To all appearance, Tiamtu and Kingu were in unlawful possession of these documents, and the king [pg 037] of the gods, Merodach, when he seized them, only took possession of what, in reality, was his own. What power the “Tablets of Fate” conferred on their possessor, we do not know, but in all probability the god in whose hands they were, became, by the very fact, creator and ruler of the universe for ever and ever.
This creative power the king of the gods at once proceeded to exercise. Passing through the heavens, he surveyed them, and built a palace called Ê-šarra, “The house of the host,” for the gods who, with himself, might be regarded as the chief in his heavenly kingdom. Next in order he arranged the heavenly bodies, forming the constellations, marking off the year; the moon, and probably the sun also, being, as stated in Genesis, “for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years,” though all this is detailed, in the Babylonian account, at much greater length. Indeed, had we the whole legend complete, we should probably find ourselves in possession of a detailed description of the Babylonian idea of the heavens which they studied so constantly, and of the world on which they lived, in relation to the celestial phenomena which they saw around them.
Fragments of tablets have been spoken of that seem to belong to the fifth and sixth of the series, and one of them speaks of the building of certain ancient cities, including that now represented by the mounds known by the name of Niffer, which must, therefore, apart from any considerations of paleographic progression in the case of inscriptions found there, or evidence based on the depth of rubbish-accumulations, be one of the oldest known. It is probably on account of this that the Talmudic writers identified the site with the Calneh of Gen. x. 10, which, notwithstanding the absence of native confirmation, may very easily be correct, for the Jews of those days were undoubtedly in a better position to know than we are, after a lapse of two thousand years. The same text, strangely [pg 038] enough, also refers to the city of Aššur, though this city (which did not, apparently, belong to Nimrod's kingdom) can hardly have been a primæval city in the same sense as “Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh.”
The text of the Semitic Creation-story is here so mutilated as to be useless for comparative purposes, and in these circumstances the bilingual story of the Creation, published by me in 1891, practically covering, as it does, the same ground, may be held, in a measure, to supply its place. Instead, therefore, of devoting to this version a separate section, I insert a translation of it here, together with a description of the tablet upon which it is written.
This second version of the Creation-story is inscribed on a large fragment (about four and a half inches high) of a tablet found by Mr. Rassam at Sippar (Abu Habbah) in 1882. The text is very neatly written in the Babylonian character, and is given twice over, that is, in the original (dialectic) Akkadian, with a Semitic (Babylonian) translation. As it was the custom of the Babylonian and Assyrian scribes, for the sake of giving a nice appearance to what they wrote, to spread out the characters in such a way that the page (as it were) was “justified,” and the ends of the lines ranged, like a page of print, it often happens that, when a line is not a full one, there is a wide space, in the middle, without writing. In the Akkadian text of the bilingual Creation-story, however, a gap is left in every line, sufficiently large to accommodate, in slightly smaller characters, the whole Semitic Babylonian translation. The tablet therefore seems to be written in three columns, the first being the first half of the Akkadian version, the second (a broad one) the Semitic translation, and the third the last half of the Akkadian original text, separated from the first part to allow of the Semitic version being inserted between.
[pg 039]The reason of the writing of the version already translated and in part commented upon is not difficult to find—it was to give an account of the origin of the world and the gods whom they worshipped. The reason of the writing of the bilingual story of the Creation, however, is not so easy to decide, the account there given being the introduction to one of those bilingual incantations for purification, in which, however, by the mutilation of the tablet, the connecting-link is unfortunately lost. But whatever the reason of its being prefixed to this incantation, the value and importance of the version presented by this new document is incontestable, not only for the legend itself, but also for the linguistic material which a bilingual text nearly always offers.
The following is a translation of this document—
Here the obverse breaks off, and the end of the bilingual story of the Creation-story is lost. How many more lines were devoted to it we do not know, nor do we know how the incantation proper, which followed it, and to which it formed the introduction, began. Where the text (about half-way down on the reverse) again becomes legible, it reads as follows—
The last line but one is apparently the title, and is followed by the first line of the next tablet. From [pg 042] this we see that this text belonged to a series of at least two tablets, and that the tablet following the above had an introduction of an astronomical or astrological nature.
It will be noticed that this text not only contains an account of the creation of gods and men, and flora and fauna, but also of the great and renowned sites and shrines of the country where it originated. It is in this respect that it bears a likeness to the fragmentary portions of the intermediate tablets of the Semitic Babylonian story of the Creation, or Bêl and the Dragon, and this slight agreement may be held to justify, in some measure, its introduction here. The bilingual version, however, differs very much in style from that in Semitic only, and seems to lack the poetical form which characterizes the latter. This, indeed, was to be expected, for poetical form in a translation which follows the original closely is an impossibility, though the poetry of words and ideas which it contains naturally remains. It is not unlikely that the original Sumerian text is in poetical form, as is suggested by the cesura, and the recurring words.
In the bilingual account of the Creation one seems to get a glimpse of the pride that the ancient Babylonians felt in the ancient and renowned cities of their country. The writer's conception of the wasteness and voidness of the earth in the beginning seems to have been that the ancient cities Babel, Niffer, Erech and Eridu had not yet come into existence. For him, those sites were as much creations as the vegetation and animal life of the earth. Being, for him, sacred sites, they must have had a sacred, a divine foundation, and he therefore attributes their origin to the greatest of the gods, Merodach, who built them, brick, and beam, and house, himself. Their renowned temples, too, had their origin at the hands of the Divine Architect of the Universe.
A few words are necessary in elucidation of what [pg 043] follows the line, “When within the sea there was a stream.” “In that day,” it says, “Êridu was made, Ê-sagila was constructed—Ê-sagila which the god Lugal-du-azaga founded within the Abyss. Babylon he built, Ê-sagila was completed.” The connection of Ê-sagila, “the temple of the lofty head,” which was within the Abyss, with Êridu, shows, with little or no doubt, that the Êridu there referred to was not the earthly city of that name, but a city conceived as lying also “within the Abyss.” This Êridu, as we shall see farther on, was the “blessed city,” or Paradise, wherein was the tree of life, and which was watered by the twin stream of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
But there was another Ê-sagila than that founded by the god Lugal-du-azaga within the Abyss, namely the Ê-sagila at Babylon, and it is this fane that is spoken of in the phrase following that mentioning the temple so called within the Abyss. To the Babylonian, therefore, the capital of the country was, in that respect, a counterpart of the divine city that he regarded as the abode of bliss, where dwelt Nammu, the river-god, and the sun-god Dumuzi-Abzu, or “Tammuz of the Abyss.” Like Sippar too, Babylon was situated in what was called the plain, the edina, of which Babylonia mainly consisted, and which is apparently the original of the Garden of Eden.
The present text differs from that of the longer (Semitic) story of the Creation, in that it makes Merodach to be the creator of the gods, as well as of mankind, and all living things. This, of course, implies that it was composed at a comparatively late date, when the god Merodach had become fully recognized as the chief divinity, and the fact that Aa was his father had been lost sight of, and practically forgotten. The goddess Aruru is apparently introduced into the narrative out of consideration for the [pg 044] city Sippar-Aruru, of which she was patron. In another text she is called “Lady of the gods of Sippar and Aruru.” There is also a goddess (perhaps identical with her) called Gala-aruru, “Great Aruru,” or “the great one (of) Aruru,” who is explained as “Ištar the star,” on the tablet K. 2109.
After the account of the creation of the beasts of the field, the Tigris and the Euphrates, vegetation, lands, marshes, thickets, plantations and forests, which are named, to all appearance, without any attempt at any kind of order, “The lord Merodach” is represented as creating those things which, at first, he had not made, namely, the great and ancient shrines in whose antiquity and glorious memories the Babylonian—and the Assyrian too—took such delight. The list, however, is a short one, and it is to be supposed that, in the lines that are broken away, further cities of the kingdom of Babylon were mentioned. That this was the case is implied by the reverse, which deals mainly—perhaps exclusively—with the great shrine of Borsippa called Ê-zida, and identified by many with the Tower of Babel. How it was brought in, however, we have no means of finding out, and must wait patiently for the completion of the text that will, in all probability, ultimately be discovered.
The reverse has only the end of the text, which, as far as it is preserved, is in the form of an “incantation of Êridu,” and mentions “the glorious fountain of the Abyss,” which to was to “purify” or “make glorious” the pathway of the personified fane referred to. As it was the god Merodach, “the merciful one,” “he who raises the dead to life,” “the lord of the glorious incantation,” who was regarded by the Babylonians as revealing to mankind the “incantation of Êridu,” which he, in his turn, obtained from his father Aa, we may see in this final part of the legend not only a glorification of the chief deity of the Babylonians, but also a further testimony of the fact that the composition [pg 045] must belong to the comparatively late period in the history of Babylonian religion, when the worship of Merodach had taken the place of that of his father Aa.
Of course, it must not be supposed that the longer account of the Creation was told so shortly as the bilingual narrative that we have introduced here to supply the missing parts of the longer version. Everything was probably recounted at much greater length, and in confirmation of this there is the testimony of the small fragment of the longer account, translated on p. 28. This simply contains the announcement that Merodach had made cunning plans, and decided to create man from his own blood, and [to form?] his bones, but there must have been, in the long gap which then ensues, a detailed account of the actual creation of the human race, probably with some reference to the formation of animals. One cannot base much upon this mutilated fragment, but, as the first translator has pointed out, the object in creating man was seemingly to ensure the performance of the service (or worship) of the gods, and the building of their shrines, prayer and sacrifice, with the fear of God, being duties from which there was no escape.
In the last tablet of the series—that recording the praises of Merodach and his fifty new names,—there are a few points that are worthy of examination. In the first place, the arrangement of the first part is noteworthy. The principal name that was given to him seems not to have been Merodach, as one would expect from the popularity of the name in later days, but Tutu, which occurs in the margin, at the head of six of the sections, and was probably prefixed to at least three more. This name Tutu is evidently an Akkadian reduplicate word, from the root tu, “to beget,” and corresponds with the explanation of the word given by the list of Babylonian gods, K. 2107; muâllid îlāni, mûddiš îlāni, “begetter of the gods, renewer [pg 046] of the gods”—a name probably given to him on account of his identification with his father, Aa, for, according to the legend, Merodach was rather the youngest than the oldest of the gods, who are even called, as will be remembered, “his fathers.” In the lost portion at the beginning of the final tablet he was also called, according to the tablet here quoted, Gugu = muttakkil îlāni, “nourisher of the gods”; Mumu = mušpiš îlāni, “increaser (?) of the gods”; Dugan = banî kala îlāni, “maker of all the gods”; Dudu = muttarrû îlāni, “saviour (?) of the gods”; Šar-azaga = ša šipat-su êllit, “he whose incantation is glorious”; and Mu-azaga = ša tû-šu êllit, “he whose charm is glorious” (cf. p. 31, l. 33). After this we have Ša-zu or Ša-sud = mûdê libbi īlāni or libbi rûḳu, “he who knoweth the heart of the gods,” or “the remote of heart” (p. 31, l. 35); Zi-uḳenna = napšat napḫar îlāni, “the life of the whole of the gods” (p. 30, l. 15); Zi-si = nasiḫ šabuti, “he who bringeth about silence” (p. 31, l. 41); Suḫ-kur = muballû aabi, “annihilator of the enemy” (p. 31, l. 43); and other names meaning muballû napḫar aabi, nasiḫ raggi, “annihilator of the whole of the enemy, rooter out of evil,” nasiḫ napḫar raggi, “rooter out of the whole of the evil,” êšû raggi, “troubler of the evil (ones),” and êšû napḫar raggi, “troubler of the whole of the evil (ones).” All these last names were probably enumerated on the lost part of the tablet between where the obverse breaks off and the reverse resumes the narrative, and the whole of the fifty names conferred upon him, which were enumerated in their old Akkadian forms and translated into Semitic Babylonian in this final tablet of the Creation, were evidently repeated in the form of a list of gods, on the tablet in tabular form from which the above renderings are taken.
Hailed then as the vanquisher of Kirbiš-Tiamtu, the great Dragon of Chaos, he is called by the name of Nibiru, “the ferry,” a name of the planet Jupiter as [pg 047] the traverser of the heavens (one of the points of contact between Babylonian and Greek mythology), the stars of which he was regarded as directing, and keeping (lit. pasturing) like sheep. (Gods and stars may here be regarded as convertible terms.) His future is then spoken of, and “father Bêl” gives him his own name, “lord of the world.” Rejoicing in the honours showered on his son, and not to be outdone in generosity, Aa decrees that henceforth Merodach shall be like him, and that he shall be called Aa, possessing all his commands, and all his pronouncements—i.e. all the wisdom which he, as god of deep wisdom, possessed. Thus was Merodach endowed with all the names, and all the attributes, of the gods of the Babylonians—“the fifty renowned names of the great gods.”
This was, to all intents and purposes, symbolic of a great struggle, in early days, between polytheism and monotheism—for the masses the former, for the more learned and thoughtful the latter. Of this we shall have further proof farther on, when discussing the name of Merodach. For the present be it simply noted, that this is not the only text identifying Merodach with the other gods.
The reference to the creation of mankind in line 29 of the obverse (p. 31) is noteworthy, notwithstanding that the translation of one of the words—and that a very important one—is very doubtful. Apparently man was created to the despite of the rebellious gods, but there is also just the possibility that there exists here an idiomatic phrase meaning “in their room.” If the latter be the true rendering, this part of the legend would be in striking accord with Bishop Avitus of Vienne, with the old English poet Caedmon, and with Milton in his Paradise Lost. In connection with this, too, the statement in the reverse, lines 113 and 114, where “man's remote ages” is referred to, naturally leads one to ask, Have we here [pg 048] traces of a belief that, in ages to come (“in lateness of days”), Merodach was to return and live among men into the remote future? The return of a divinity or a hero of much-cherished memory is such a usual thing among popular beliefs, that this may well have been the case likewise among the Babylonians.
The comparison of the two accounts of the Creation—that of the Hebrews and that of the Babylonians, that have been presented to the reader—will probably have brought prominently before him the fact, that the Babylonian account, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, differs so much from the Biblical account, that they are, to all intents and purposes, two distinct narratives. That there are certain ideas in common, cannot be denied, but most of them are ideas that are inseparable from two accounts of the same event, notwithstanding that they have been composed from two totally different standpoints. In writing an account of the Creation, statements as to what are the things created must of necessity be inserted. There is, therefore, no proof of a connection between two accounts of the Creation in the fact that they both speak of the formation of dry land, or because they both state that plants, animals, and man were created. Connection may be inferred from such statements that the waters were the first abode of life, or that an expansion was created dividing the waters above from those below. With reference to such points of contact as these just mentioned, however, the question naturally arises, Are these points of similarity sufficient to justify the belief that two so widely divergent accounts as those of the Bible and of the Babylonian tablets have one and the same origin? In the mind of the present writer there seems to be but one answer, and that is, that the two accounts are practically distinct, and are the production of people having entirely different ideas upon the subject, though they may have influenced each other [pg 049] in regard to certain points, such as the two mentioned above. For the rest, the fact that there is—
No direct statement of the creation of the heavens and the earth;
No systematic division of the things created into groups and classes, such as is found in Genesis;
No reference to the Days of Creation;
No appearance of the Deity as the first and only cause of the existence of things—
must be held as a sufficient series of prime reasons why the Babylonian and the Hebrew versions of the Creation-story must have had different origins.
As additional arguments may also be quoted the polytheism of the Babylonian account; the fact that it appears to be merely the setting to the legend of Bêl and the Dragon, and that, as such, it is simply the glorification of Merodach, the patron divinity of the Babylonians, over the other gods of the Assyro-Babylonian Pantheon.