evil. The story of
the fight between them is nothing more nor less than a picturesque
allegory of natural phenomena. Similar descriptions are found in the
literatures of other primitive nations, and the story of the great fight
between Her-ur, the great god of heaven, and Set, the great captain of
the hosts of darkness, may be quoted as an example. Set regarded the
"order" which Her-ur was bringing into the universe with the same
dislike as that with which APSÛ contemplated the beneficent work of
Sin, the Moon-god, Shamash, the Sun-god, and their brother gods. And
the hostility of Set and his allies to the gods, like that of Tiâmat and her
allies, was everlasting.
[Illustration: between Marduk (Bel) and the Dragon. Drawn from a
bas-relief from the Palace of Ashur-nasir-pal, King of Assyria, 885-860
B.C., at Nimrûd. [Nimrûd Gallery, Nos. 28 and 29.]]
At this point a new Text fills a break in the First Tablet, and describes
the fight which took place between Nudimmud or Ea, (the
representative of the established "order" which the rule of the gods had
introduced into the domain of Apsû and Tiâmat) and Apsû and his
envoy Mummu. Ea went forth to fight the powers of darkness and he
conquered Apsû and Mummu. The victory over Apsû, i.e., the confused
and boundless mass of primeval water, represents the setting of
impassable boundaries to the waters that are on and under the earth, i.e.,
the formation of the Ocean. The exact details of the conquest cannot be
given, but we know that Ea was the possessor of the "pure (or white, or
holy) incantation" and that he overcame Apsû and his envoy by the
utterance of a powerful spell. In the Egyptian Legend of Ra and Aapep,
the monster is rendered spell-bound by the god Her-Tuati, who plays in
it exactly the same part as