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



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 Kuyыnjik (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 Kuyыnjik 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 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, Bоt-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 Tiвmat, 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 Sharkвt (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 Abы 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 house had been made, no city had been built.

[Illustration: The Bilingual Version of the Creation Legend. [No. 93,014.]]

5. "No city had been made, no creature had been constituted.

6. "Enlil's city, (i.e., Nippur) had not been made, E-kur had not been
built,

7. "Erech had not been made, E-Aena had not been built,

8. The Deep[1] (or Abyss) had not been made, Eridu had not been built.

[Footnote 1: APSЫ. It is doubtful if APSЫ here really means the great
abyss of waters from out of which the world was called. It was, more
probably, a ceremonial object used in the cult of the god, something
like the great basin, or "sea," in the court of the temple of King
Solomon, mentioned in I Kings, vii, 23; 2 Kings, xxv, 13, etc.]

9. "Of the holy house, the house of the gods, the dwelling-place had
not been made.

10. "All the lands were sea

11. "At the time that the mid-most sea was [shaped like] a trough,

12. "At that time Eridu was made, and E-sagil was built,

13. "The E-sagil where in the midst of the Deep the god
Lugal-dul-azaga [1] dwelleth,

[Footnote 1: This is a name under which Marduk was worshipped at
Eridu.]

14. "Babylon was made, E-sagil was completed.

15. "The gods the Anunnaki he created at one time.

16. "They proclaimed supreme the holy city, the dwelling of their
heart's happiness.

17. "Marduk laid a rush mat upon the face of the waters,

18. "He mixed up earth and moulded it upon the rush mat,

19. "To enable the gods to dwell in the place where they fain would
be.

20. "He fashioned man.

21. "The goddess Aruru with him created the seed of mankind.

22. "He created the beasts of the field and [all] the living things in
the field.

23. "He created the river Idiglat (Tigris) and the river Purattu
(Euphrates), and he set them in their places,

24. "He proclaimed their names rightly.

[Illustration: Terra-cotta figure of a god. From a foundation deposit
at Babylon. [No. 90,9961]]

25. "He created grass, the vegetation of the marsh, seed and shrub;

26. "He created the green plants of the plain,

27. "Lands, marshes, swamps,

28. "The wild cow and the calf she carried, the wild calf, the sheep
and the young she carried, the lamb of the fold,

29. "Plantations and shrub land,

30. "The he-goat and the mountain goat ...

31. "The lord Marduk piled up a dam in the region of the sea (i.e., he
reclaimed land)

32. "He ... a swamp, he founded a marsh.

33. "... he made to be

34. "Reeds he created, trees he created,

35. "... in place he created

36. "He laid bricks, he built a brick-work,

37. "He constructed houses, he formed cities.

38. "He constructed cities, creatures he set [therein].

39. "Nippur he made, E-Kur he built.

40. "[Erech he made, E-Anna] he built.

[The remainder of the text is fragmentary, and shows that the text
formed part of an incantation which was recited in the Temple of
E-Zida, possibly the great temple of Nabu at Borsippa.]

[Illustration: Bronze figure of a Babylonian god.  [No. 91,147]]



THE LEGEND OF THE CREATION ACCORDING TO BEROSUS AND DAMASCIUS.

Versions in Greek of the Legends found by George Smith had long been
known to classical scholars, owing to the preservation of fragments of
them in the works of later Greek writers, e.g., Eusebius, Syncellus, and
others. The most important of these is derived from the History of
Babylonia, which was written in Greek by BEROSUS, a priest of
Bel-Marduk, i.e., the "Lord Marduk," at Babylon, about 250 B.C. In this
work Berosus reproduced all the known historical facts and traditions
derived from native sources which were current in his day. It is
therefore not surprising to find that his account of the Babylonian
beliefs about the origin of things corresponds very closely with that
given in the cuneiform texts, and that it is of the greatest use in
explaining and partly in expanding these texts. His account of the
primeval abyss, out of which everything came, and of its
inhabitants reads:--

[Illustration: Babylonian Monster. [No. 108,979.]]

"There was a time in which there existed nothing but darkness and an
abyss of waters, wherein resided most hideous beings, which were
produced on a two-fold principle. There appeared men, some of whom
were furnished with two wings, others with four, and with two
faces. They had one body but two heads; the one that of a man, the
other of a woman; and likewise in their several organs both male and
female. Other human figures were to be seen with the legs and horns of
goats; some had horses' feet; while others united the hind-quarters of
a horse with the body of a man, resembling in shape the hippo-centaurs.
Bulls likewise were bred there with