Mutilated condition of tablets.—List of subjects.—Description of chaos.—Tiamat.—Generation of Gods.—Damascius.—Comparison with Genesis.—Three great gods.—Doubtful fragments.—Fifth tablet.—Stars.—Moon.—Sun.—Abyss or chaos.—Creation of moon.—Creation of animals.—Monotheism.—Hymn to Merodach.—The black-headed race or Adamites.—Garden of Eden.—The flaming sword.—The fall.—The Sabbath.—Sacred tree.—Hymn to the Creator.
It is extremely unfortunate that the legend of the Creation in days has reached us in so fragmentary a condition. It is evident, however, that in its present form it is of Assyrian, not of Babylonian, origin, and was probably composed in the time of Assur-bani-pal. It breathes throughout the spirit of a later age, its language and style show no traces of an Accadian original, and the colophon at the end implies by its silence that it was not a copy of an older document. No doubt the story itself was an ancient one; the number seven was a sacred number among the Accadians, who invented the week of seven days, and kept a seventhday Sabbath, and excavations in Babylonia may yet bring to light the early Chaldean form of the legend. But this we do not at present possess.
So far as the fragments can be arranged, they seem to observe the following order:—
These fragments indicate that the series included at least seven tablets, the writing on each tablet being in one column on the front and back, and probably including over one hundred lines of text.
The first fragment in the story is the upper part of the first tablet, giving the description of the void or chaos, and part of the generation of the gods. The translation is as follows:
On the reverse of this tablet there are only fragments of the eight lines of colophon, but the restoration of the passage is easy; it reads:—
This colophon will serve to show the value attached to the documents, and the date of the present copies.
The fragment of the obverse, broken as it is, is precious as giving the description of the chaos or desolate void before the Creation of the world, and the first movement of creation. This corresponds with the first two verses of the first chapter of Genesis.
1. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
On comparing the fragment of the first tablet of the Creation with the extract from Damascius, we do not find any statement as to there being two principles at first called Tauthe and Apason, and these producing Moymis, but in the Creation tablet the first existence is called Mummu Tiamatu, a name meaning “the chaos of the deep.” The compound Mummu Tiamatu, in fact, combines the two names Moymis and Tauthe of Damascius. Tiamatu must also be the same as the Thalatth of Berosus, which we are expressly told was the sea. It should, therefore, be corrected to Thavatth, as M. Lenormant proposed some years ago. It is evident that, according to the notion of the Babylonians, the sea was the origin of all things, and this also agrees with the statement of Genesis i. 2. where the chaotic waters are called tĕhôm, “the deep,” the same word as the Tiamat of the Creation text and the Tauthe of Damascius.
The Assyrian word Mummu is probably connected with the Hebrew mĕhûmâh, confusion, its Accadian equivalent being Umun. Besides the name of the chaotic deep called tĕhôm in Genesis, which is, as has been said, evidently the Tiamat of the Creation text, we have in Genesis the word tohû, waste, desolate, or formless, applied to this chaos. The correspondence between the inscription and Genesis is complete, since both state that a watery chaos preceded the creation, and formed, in fact, the origin and groundwork of the universe. We have here not only an agreement in sense, but, what is rarer, the same word used in both narratives as the name of this chaos, and given also in the account of Damascius.
Next we have in the inscription the creation of the gods Lakhmu and Lakhamu; these are male and female personifications of motion and production, and correspond to the Dache and Dachus of Damascius, and the moving rûakh, the wind, or spirit of Genesis. The next stage in the creation was the production of Sar and Kisar, representing the upper expanse and the lower expanse, and corresponding with the Assorus and Kissare of Damascius. The resemblance in these names is probably even closer than is here represented, since Sar is generally read Assur as a deity in later times, being an ordinary symbol for the supreme god of the Assyrians.
So far as can be made out from the mutilated text, the next step in the creation of the universe was (as in Damascius) the generation of the three great gods, Anu, Elum, and Hea, the Anus, Illinus, and Aus of that writer. Anu here symbolizes the heaven, Elum the earth, and Hea the sea.
It is probable that the inscription went on to relate the generation of the other gods, and then passed to the successive acts of creation by which the world was fashioned.
The successive forms Lakhmu and Lakhamu, Sar and Kisar, are represented in some of the lists of the gods as names or manifestations of Anu and Anatu. These lists were compiled at a time when a school of monotheists had risen in Chaldea, and an attempt was made on the part of its adherents to resolve the various deities of the popular creed into forms of “the one god” Anu. In each case there appears to be a male and female principle, which principles combine in the formation of the universe.
As has been already remarked, the conception of a male and female principle was due to the Semites. Hence it is clear that the system of cosmology embodied in these Creation tablets was of Semitic and not Accadian origin.
The resemblance between the extract from Damascius and the account in the Creation tablet as to the successive stages or forms of the Creation, is striking, and leaves no doubt about the source of the quotation from the Greek writer.
The three next tablets in the Creation series are absent, there being only two doubtful fragments of this part of the story. Judging from the analogy of the Book of Genesis, we may conjecture that this part of the narrative contained the description of the creation of light, of the atmosphere or firmament, of the dry land, and of plants. One fragment which probably belonged to this space is a small portion of the top of a tablet referring to the fixing of the dry land; but it may belong to a later part of the story, since it is part of a speech to one of the gods. This fragment is—
There is a second more doubtful fragment which also may come in here, and, like the last, relate to the creation of the dry land. It is, however, given under reserve—
This fragment is both mutilated and obscure, and it is more than doubtful whether it has anything to do with the Creation tablets. It seems rather to be a local legend relating to Assur, the old capital of Assyria, and possibly recording the legend of its foundation. Bit-Sarra or E-Sarra, “the temple of the legions,” was dedicated to Ninip, and forms part of the name of Tiglath-Pileser (Tuculti-pal-esara “Servant of the son of Bit-Sarra,” i.e. Ninip). It seems to have denoted the firmament, the “legions” or “hosts” referring to the multitudinous spirits of heaven. The Biblical expression “the Lord of hosts” may be compared.
The next recognizable portion of the Creation legends is the upper part of the fifth tablet, which gives the creation of the heavenly bodies, and runs parallel to the account of the fourth day of creation in Genesis.
This tablet opens as follows:—
Fifth Tablet of Creation Legend.
Obverse.
All that is left of the reverse is the latter half of the last line of the narrative, and the colophon, which runs thus:—
..... the gods on his hearing.
Fifth tablet of (the series beginning) At that time above.
Property of Assur-bani-pal king of nations king of Assyria.
This fine fragment is a typical specimen of the style of the whole series, and shows a marked stage in the Creation, the appointment of the heavenly orbs. It parallels the fourth day of Creation in the first chapter of Genesis, where we read: “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
“15. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
“16. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also.
“17. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
“18. And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
“19. And the evening and morning were the fourth day.”
The fragment of the first tablet of the Creation series was introductory, and dealt with the generation of the gods rather than the creation of the universe, and when we remember that the fifth tablet contains the Creation given in Genesis under the fourth day, while a subsequent tablet, probably the seventh, gives the creation of the animals which, according to Genesis, took place on the sixth day, it would seem that the events of each of the days of Genesis were recorded on a separate tablet, and that the numbers of the tablets generally followed in the same order as the days of Creation in Genesis, thus:
Genesis, Chap. I.
The assertion with which the fifth tablet begins may be compared with the oft-repeated statement of Genesis, after each act of creative power, that “God saw that it was good.” In fact, the difference between the expressions used by the Hebrew and Assyrian writers seems greater than it really is, since the word rendered “to make suitable” comes from a root which signifies “pleasant” or “agreeable.” It may be noted that the word yuaddi “he arranged” or “appointed” in the third line has the same root as the Hebrew môădhim, which is used in the same connection Gen. i. 14 in the sense of “seasons.”
We next come to the creation of the heavenly orbs, and just as the book of Genesis says they were set for signs and seasons, for days and years, so the inscription describes that the stars were set in courses to define the year. The twelve constellations or signs of the zodiac, and two other bands of constellations are referred to, corresponding with the two sets of twelve stars, one to the north and the other to the south of the zodiac, which according to Diodorus Siculus played a prominent part in Babylonian astronomy.
The god Nibiru appears in the astronomical tablets as one of the stars. Here, however, in the account of the Creation, he seems to be the deity who specially presided over the signs of the zodiac and the course of the year, and in a hymn to the Creator, which will be translated further on, he takes the place of the classical Fate, and determines the laws of the universe generally, and of the stars in particular. It is evident, from the opening of the inscription on the first tablet of the great Chaldean work on astrology and astronomy, that the functions of the stars were according to the Babylonians to act not only as regulators of the seasons and the year, but to be also used as signs, as in Genesis i. 14, for in those ages it was generally believed that the heavenly bodies gave, by their appearance and positions, signs of events which were coming on the earth.
The passage given in the eighth line of the inscription, to the effect that the God who created the stars fixed places or habitations for Bel and Hea with himself in the heavens, points to the fact that Anu, god of the heavens, was considered to be the creator of the heavenly hosts; for it is he who shares with Bel and Hea the divisions of the face of the sky, which was divided into three zones. Summer was the season of Bel, autumn of Anu, and winter of Hea, the season of spring not being recognized by the Babylonians. The new moon also was called Anu for the first five days, Hea for the next five, and Bel for the third.
The ninth line of the tablet gives us an insight into the philosophical beliefs of the early Babylonians. They evidently considered that the world was drawn together out of the waters, and rested or reposed upon a vast abyss of chaotic ocean which filled the space below the world. This dark infernal lake was shut in by gigantic gates and strong fastenings, which prevented the floods from overwhelming the world. In the centre was a staircase which led from the abyss below to the region of light above.
The account then goes on to describe the creation of the moon for the purpose of beautifying the night and regulating the calendar. The phases of the moon are recorded: its commencing as a thin crescent at evening on the first day of the month, and its gradually increasing and travelling further into the night. It will be noticed that it is regarded as appointed, in the language of the Bible, “to divide the day from the night,” and to be for a sign and a season. The expression “judge judgment” may be compared with the expression of Genesis (i. 18.) that the sun and moon were set “to rule over the day and over the night.” An account of the creation of the sun probably followed upon that of the creation of the moon.
The creation of the moon, however, is placed first in accordance with the general views of the Babylonians, who, as was natural in a people of astronomers, honoured the moon above the sun, even making the sun-god the son of the moon-god.
The details of the creation of the planets and stars, which would have been very important to us, are unfortunately lost, no further fragment of this tablet having been recovered.
The colophon at the close of the tablet gives us, however, part of the first line of the sixth tablet, but not enough to determine its subject. It is probable that this dealt with the creation of creatures of the water and fowls of the air, and that these were the creation of Bel, the companion deity to Anu.
The next tablet, the seventh in the series, is probably represented by a curious fragment, which was found by Mr. Smith in one of the trenches at Kouyunjik.
This fragment is like some of the others, the upper portion of a tablet much broken, and only valuable from its generally clear meaning. The translation is as follows:
This tablet corresponds with the sixth day of Creation in Genesis (i. 24-25): “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
“And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”
The Assyrian tablet commences with a statement of the satisfaction a former creation, apparently that of the monsters or whales, had given; here referring to Genesis i. 23. It then goes on to relate the creation of living animals on land, three kinds being distinguished, exactly agreeing with the Genesis account, and then we have in the ninth line a curious reference to the god Nin-si-ku (one of the names of Hea). One of Hea’s titles was “the lord of mankind,” and Sir Henry Rawlinson has endeavoured to show that Eridu, the city of Hea, was identical with the Biblical Garden of Eden. We may here notice a tablet which refers to the creation of man. In this tablet, K 63, the creation of the human race is given to Hea, and all the references in other inscriptions make this his work. As in Genesis, so in these cuneiform tablets the Creator is made to speak and to address the objects which he calls into existence.
The next fragment was supposed by Mr. Smith to relate to the fall of man and to contain the speech of the deity to the newly-created pair. This, however, is extremely doubtful, as will appear from the revised translation below. The fragment is in so broken a condition that almost anything may be made out of it. It is possible that nothing more is intended by it than instructions as to the construction of an image of a household god or spirit and the correct mode of worshipping it.
K 3364 obverse.
(Many lines lost.)
Reverse.
(Many lines lost.)
The next fragment is a small one; it is the lower corner of a tablet with the ends of a few lines. Mr. Smith connected it with the legend of the fall of man, but the mention of the god Sar-tuli-elli, “the king of the illustrious mound,” would rather indicate that it has to do with the story of the Tower of Babel. As, however, the fragment is too small and mutilated to decide the question, it has been allowed to remain in the place assigned to it by Mr. Smith, and not transferred to a later chapter.
According to Sir H. Rawlinson, “the holy mound” is now represented by the ruins of Amrán. At any rate, it stood on the site of the Tower of Babel and was dedicated to the god Anu. Along with the adjoining buildings, among which are to be numbered the royal palace and the famous hanging gardens, it formed a particular quarter of Babylon, enclosed within its own wall and known under the name of Su-Anna, the “Valley of Anu,” which Sir H. Rawlinson proposes to read Khalannê, and identify with the Calneh of the Old Testament. In support of his reading he refers to the statement of the Septuagint in Isaiah x. 9.: “Have not I taken the region above Babylon and Khalannê, where the tower was built?”
Obverse.
Reverse.
We may conclude this chapter with a fragment of some length, which Mr. Smith erroneously supposed to refer to the Fall. His mistake arose from the imperfect state in which the text of it has been preserved, and the consequent obscurity of its reference and meaning. Dr. Oppert has shown that it really contains a hymn to the Creator Hea. Before the commencement of lines 1, 5, 11, 19, 27, and 29 on the obverse, there are glosses stating that the divine titles commencing these lines all apply to the same deity. These explanatory glosses show that even in the Assyrian time the allusions in the original text were not all intelligible without the help of a commentary.
Obverse.
Reverse.
In a second copy which presents several variations lines 14 to 19 are omitted.
It is evident that this hymn to the Creator emanated from what Sir Henry Rawlinson has termed the monotheistic party among the ancient Babylonians, and that the speech of Hea in lines 14 to 19 has been inserted by a poet who did not belong to it. The various deities of the popular faith are all resolved into the one supreme God, the maker of the world and man, who was worshipped at Babylon under the names of Bel, “the Lord,” and Merodach the sun-god, at Eridu under that of Hea and at Nipur under that of Anu. The gods of the multitude are said to be only the fifty names of the Creator. To him is ascribed the regulation of the stars, the naming of the angels, and the subjection of the subordinate demi-gods, and marginal notes expressly state that the several titles under which the Creator is addressed on the obverse of the tablets, all belong to one and the same divinity.
In the popular mythology the part of the Creator was usually assigned to Merodach. Thus we find the latter deity addressed as follows in a mutilated bilingual hymn (K 2962 Obv.):—
In these references to the names of the living creatures made by the Creator at the beginning of the world, we are irresistibly reminded of the passage in Genesis ii. 19., where we read that “out of the ground God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air; and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”
One of the most curious statements made in these hymns is that the race of men created by the deity was black-headed. The same race of men is mentioned elsewhere in the ancient literature of the Accadians. Thus in a hymn to the goddess Gula, the goddess is described as “the mother who bore the men of the black heads,” and in another hymn the sun-god is declared to “direct the men of the black heads.” Sargon of Agané is further described as ruling over “all the men of the black heads,” and in imitation of this mode of expression Sennacherib in later days speaks of having overcome “all the black-headed race.” The black-headed race of Sennacherib, however, was the Turanian population of Elam and the adjoining districts on the east of Babylonia, whereas it is plain that the Accadian hymns mean by the black-headed race the Accadian people itself. It was over them that Sargon of Agané, the Semite, boasts of having extended his sway, though according to an old geographical list it was Sumer or Shinar rather than Accad, which was inhabited by the people of “the black-face.” But after all there is no contradiction between the statements of Sennacherib and of the hymns. The Accadians belonged to the same race as the Turanian inhabitants of Elam, and spoke a similar language to theirs.
Now we shall find in the account of the exploits of Dibbara, which will be translated in a subsequent chapter, that the black race, which is identified with the Accadians, is contrasted with the people of Syria, while in the bilingual tablets, the black race is similarly contrasted with the white race. Hence it is clear that the white race was the same as the Syrians, and since the Syrians were Semites, the white race must have been synonymous in the language of the Accadians with Semitic. As a matter of fact, the Semites belong to the white-skinned division of mankind, and were accordingly painted yellow by the Egyptians. The Accadian population, on the other hand, belonged to the dark-skinned division, though it is not necessary to suppose them to have been as black as the negro or the “blameless Ethiopian.” In the bilingual tablets, the black race is rendered in Assyrian by the word Adamatu or “red-skins.”
A popular etymology connected this word Adamatu with the word Adamu or admu, “man,” partly on account of the similarity of sound, partly because in the age of Accadian supremacy and literature, the men par excellence, the special human beings made by the Creator, were the dark-skinned race of Accad. The Accadian Adam or “man” was dark; it was only when the culture of the Accadians had been handed on to their Semitic successors that he became fair.
The discovery that the Biblical Adam is identical with the Assyrian Adamu or “man,” and that the Assyrian Adamu goes back to the first-created man of Accadian tradition who belonged to the black, that is, to the Accadian race, is due to Sir Henry Rawlinson. He has also suggested that the contrast between the black and the white races, between the Accadian and the Semite, is indicated in the sixth chapter of Genesis, where a contrast is drawn between the daughters of men, or Adamu, and the sons of God. It was owing to the intermarriage of the sons of God with the Adamites that the evils were spread which brought down upon the world the punishment of the Deluge.
It was Sir Henry Rawlinson who further pointed out that the Biblical Gân Eden, or “Garden of Eden,” is Gan-Duniyas (also called Gun-duni), a name under which Babylonia is frequently known in the Assyrian inscriptions. Gan-Duniyas signifies “the enclosure” or “fortress of the god Duniyas,” a deity whose nature and attributes are still obscure, and who may have been merely a deified monarch of the country. Two of the four rivers of Paradise are the two great rivers that enclose the fruitful plain of Babylonia, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. The Euphrates was called Purrat, or “the curving water” in Accadian from its shape; the Tigris was known under the name of Masgugar, “the current,” Tiggar, and Idikna or Idikla, from the latter of which comes the Hiddekhel of Genesis, with prefixed Accadian hid, “river.” Gihon is identified with the Arakhtu or Araxes, “the river of Babylon,” which flowed westward into the desert of Arabia or Cush, though Sir H. Rawlinson suggests its identity with the modern Jukhá, which runs past the site of Eridu, while Sargon calls Elam the country of “the four rivers.”11
The tree of life was well known to the Accadians and the Assyrians after them, and the bas-reliefs of Nineveh frequently present us with a representation of it, guarded on either side by a winged cherub who has the head sometimes of a man, sometimes of an eagle. The tree always assumes a conventional form, and since it generally bears fir-cones we may infer that the Accadians brought the tradition of it with them from their original seat in the colder mountainous land of Media, where the fir was plentiful, and identified it with the palm-tree only after their settlement in Chaldea. An old name of Babylon, or of a part of Babylon, was Din-Tir, “the life of the forest,” which may possibly have some connection with the tree of life. The special spot, however, in which the site of the tree of life was localized was close to the city of Eridu, now represented by Dhib according to Sir H. Rawlinson, where the solar hero Tammuz was supposed to have received the death-blow which obliged him to spend one half the year in the lower world.
A fragmentary bilingual hymn speaks thus of the sacred spot, and of the tree of life that grew therein:—
Eridu was the special seat of the worship of Hea, and was often known as “the good city.”
The flaming sword, which according to Genesis guarded the approach to the tree of life is paralleled by the flaming sword of Merodach, which is explained to be the lightning. It was with this sword which is represented on the monuments as having the form of a sickle like the sword of the Greek hero Perseus, that Merodach overthrew the dragon and the powers of darkness. A hymn put into the mouth of Merodach, thus speaks of it:—
Allusion is made in this hymn, it will be noticed, to a fabulous serpent with seven heads, which beats the sea into waves. This serpent was originally identical with the dragon of the deep, combated by Merodach, as we shall learn from a fragment to be translated hereafter, that is to say with the principle of chaos and darkness, called Mummu Tiamtu, “the chaos of the deep,” in the account of the creation. It is also described as “the serpent of night,” “the serpent of darkness,” “the wicked serpent,” and “the mightily strong serpent,” epithets which show that it was on the one hand the embodiment of moral evil, and on the other was primitively nothing more than the darkness destroyed by the sun, the bright power of day. It is difficult not to compare the serpent of Genesis with this serpent of Babylonian mythology. No Chaldean legend of the Fall has as yet been found, but when we remember how few Chaldean legends have been discovered, and that even for these we are dependent on the selection and copies of Assyrian scribes, we need not be surprised that such should be the case. The Babylonian colouring of the history in Genesis, the fact that the rivers of Paradise are Babylonian rivers, and that the tree of life was familiar to Babylonian art and tradition, make it probable that we shall yet discover the Chaldean version of the Fall of Man as soon as the libraries of Babylonia have been explored. Indeed, this is made almost certain by the existence of an early Babylonian seal, now in the British Museum, on which a tree is represented with a human figure seated on either side of it, with the hands stretched out towards the fruit, and a serpent standing erect behind one of them. We know that the devices on these early seals were taken from the popular legends and myths. It must be admitted, however, that the two figures seem both to be males.
But if references to the Fall are few and obscure, there can be no doubt that the Sabbath was an Accadian institution, intimately connected with the worship of the seven planets. The astronomical tablets have shown that the seven-day week was of Accadian origin, each day of it being dedicated to the sun, moon, and five planets, and the word Sabbath itself, under the form of Sabattu, was known to the Assyrians, and explained by them as “a day of rest for the heart.” A calendar of Saint’s days for the month of the intercalary Elul makes the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of the lunar month Sabbaths on which no work was allowed to be done. The Accadian words by which the idea of Sabbath is denoted, literally mean, “a day on which work is unlawful,” and are interpreted in the bilingual tablets as signifying “a day of peace” or “completion of labours.” The calendar lays down the following injunctions to the king for each of these sabbaths:—
A Sabbath: the prince of many nations the flesh of animals and cooked food may not eat.
The garments of his body he may not change. White robes he may not put on.
Sacrifice he may not offer. The king may not ride in his chariot.
In royal fashion he may not legislate. A review of the army the general may not hold.
Medicine for his sickness of body he may not apply.