Legends Of Babylon And Egypt

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(1) The extract from the Sumerian Version, which occurs in
the lower part of the First Column, is here compared with
the Semitic-Babylonian Creation Series, Tablet VI, ll. 6-10
(see _Seven Tablets_, Vol. I, pp. 86 ff.). The comparison is
justified whether we regard the Sumerian speech as a direct
preliminary to man's creation, or as a reassertion of his
duty after his rescue from destruction by the Flood.

SUMERIAN VERSION SEMITIC VERSION

"The people will I cause to . . . "I will make man, that man may
in their settlements, (. . .).
Cities . . . shall (man) build, I will create man who shall
in their protection will I cause inhabit (. . .),
him to rest,
That he may lay the brick of our That the service of the gods may
house in a clean spot, be established, and that
(their) shrines (may be
built).
That in a clean spot he may But I will alter the ways of the
establish our . . . !" gods, and I will change (their
paths);
Together shall they be
oppressed, and unto evil shall
(they . . .)!"

The welding of incongruous elements is very apparent in the Semitic
Version. For the statement that man will be created in order that the
gods may have worshippers is at once followed by the announcement that
the gods themselves must be punished and their "ways" changed. In the
Sumerian Version the gods are united and all are naturally regarded as
worthy of man's worship. The Sumerian Creator makes no distinctions; he
refers to "our houses", or temples, that shall be established. But in
the later version divine conflict has been introduced, and the future
head of the pantheon has conquered and humiliated the revolting deities.
Their "ways" must therefore be altered before they are fit to receive
the worship which was accorded them by right in the simpler Sumerian
tradition. In spite of the epitomized character of the Sumerian
Version, a comparison of these passages suggests very forcibly that the
Semitic-Babylonian myth of Creation is based upon a simpler Sumerian
story, which has been elaborated to reconcile it with the Dragon myth.

The Semitic poem itself also supplies evidence of the independent
existence of the Dragon myth apart from the process of Creation, for the
story of Ea and Apsu, which it incorporates, is merely the local Dragon
myth of Eridu. Its inclusion in the story is again simply a tribute to
Marduk; for though Ea, now become Marduk's father, could conquer Apsu,
he was afraid of Tiamat, "and turned back".(1) The original Eridu myth
no doubt represented Enki as conquering the watery Abyss, which became
his home; but there is nothing to connect this tradition with his
early creative activities. We have long possessed part of another local
version of the Dragon myth, which describes the conquest of a dragon by
some deity other than Marduk; and the fight is there described as taking
place, not before Creation, but at a time when men existed and cities
had been built.(2) Men and gods were equally terrified at the monster's
appearance, and it was to deliver the land from his clutches that one
of the gods went out and slew him. Tradition delighted to dwell on the
dragon's enormous size and terrible appearance. In this version he is
described as fifty _beru_(3) in length and one in height; his mouth
measured six cubits and the circuit of his ears twelve; he dragged
himself along in the water, which he lashed with his tail; and, when
slain, his blood flowed for three years, three months, a day and a
night. From this description we can see he was given the body of an
enormous serpent.(4)

(1) Tabl. III, l. 53, &c. In the story of Bel and the
Dragon, the third of the apocryphal additions to Daniel, we
have direct evidence of the late survival of the Dragon
_motif_ apart from any trace of the Creation myth; in this
connexion see Charles, _Apocrypha and Pseudopigrapha_, Vol.
I (1913), p. 653 f.

(2) See _Seven Tablets_, Vol. I, pp. 116 ff., lxviii f. The
text is preserved on an Assyrian tablet made for the library
of Ashur-bani-pal.

(3) The _beru_ was the space that could be covered in two
hours' travelling.

(4) The Babylonian Dragon has progeny in the later
apocalyptic literature, where we find very similar
descriptions of the creatures' size. Among them we may
perhaps include the dragon in the Apocalypse of Baruch, who,
according to the Slavonic Version, apparently every day
drinks a cubit's depth from the sea, and yet the sea does
not sink because of the three hundred and sixty rivers that
flow into it (cf. James, "Apocrypha Anecdota", Second
Series, in Armitage Robinson's _Texts and Studies_, V, No.
1, pp. lix ff.). But Egypt's Dragon _motif_ was even more
prolific, and the _Pistis Sophia_ undoubtedly suggested
descriptions of the Serpent, especially in connexion with
Hades.

A further version of the Dragon myth has now been identified on one of
the tablets recovered during the recent excavations at Ashur,(1) and in
it the dragon is not entirely of serpent form, but is a true dragon with
legs. Like the one just described, he is a male monster. The description
occurs as part of a myth, of which the text is so badly preserved that
only the contents of one column can be made out with any certainty. In
it a god, whose name is wanting, announces the presence of the dragon:
"In the water he lies and I (. . .)!" Thereupon a second god cries
successively to Aruru, the mother-goddess, and to Pallil, another deity,
for help in his predicament. And then follows the description of the
dragon:

In the sea was the Serpent cre(ated).
Sixty _beru_ is his length;
Thirty _beru_ high is his he(ad).(2)
For half (a _beru_) each stretches the surface of his ey(es);(3)
For twenty _beru_ go (his feet).(4)
He devours fish, the creatures (of the sea),
He devours birds, the creatures (of the heaven),
He devours wild asses, the creatures (of the field),
He devours men,(5) to the peoples (he . . .).

(1) For the text, see Ebeling, _Assurtexte_ I, No. 6; it is
translated by him in _Orient. Lit.-Zeit._, Vol. XIX, No. 4
(April, 1916).

(2) The line reads: _30 beru sa-ka-a ri-(sa-a-su)_. Dr.
Ebeling renders _ri-sa-a_ as "heads" (Koepfe), implying that
the dragon had more than one head. It may be pointed out
that, if we could accept this translation, we should have an
interesting parallel to the description of some of the
primaeval monsters, preserved from Berossus, as {soma men
ekhontas en, kephalas de duo}. But the common word for
"head" is _kakkadu_, and there can be little doubt that
_risa_ is here used in its ordinary sense of "head, summit,
top" when applied to a high building.

(3) The line reads: _a-na 1/2 ta-am la-bu-na li-bit en(a-
su)_. Dr. Ebeling translates, "auf je eine Haelfte ist ein
Ziegel (ihrer) Auge(n) gelegt". But _libittu_ is clearly
used here, not with its ordinary meaning of "brick", which
yields a strange rendering, but in its special sense, when
applied to large buildings, of "foundation, floor-space,
area", i.e. "surface". Dr. Ebeling reads _ena-su_ at the end
of the line, but the sign is broken; perhaps the traces may
prove to be those of _uzna su_, "his ears", in which case
_li-bit uz(na-su)_ might be rendered either as "surface of
his ears", or as "base (lit. foundation) of his ears".

(4) i.e. the length of his pace was twenty _beru_.

(5) Lit. "the black-headed".

The text here breaks off, at the moment when Pallil, whose help against
the dragon had been invoked, begins to speak. Let us hope we shall
recover the continuation of the narrative and learn what became of this
carnivorous monster.

There are ample grounds, then, for assuming the independent existence of
the Babylonian Dragon-myth, and though both the versions recovered
have come to us in Semitic form, there is no doubt that the myth itself
existed among the Sumerians. The dragon _motif_ is constantly recurring
in descriptions of Sumerian temple-decoration, and the twin dragons
of Ningishzida on Gudea's libation-vase, carved in green steatite and
inlaid with shell, are a notable product of Sumerian art.(1) The very
names borne by Tiamat's brood of monsters in the "Seven Tablets" are
stamped in most cases with their Sumerian descent, and Kingu, whom she
appointed as her champion in place of Apsu, is equally Sumerian. It
would be strange indeed if the Sumerians had not evolved a Dragon
myth,(2) for the Dragon combat is the most obvious of nature myths and
is found in most mythologies of Europe and the Near East. The trailing
storm-clouds suggest his serpent form, his fiery tongue is seen in the
forked lightning, and, though he may darken the world for a time,
the Sun-god will always be victorious. In Egypt the myth of "the
Overthrowing of Apep, the enemy of Ra" presents a close parallel to that
of Tiamat;(3) but of all Eastern mythologies that of the Chinese
has inspired in art the most beautiful treatment of the Dragon, who,
however, under his varied forms was for them essentially beneficent.
Doubtless the Semites of Babylonia had their own versions of the Dragon
combat, both before and after their arrival on the Euphrates, but the
particular version which the priests of Babylon wove into their epic is
not one of them.

(1) See E. de Sarzec, _Decouvertes en Chaldee_, pl. xliv,
Fig. 2, and Heuzey, _Catalogue des antiquites chaldeennes_,
p. 281.

(2) In his very interesting study of "Sumerian and Akkadian
Views of Beginnings", contributed to the _Journ. of the
Amer. Or. Soc._, Vol. XXXVI (1916), pp. 274 ff., Professor
Jastrow suggests that the Dragon combat in the Semitic-
Babylonian Creation poem is of Semitic not Sumerian origin.
He does not examine the evidence of the poem itself in
detail, but bases the suggestion mainly on the two
hypotheses, that the Dragon combat of the poem was suggested
by the winter storms and floods of the Euphrates Valley, and
that the Sumerians came from a mountain region where water
was not plentiful. If we grant both assumptions, the
suggested conclusion does not seem to me necessarily to
follow, in view of the evidence we now possess as to the
remote date of the Sumerian settlement in the Euphrates
Valley. Some evidence may still be held to point to a
mountain home for the proto-Sumerians, such as the name of
their early goddess Ninkharsagga, "the Lady of the
Mountains". But, as we must now regard Babylonia itself as
the cradle of their civilization, other data tend to lose
something of their apparent significance. It is true that
the same Sumerian sign means "land" and "mountain"; but it
may have been difficult to obtain an intelligible profile
for "land" without adopting a mountain form. Such a name as
Ekur, the "Mountain House" of Nippur, may perhaps indicate
size, not origin; and Enki's association with metal-working
may be merely due to his character as God of Wisdom, and is
not appropriate solely "to a god whose home is in the
mountains where metals are found" (op. cit., p. 295). It
should be added that Professor Jastrow's theory of the
Dragon combat is bound up with his view of the origin of an
interesting Sumerian "myth of beginnings", to which
reference is made later.

(3) Cf. Budge, _Gods of the Egyptians_, Vol. I, pp. 324 ff.
The inclusion of the two versions of the Egyptian Creation
myth, recording the Birth of the Gods in the "Book of
Overthrowing Apep", does not present a very close parallel
to the combination of Creation and Dragon myths in the
Semitic-Babylonian poem, for in the Egyptian work the two
myths are not really combined, the Creation Versions being
inserted in the middle of the spells against Apep, without
any attempt at assimilation (see Budge, _Egyptian
Literature_, Vol. I, p. xvi).

We have thus traced four out of the five strands which form the
Semitic-Babylonian poem of Creation to a Sumerian ancestry. And we now
come back to the first of the strands, the Birth of the Gods, from which
our discussion started. For if this too should prove to be Sumerian, it
would help to fill in the gap in our Sumerian Creation myth, and might
furnish us with some idea of the Sumerian view of "beginnings", which
preceded the acts of creation by the great gods. It will be remembered
that the poem opens with the description of a time when heaven and earth
did not exist, no field or marsh even had been created, and the universe
consisted only of the primaeval water-gods, Apsu, Mummu, and Tiamat,
whose waters were mingled together. Then follows the successive
generation of two pairs of deities, Lakhmu and Lakhamu, and Anshar and
Kishar, long ages separating the two generations from each other and
from the birth of the great gods which subsequently takes place. In
the summary of the myth which is given by Damascius(1) the names of the
various deities accurately correspond to those in the opening lines of
the poem; but he makes some notable additions, as will be seen from the
following table:

DAMASCUS "SEVEN TABLETS" I

{'Apason---Tauthe} Apsu---Tiamat
|
{Moumis} Mummu
{Lakhos---Lakhe}(2) Lakhmu---Lakhamu
{'Assoros---Kissare} Anshar---Kishar
{'Anos, 'Illinos, 'Aos} Anu, ( ), Nudimmud (= Ea)
{'Aos---Dauke}
|
{Belos}

(1) _Quaestiones de primis principiis_, cap. 125; ed. Kopp,
p. 384.

(2) Emended from the reading {Dakhen kai Dakhon} of the
text.

In the passage of the poem which describes the birth of the great gods
after the last pair of primaeval deities, mention is duly made of Anu
and Nudimmud (the latter a title of Ea), corresponding to the {'Anos}
and {'Aos} of Damascius; and there appears to be no reference to Enlil,
the original of {'Illinos}. It is just possible that his name occurred
at the end of one of the broken lines, and, if so, we should have a
complete parallel to Damascius. But the traces are not in favour of the
restoration;(1) and the omission of Enlil's name from this part of
the poem may be readily explained as a further tribute to Marduk, who
definitely usurps his place throughout the subsequent narrative. Anu and
Ea had both to be mentioned because of the parts they play in the Epic,
but Enlil's only recorded appearance is in the final assembly of the
gods, where he bestows his own name "the Lord of the World"(2) upon
Marduk. The evidence of Damascius suggests that Enlil's name was here
retained, between those of Anu and Ea, in other versions of the poem.
But the occurrence of the name in any version is in itself evidence
of the antiquity of this strand of the narrative. It is a legitimate
inference that the myth of the Birth of the Gods goes back to a time at
least before the rise of Babylon, and is presumably of Sumerian origin.

(1) Anu and Nudimmud are each mentioned for the first time
at the beginning of a line, and the three lines following
the reference to Nudimmud are entirely occupied with
descriptions of his wisdom and power. It is also probable
that the three preceding lines (ll. 14-16), all of which
refer to Anu by name, were entirely occupied with his
description. But it is only in ll. 13-16 that any reference
to Enlil can have occurred, and the traces preserved of
their second halves do not suggestion the restoration.

(2) Cf. Tabl. VII, . 116.

Further evidence of this may be seen in the fact that Anu, Enlil, and Ea
(i.e. Enki), who are here created together, are the three great gods of
the Sumerian Version of Creation; it is they who create mankind with the
help of the goddess Ninkharsagga, and in the fuller version of that myth
we should naturally expect to find some account of their own origin. The
reference in Damascius to Marduk ({Belos}) as the son of Ea and Damkina
({Dauke}) is also of interest in this connexion, as it exhibits a
goddess in close connexion with one of the three great gods, much as
we find Ninkharsagga associated with them in the Sumerian Version.(1)
Before leaving the names, it may be added that, of the primaeval
deities, Anshar and Kishar are obviously Sumerian in form.

(1) Damkina was the later wife of Ea or Enki; and
Ninkharsagga is associated with Enki, as his consort, in
another Sumerian myth.

It may be noted that the character of Apsu and Tiamat in this portion of
the poem(1) is quite at variance with their later actions. Their revolt
at the ordered "way" of the gods was a necessary preliminary to the
incorporation of the Dragon myths, in which Ea and Marduk are the
heroes. Here they appear as entirely beneficent gods of the primaeval
water, undisturbed by storms, in whose quiet depths the equally
beneficent deities Lakhmu and Lakhamu, Anshar and Kishar, were
generated.(2) This interpretation, by the way, suggests a more
satisfactory restoration for the close of the ninth line of the poem
than any that has yet been proposed. That line is usually taken to imply
that the gods were created "in the midst of (heaven)", but I think the
following rendering, in connexion with ll. 1-5, gives better sense:

When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not bear a name,
And the primaeval Apsu who begat them,(3)
And Mummu, and Tiamat who bore them(3) all,--
Their waters were mingled together,
. . .
. . .
. . .
Then were created the gods in the midst of (their waters),(4)
Lakhmu and Lakhamu were called into being . . .

(1) Tabl. I, ll. 1-21.

(2) We may perhaps see a survival of Tiamat's original
character in her control of the Tablets of Fate. The poem
does not represent her as seizing them in any successful
fight; they appear to be already hers to bestow on Kingu,
though in the later mythology they are "not his by right"
(cf. Tabl. I, ll. 137 ff., and Tabl. IV, l. 121).

(3) i.e. the gods.

(4) The ninth line is preserved only on a Neo-Babylonian
duplicate (_Seven Tablets_, Vol. II, pl. i). I suggested the
restoration _ki-rib s(a-ma-mi)_, "in the midst of heaven",
as possible, since the traces of the first sign in the last
word of the line seemed to be those of the Neo-Babylonian
form of _sa_. The restoration appeared at the time not
altogether satisfactory in view of the first line of the
poem, and it could only be justified by supposing that
_samamu_, or "heaven", was already vaguely conceived as in
existence (op. cit., Vol. I, p. 3, n. 14). But the traces of
the sign, as I have given them (op. cit., Vol. II, pl. i),
may also possibly be those of the Neo-Babylonian form of the
sign _me_; and I would now restore the end of the line in
the Neo-Babylonian tablet as _ki-rib m(e-e-su-nu)_, "in the
midst of (their waters)", corresponding to the form _mu-u-
su-nu_ in l. 5 of this duplicate. In the Assyrian Version
_me(pl)-su-nu_ would be read in both lines. It will be
possible to verify the new reading, by a re-examination of
the traces on the tablet, when the British Museum
collections again become available for study after the war.

If the ninth line of the poem be restored as suggested, its account of
the Birth of the Gods will be found to correspond accurately with
the summary from Berossus, who, in explaining the myth, refers to the
Babylonian belief that the universe consisted at first of moisture
in which living creatures, such as he had already described, were
generated.(1) The primaeval waters are originally the source of life,
not of destruction, and it is in them that the gods are born, as in
Egyptian mythology; there Nu, the primaeval water-god from whom Ra was
self-created, never ceased to be the Sun-god's supporter. The change in
the Babylonian conception was obviously introduced by the combination of
the Dragon myth with that of Creation, a combination that in Egypt
would never have been justified by the gentle Nile. From a study of some
aspects of the names at the beginning of the Babylonian poem we have
already seen reason to suspect that its version of the Birth of the Gods
goes back to Sumerian times, and it is pertinent to ask whether we have
any further evidence that in Sumerian belief water was the origin of all
things.

(1) {ugrou gar ontos tou pantos kai zoon en auto
gegennemenon (toionde) ktl}. His creatures of the primaeval
water were killed by the light; and terrestrial animals were
then created which could bear (i.e. breathe and exist in)
the air.

For many years we have possessed a Sumerian myth of Creation, which has
come to us on a late Babylonian tablet as the introductory section of
an incantation. It is provided with a Semitic translation, and to judge
from its record of the building of Babylon and Egasila, Marduk's temple,
and its identification of Marduk himself with the Creator, it has
clearly undergone some editing at the hands of the Babylonian priests.
Moreover, the occurrence of various episodes out of their logical order,
and the fact that the text records twice over the creation of swamps and
marshes, reeds and trees or forests, animals and cities, indicate that
two Sumerian myths have been combined. Thus we have no guarantee that
the other cities referred to by name in the text, Nippur, Erech, and
Eridu, are mentioned in any significant connexion with each other.(1) Of
the actual cause of Creation the text appears to give two versions also,
one in its present form impersonal, and the other carried out by a
god. But these two accounts are quite unlike the authorized version
of Babylon, and we may confidently regard them as representing genuine
Sumerian myths. The text resembles other early accounts of Creation by
introducing its narrative with a series of negative statements, which
serve to indicate the preceding non-existence of the world, as will be
seen from the following extract:(2)

No city had been created, no creature had been made,
Nippur had not been created, Ekur had not been built,
Erech had not been created, Eanna had not been built,
Apsu had not been created, Eridu had not been built,
Of the holy house, the house of the gods, the habitation had not
been created.
All lands(3) were sea.
At the time when a channel (was formed) in the midst of the sea,
Then was Eridu created, Esagila built, etc.

Here we have the definite statement that before Creation all the world
was sea. And it is important to note that the primaeval water is not
personified; the ordinary Sumerian word for "sea" is employed, which
the Semitic translator has faithfully rendered in his version of
the text.(4) The reference to a channel in the sea, as the cause of
Creation, seems at first sight a little obscure; but the word implies
a "drain" or "water-channel", not a current of the sea itself, and the
reference may be explained as suggested by the drainage of a flood-area.
No doubt the phrase was elaborated in the original myth, and it is
possible that what appears to be a second version of Creation later on
in the text is really part of the more detailed narrative of the
first myth. There the Creator himself is named. He is the Sumerian god
Gilimma, and in the Semitic translation Marduk's name is substituted. To
the following couplet, which describes Gilimma's method of creation,
is appended a further extract from a later portion of the text, there
evidently displaced, giving additional details of the Creator's work:

Gilimma bound reeds in the face of the waters,
He formed soil and poured it out beside the reeds.(5)
(He)(6) filled in a dike by the side of the sea,
(He . . .) a swamp, he formed a marsh.
(. . .), he brought into existence,
(Reeds he form)ed,(7) trees he created.

(1) The composite nature of the text is discussed by
Professor Jastrow in his _Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions_,
pp. 89 ff.; and in his paper in the _Journ. Amer. Or. Soc._,
Vol. XXXVI (1916), pp. 279 ff.; he has analysed it into two
main versions, which he suggests originated in Eridu and
Nippur respectively. The evidence of the text does not
appear to me to support the view that any reference to a
watery chaos preceding Creation must necessarily be of
Semitic origin. For the literature of the text (first
published by Pinches, _Journ. Roy. Asiat. Soc._, Vol. XXIII,
pp. 393 ff.), see _Sev. Tabl._, Vol. I, p. 130.