Chapter VI.
OTHER BABYLONIAN ACCOUNTS OF THE CREATION.

Cuneiform accounts originally traditions.—Variations.—Account of Berosus.—Tablet from Cutha.—Translation.—Composite animals.—Eagle-headed men.—Seven brothers.—Destruction of men.—Seven wicked spirits.—Mythical explanation of lunar eclipses.—Hymn to the God of Fire.—War in heaven.—Tiamat-Merodach.—The great dragon.—Parallel Biblical account.

The traditions embodied by Accadians and Assyrians in the literature of which specimens have been given in the preceding chapter, had been handed down by word of mouth through many generations, and committed to writing only at a comparatively late period. When such is the case, traditions are naturally liable to vary, sometimes very widely, according to the period and condition of the country. Thus many different versions of a story arise, and there can be no doubt that this was actually the case with the Creation legends. The account of the Creation in six days was not the only account of the Creation current among the inhabitants of Assyria and Babylonia. It was but one out of many which had slowly grown up among the people, and been finally thrown into a literary form. The story of the Creation transmitted through Berosus (see chapter iii. pp. 34-36), for example, supplies us with an account which differs entirely from the cuneiform account in the last chapter as well as from the Genesis account, and some fragments of tablets from Kouyunjik belonging to the library of Assur-bani-pal give a copy, mutilated as usual, of a third version which has, however, points of agreement with the account of Berosus. This legend, of which the following is a translation, is stated to be copied from a tablet at Cutha.

Legend of Creation from Cutha tablet.

(Many lines lost at commencement.)

Column II.

(Many lines lost.)

Column III.

Column IV.

(Several lines lost at commencement.)

Sacred Tree, attendant Figures and Eagle-headed Men, from the seal of a Syrian Chief, ninth century b.c.

This is a very obscure inscription, the first column, however, forms part of a relation similar to that of Berosus in his history of the Creation; the beings who were killed by the light, and those with men’s heads and bird’s bodies, and bird’s heads and men’s bodies, agree with the composite monsters of Berosus, while the goddess of chaos, Tiamtu, who is over them, is the same as the Thalatth of the Greek writer. It may be remarked that the doctrine of the Greek philosopher, Anaximander, that man has developed out of creatures of various shape, and once like the fish was an inhabitant of the water, is but a reminiscence of the old Babylonian legend.

The relation in the third column of the inscription is difficult, and does not correspond with any known incident. The fourth column contains an address to any future king who should read the inscription which was deposited in the temple of Nergal at Cutha.

It is possible that this legend was supposed to be the work of one of the mythical kings of Chaldea, who describes the condition and history of the world before his time.

The war carried on against the monstrous creations of Tiamtu, described in this myth, was but one version of the war waged against Tiamtu, or Chaos, herself by the sun-god Merodach. The most famous form taken by the story of this war was that which described the attack of the seven wicked spirits, or storm-demons, against the moon, and their final discomfiture by the bright power of day. This attack was a primitive attempt to account for lunar eclipses, dressed up in poetry, and may be compared with the Chinese belief that when the moon is eclipsed it has been devoured by the dragon of night. Similarly the Egyptians told how Set or Typhon pursued the moon, the eye of Horus, how it waned week by week as he struck it, and finally passed into eclipse when he blinded it altogether. According to Hindu legend, the immortal head of the serpent-demon Râhu, cut off by Vishnu who had been informed by the sun and moon of his theft of the drink of immortality, incessantly pursues the two informers in order to devour them, and a Scandinavian myth makes the sun and moon to be always pursued by two wolves, Sköll and Hati, the latter of whom, also called Mânagarmr or dog of the moon, will at the end of the times swallow up the chief luminary of night.

Tablet with the story of the Seven Wicked Spirits.

Column I.

Column II.

Merodach delivering the Moon-god from the evil spirits; from a Babylonian Cylinder.

The second column, which is much mutilated at the beginning, goes on to describe “the trouble” of the moon-god, how “night and day in eclipse, in the seat of his dominion he sat not.” But

Eagle-headed Man. From Nimroud Sculpture.

Most of the remainder of the legend, consisting of some forty lines, is unfortunately lost, owing to a fracture of the tablet. What is left, however, shows that Merodach, “the brilliance of the sun,” for such is the meaning of his name, who always appears in the Accadian hymns as a kind of Babylonian Prometheus and universal benefactor, comes to the help of the “labouring” moon, and “awe” goes before him. Dressed in “glistening armour of unsoiled cloths and broad garments,” he enters “the gate of the palace,” “a king, the son of his god, who, like the bright one, the moon-god, sustains the life of the land,” and there with a helmet of “light like the fire” upon his head, successfully overthrows the seven powers of darkness. The poem concludes with a prayer that they may never descend into the land, and traverse its borders.

In this story, which differs again from all the others, Bel is supposed to place in the heaven the Moon, Sun, and Venus, the representative of the stars. The details have no analogy with the other stories, and this can only be considered a poetical myth of the Creation.

This legend is part of the sixteenth tablet of the series on evil spirits; but the tablet contains other matters as well, the legend apparently being only quoted in it. There is another remarkable legend of the same sort in praise of the fire-god, on another tablet of this series published in “Cuneiform Inscriptions,” vol. iv. p. 15. The whole of this series concerns the wanderings of the god Merodach, who goes about the world seeking to remove curses and spells, and in every difficulty applying to his father Hea to learn how to combat the influence of the evil spirits, to whom all misfortunes were attributed.

The seven evil spirits illustrate well the way in which a moral signification may come to be attached to what was originally a purely physical myth. They are frequently mentioned in the literature of ancient Accad. Thus the twenty-third book, on eclipses of the moon, of the great work on astronomy compiled for Sargon of Agané, states that: “When the moon shall describe a section (in) the upper circle (of its revolution), the gods of heaven and earth bring about dearth of men (and) their overthrow; and (there is) eclipse, inundation, sickness, (and) death; the seven great spirits before the moon are broken.” Elsewhere, an Accadian hymn, which has an interlinear Assyrian translation attached to it, speaks as follows of these dreaded spirits:—

Another Accadian poet, who lived at Eridu, the supposed site of Paradise, at the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates, has left another account of the Seven wicked spirits in the hymn to the fire-god mentioned above. He says of them:—

Merodach is then ordered to fetch “the laurel, the baleful tree that breaks in pieces the incubi, the name whereof Hea remembers in his heart, in the mighty enclosure, the girdle of Eridu,” in order that the seven evil spirits may be driven away. Can this laurel-tree be the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? It must be remembered that Hea was “the lord of wisdom,” and under the form of a fish as Oannes or Hea Khan was supposed to have ascended from the Persian Gulf, and taught the primitive Babylonians the elements of culture and civilization.

At the head of the seven evil spirits stood Tiamtu, the representative of chaos and darkness. One of the most remarkable Babylonian legends yet discovered is one which tells of the primæval struggle between Tiamtu and Merodach, between light and darkness or good and evil, and which does but embody in a new shape the conception which found expression in the myth of the war against the moon. The tablets which contain this legend are unfortunately in a very fragmentary condition.

The first of these is K 4832, too mutilated to translate; it contains speeches of the gods before the war.

The second fragment, K 3473, contains also speeches, and shows the gods preparing for battle. It is so terribly broken that translation is impossible, and all that can be made out is a line here and there.

The third fragment, K 3938, is on the same subject; some lines of this give the following general meaning:—

There are many more similar broken lines, and on the other side fragments of a speech by some being who desires Tiamtu to make war.

All these fragments are not sufficiently complete to allow us to translate them with certainty, or even to ascertain their order.

The fourth fragment, K 3449, relates to the making of weapons to arm the god who should meet in war the dragon.

This reads with some doubt on account of its mutilation:

Bel encountering the Dragon; from Babylonian Cylinder.

The next fragment or collection of fragments gives the final struggle between Tiamtu and Bel Merodach. The saparu, or sickle-shaped sword, is always represented both in the sculptures and inscriptions as a weapon of Bel Merodach in this war.

Sixth Fragment.

(Several other fragmentary lines.)

Reverse.

Merodach, or Bel, armed for the Conflict with the Dragon; from Assyrian Cylinder.

Again the main difficulty arises from the fragmentary state of the documents, it being impossible even to decide the order of the fragments. It appears, however, that the gods have fashioned for them a scimitar and a bow to fight the dragon Tiamtu, and Anu proclaims great honour (fourth fragment, lines 7 to 11) to any of the gods who will engage in battle with her. Bel or Merodach volunteers, and goes forth armed with these weapons to fight the dragon. Tiamtu is encouraged by one of the gods who has become her husband, and meets Merodach in battle. The description of the fight and the subsequent triumph of the god are very fine, and remarkably curious in their details, but the connection between the fragments is so uncertain at present that it is better to reserve comment upon them until the text is more complete. The scimitar with which Merodach is armed is shown by the cylinders and bas-reliefs to have been of the shape of a sickle, and is therefore the same as the harpê or khereb with which the Greek hero Perseus was armed when he went forth to fight against the dragon of the sea at Joppa. The dragon itself, according to the representations of the monuments, was a composite monster, with the tail, horns, claws, and wings of the mediæval devil. The whole war between the powers of good and evil, chaos and order, finds its parallel in the war between Michael and the dragon in Revelation xii. 7 to 9, where the dragon is called “the great dragon, that old serpent, called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.” This description is strikingly like the impression gathered from the fragments of the cuneiform story; the dragon Tiamtu who fought against the gods, and whose fate it was to be conquered in a celestial war, closely corresponds in all essential points with the dragon conquered by Michael. That the dragon originally symbolized the sea is one proof out of many that the Accadians were a seafaring people, well acquainted with the terrors of the deep, when the waves conspire with the storm-clouds, those seven evil spirits, to throw all nature once more into its primeval anarchy.

Fight between Bel and the Dragon, from Babylonian Cylinder.