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Ledgends of Babylon and Egypt

by Leonard W. King

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[5]Terms

[6]Contents

[7]Introduction

[8]Preface

[9]Lecture I

[10]Lecture II

[11]Lecture III

[12]APPENDIX I

[13]APPENDIX II

Lecture III

Creation and the Dragon Myth; and the Problem of Babylonian Parallels in
Hebrew Tradition

I n our discussion of the new Sumerian version of the Deluge story
we came to the conclusion that it gave no support to any theory
which would trace all such tales to a single origin, whether in
Egypt or in Babylonia. In spite of strong astrological elements in
both the Egyptian and Babylonian religious systems, we saw grounds
for regarding the astrological tinge of much ancient mythology as a
later embellishment and not as primitive material. And so far as
our new version of the Deluge story was concerned, it resolved
itself into a legend, which had a basis of historical fact in the
Euphrates Valley. It will be obvious that the same class of
explanation cannot be applied to narratives of the Creation of the
World. For there we are dealing, not with legends, but with myths,
that is, stories exclusively about the gods. But where an
examination of their earlier forms is possible, it would seem to
show that many of these tales also, in their origin, are not to be
interpreted as nature myths, and that none arose as mere
reflections of the solar system. In their more primitive and
simpler aspects they seem in many cases to have been suggested by
very human and terrestrial experience. To-day we will examine the
Egyptian, Sumerian, and Babylonian myths of Creation, and, after we
have noted the more striking features of our new material, we will
consider the problem of foreign influences upon Hebrew traditions
concerning the origin and early history of the world.

In Egypt, as until recently in Babylonia, we have to depend for our
knowledge of Creation myths on documents of a comparatively late
period. Moreover, Egyptian religious literature as a whole is
textually corrupt, and in consequence it is often difficult to
determine the original significance of its allusions. Thanks to the
funerary inscriptions and that great body of magical formulae and
ritual known as "The Chapters of Coming forth by Day", we are very
fully informed on the Egyptian doctrines as to the future state of
the dead. The Egyptian's intense interest in his own remote future,
amounting almost to an obsession, may perhaps in part account for
the comparatively meagre space in the extant literature which is
occupied by myths relating solely to the past. And it is
significant that the one cycle of myth, of which we are fully
informed in its latest stage of development, should be that which
gave its sanction to the hope of a future existence for man. The
fact that Herodotus, though he claims a knowledge of the sufferings
or "Mysteries" of Osiris, should deliberately refrain from
describing them or from even uttering the name,[1] suggests that in
his time at any rate some sections of the mythology had begun to
acquire an esoteric character. There is no doubt that at all
periods myth played an important part in the ritual of feast-days.
But mythological references in the earlier texts are often obscure;
and the late form in which a few of the stories have come to us is
obviously artificial. The tradition, for example, which relates how
mankind came from the tears which issued from Ra's eye undoubtedly
arose from a play upon words.

[1] Herodotus, II, 171.

On the other hand, traces of myth, scattered in the religious
literature of Egypt, may perhaps in some measure betray their
relative age by the conceptions of the universe which underlie
them. The Egyptian idea that the sky was a heavenly ocean, which is
not unlike conceptions current among the Semitic Babylonians and
Hebrews, presupposes some thought and reflection. In Egypt it may
well have been evolved from the probably earlier but analogous idea
of the river in heaven, which the Sun traversed daily in his boats.
Such a river was clearly suggested by the Nile; and its
world-embracing character is reminiscent of a time when through
communication was regularly established, at least as far south as
Elephantine. Possibly in an earlier period the long narrow valley,
or even a section of it, may have suggested the figure of a man
lying prone upon his back. Such was Keb, the Earth-god, whose
counterpart in the sky was the goddess Nut, her feet and hands
resting at the limits of the world and her curved body forming the
vault of heaven. Perhaps still more primitive, and dating from a
pastoral age, may be the notion that the sky was a great cow, her
body, speckled with stars, alone visible from the earth beneath.
Reference has already been made to the dominant influence of the
Sun in Egyptian religion, and it is not surprising that he should
so often appear as the first of created beings. His orb itself, or
later the god in youthful human form, might be pictured as emerging
from a lotus on the primaeval waters, or from a marsh-bird's egg, a
conception which influenced the later Phoenician cosmogeny. The
Scarabaeus, or great dung-feeding beetle of Egypt, rolling the ball
before it in which it lays its eggs, is an obvious theme for the
early myth-maker. And it was natural that the Beetle of Khepera
should have been identified with the Sun at his rising, as the Hawk
of Ra represented his noonday flight, and the aged form of Attun
his setting in the west. But in all these varied conceptions and
explanations of the universe it is difficult to determine how far
the poetical imagery of later periods has transformed the original
myths which may lie behind them.

As the Egyptian Creator the claims of Ra, the Sun-god of
Heliopolis, early superseded those of other deities. On the other
hand, Ptah of Memphis, who for long ages had been merely the god of
architects and craftsmen, became under the Empire the architect of
the universe and is pictured as a potter moulding the world-egg. A
short poem by a priest of Ptah, which has come down to us from that
period, exhibits an attempt to develop this idea on philosophical
lines.[1] Its author represents all gods and living creatures as
proceeding directly from the mind and thought of Ptah. But this
movement, which was more notably reflected in Akhenaton's religious
revolution, died out in political disaster, and the original
materialistic interpretation of the myths was restored with the
cult of Amen. How materialistic this could be is well illustrated
by two earlier members of the XVIIIth Dynasty, who have left us
vivid representations of the potter's wheel employed in the process
of man's creation. When the famous Hatshepsut, after the return of
her expedition to Punt in the ninth year of her young consort
Thothmes III, decided to build her temple at Deir el-Bahari in the
necropolis of Western Thebes, she sought to emphasize her claim to
the throne of Egypt by recording her own divine origin upon its
walls. We have already noted the Egyptians' belief in the solar
parentage of their legitimate rulers, a myth that goes back at
least to the Old Kingdom and may have had its origin in prehistoric
times. With the rise of Thebes, Amen inherited the prerogatives of
Ra; and so Hatshepsut seeks to show, on the north side of the
retaining wall of her temple's Upper Platform, that she was the
daughter of Amen himself, "the great God, Lord of the sky, Lord of
the Thrones of the Two Lands, who resides at Thebes". The myth was
no invention of her own, for obviously it must have followed
traditional lines, and though it is only employed to exhibit the
divine creation of a single personage, it as obviously reflects the
procedure and methods of a general Creation myth.

[1] See Breasted, /Zeitschrift fur Aegyptische Sprache/, XXXIX, pp.
39 ff., and /History of Egypt/, pp. 356 ff.

This series of sculptures shared the deliberate mutilation that all
her records suffered at the hands of Thothmes III after her death,
but enough of the scenes and their accompanying text has survived
to render the detailed interpretation of the myth quite certain.[1]
Here, as in a general Creation myth, Amen's first act is to summon
the great gods in council, in order to announce to them the future
birth of the great princess. Of the twelve gods who attend, the
first is Menthu, a form of the Sun-god and closely associated with
Amen.[2] But the second deity is Atum, the great god of Heliopolis,
and he is followed by his cycle of deities--Shu, "the son of Ra";
Tefnut, "the Lady of the sky"; Keb, "the Father of the Gods"; Nut,
"the Mother of the Gods"; Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Set, Horus, and
Hathor. We are here in the presence of cosmic deities, as befits a
projected act of creation. The subsequent scenes exhibit the
Egyptian's literal interpretation of the myth, which necessitates
the god's bodily presence and personal participation. Thoth
mentions to Amen the name of queen Aahmes as the future mother of
Hatshepsut, and we later see Amen himself, in the form of her
husband, Aa-kheperka-Ra (Thothmes I), sitting with Aahmes and
giving her the Ankh, or sign of Life, which she receives in her
hand and inhales through her nostrils.[3] God and queen are seated
on thrones above a couch, and are supported by two goddesses. After
leaving the queen, Amen calls on Khnum or Khnemu, the flat-horned
ram-god, who in texts of all periods is referred to as the
"builder" of gods and men;[4] and he instructs him to create the
body of his future daughter and that of her /Ka/, or "double",
which would be united to her from birth.

[1] See Naville, /Deir el-Bahari/, Pt. II, pp. 12 ff., plates xlvi
ff.

[2] See Budge, /Gods of the Egyptians/, Vol. II, pp. 23 ff. His
chief cult-centre was Hermonthis, but here as elsewhere he is given
his usual title "Lord of Thebes".

[3] Pl. xlvii. Similar scenes are presented in the "birth-temples"
at Denderah, Edfu, Philae, Esneh, and Luxor; see Naville, op. cit.,
p. 14.

[4] Cf. Budge, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 50.

The scene in the series, which is of greatest interest in the
present connexion, is that representing Khnum at his work of
creation. He is seated before a potter's wheel which he works with
his foot,[1] and on the revolving table he is fashioning two
children with his hands, the baby princess and her "double". It was
always Hatshepsut's desire to be represented as a man, and so both
the children are boys.[2] As yet they are lifeless, but the symbol
of Life will be held to their nostrils by Heqet, the divine
Potter's wife, whose frog-head typifies birth and fertility. When
Amenophis III copied Hatshepsut's sculptures for his own series at
Luxor, he assigned this duty to the greater goddess Hathor, perhaps
the most powerful of the cosmic goddesses and the mother of the
world. The subsequent scenes at Deir el-Bahari include the leading
of queen Aahmes by Khnum and Heqet to the birth-chamber; the great
birth scene where the queen is attended by the goddesses Nephthys
and Isis, a number of divine nurses and midwives holding several of
the "doubles" of the baby, and favourable genii, in human form or
with the heads of crocodiles, jackals, and hawks, representing the
four cardinal points and all bearing the gift of life; the
presentation of the young child by the goddess Hathor to Amen, who
is well pleased at the sight of his daughter; and the divine
suckling of Hatshepsut and her "doubles". But these episodes do not
concern us, as of course they merely reflect the procedure
following a royal birth. But Khnum's part in the princess's origin
stands on a different plane, for it illustrates the Egyptian myth
of Creation by the divine Potter, who may take the form of either
Khnum or Ptah. Monsieur Naville points out the extraordinary
resemblance in detail which Hatshepsut's myth of divine paternity
bears to the Greek legend of Zeus and Alkmene, where the god takes
the form of Amphitryon, Alkmene's husband, exactly as Amen appears
to the queen;[3] and it may be added that the Egyptian origin of
the Greek story was traditionally recognized in the ancestry
ascribed to the human couple.[4]

[1] This detail is not clearly preserved at Deir el-Bahari; but it
is quite clear in the scene on the west wall of the "Birth-room" in
the Temple at Luxor, which Amenophis III evidently copied from that
of Hatshepsut.

[2] In the similar scene at Luxor, where the future Amenophis III
is represented on the Creator's wheel, the sculptor has
distinguished the human child from its spiritual "double" by the
quaint device of putting its finger in its mouth.

[3] See Naville, op. cit., p. 12.

[4] Cf., e.g., Herodotus, II, 43.

The only complete Egyptian Creation myth yet recovered is preserved
in a late papyrus in the British Museum, which was published some
years ago by Dr. Budge.[1] It occurs under two separate versions
embedded in "The Book of the Overthrowing of Apep, the Enemy of
Ra". Here Ra, who utters the myth under his late title of
Neb-er-tcher, "Lord to the utmost limit", is self-created as
Khepera from Nu, the primaeval water; and then follow successive
generations of divine pairs, male and female, such as we find at
the beginning of the Semitic-Babylonian Creation Series.[2] Though
the papyrus was written as late as the year 311 B.C., the myth is
undoubtedly early. For the first two divine pairs Shu and Tefnut,
Keb and Nut, and four of the latter pairs' five children, Osiris
and Isis, Set and Nephthys, form with the Sun-god himself the
Greater Ennead of Heliopolis, which exerted so wide an influence on
Egyptian religious speculation. The Ennead combined the older solar
elements with the cult of Osiris, and this is indicated in the myth
by a break in the successive generations, Nut bringing forth at a
single birth the five chief gods of the Osiris cycle, Osiris
himself and his son Horus, with Set, Isis, and Nephthys. Thus we
may see in the myth an early example of that religious syncretism
which is so characteristic of later Egyptian belief.

[1] See /Archaeologia/, Vol. LII (1891). Dr. Budge published a new
edition of the whole papyrus in /Egyptian Hieratic Papyri in the
British Museum/ (1910), and the two versions of the Creation myth
are given together in his /Gods of the Egyptians/, Vol. I (1904),
Chap. VIII, pp. 308 ff., and more recently in his /Egyptian
Literature/, Vol. I, "Legends of the Gods" (1912), pp. 2 ff. An
account of the papyrus is included in the Introduction to "Legends
of the Gods", pp. xiii ff.

[2] In /Gods of the Egyptians/, Vol. I, Chap. VII, pp. 288 ff., Dr.
Budge gives a detailed comparison of the Egyptian pairs of
primaeval deities with the very similar couples of the Babylonian
myth.

The only parallel this Egyptian myth of Creation presents to the
Hebrew cosmogony is in its picture of the primaeval water,
corresponding to the watery chaos of Genesis i. But the resemblance
is of a very general character, and includes no etymological
equivalence such as we find when we compare the Hebrew account with
the principal Semitic-Babylonian Creation narrative.[1] The
application of the Ankh, the Egyptian sign for Life, to the
nostrils of a newly-created being is no true parallel to the
breathing into man's nostrils of the breath of life in the earlier
Hebrew Version,[2] except in the sense that each process was
suggested by our common human anatomy. We should naturally expect
to find some Hebrew parallel to the Egyptian idea of Creation as
the work of a potter with his clay, for that figure appears in most
ancient mythologies. The Hebrews indeed used the conception as a
metaphor or parable,[3] and it also underlies their earlier picture
of man's creation. I have not touched on the grosser Egyptian
conceptions concerning the origin of the universe, which we may
probably connect with African ideas; but those I have referred to
will serve to demonstrate the complete absence of any feature that
presents a detailed resemblance of the Hebrew tradition.

[1] For the wide diffusion, in the myths of remote peoples, of a
vague theory that would trace all created things to a watery
origin, see Farnell, /Greece and Babylon/, p. 180.

[2] Gen. ii. 7 (J).

[3] Cf., e.g., Isaiah xxix. 16, xlv. 9; and Jeremiah xviii. 2f.

When we turn to Babylonia, we find there also evidence of
conflicting ideas, the product of different and to some extent
competing religious centres. But in contrast to the rather confused
condition of Egyptian mythology, the Semitic Creation myth of the
city of Babylon, thanks to the latter's continued political
ascendancy, succeeded in winning a dominant place in the national
literature. This is the version in which so many points of
resemblance to the first chapter of Genesis have long been
recognized, especially in the succession of creative acts and their
relative order. In the Semitic-Babylonian Version the creation of
the world is represented as the result of conflict, the emergence
of order out of chaos, a result that is only attained by the
personal triumph of the Creator. But this underlying dualism does
not appear in the more primitive Sumerian Version we have now
recovered. It will be remembered that in the second lecture I gave
some account of the myth, which occurs in an epitomized form as an
introduction to the Sumerian Version of the Deluge, the two
narratives being recorded in the same document and connected with
one another by a description of the Antediluvian cities. We there
saw that Creation is ascribed to the three greatest gods of the
Sumerian pantheon, Anu, Enlil, and Enki, assisted by the goddess
Ninkharsagga.

It is significant that in the Sumerian version no less than four
deities are represented as taking part in the Creation. For in this
we may see some indication of the period to which its composition
must be assigned. Their association in the text suggests that the
claims of local gods had already begun to compete with one another
as a result of political combination between the cities of their
cults. To the same general period we must also assign the
compilation of the Sumerian Dynastic record, for that presupposes
the existence of a supreme ruler among the Sumerian city-states.
This form of political constitution must undoubtedly have been the
result of a long process of development, and the fact that its
existence should be regarded as dating from the Creation of the
world indicates a comparatively developed stage of the tradition.
But behind the combination of cities and their gods we may
conjecturally trace anterior stages of development, when each local
deity and his human representative seemed to their own adherents
the sole objects for worship and allegiance. And even after the
demands of other centres had been conceded, no deity ever quite
gave up his local claims.

Enlil, the second of the four Sumerian creating deities, eventually
ousted his rivals. It has indeed long been recognized that the
/rôle/ played by Marduk in the Babylonian Version of Creation had
been borrowed from Enlil of Nippur; and in the Atrakhasis legend
Enlil himself appears as the ultimate ruler of the world and the
other gods figure as "his sons". Anu, who heads the list and plays
with Enlil the leading part in the Sumerian narrative, was clearly
his chief rival. And though we possess no detailed account of Anu's
creative work, the persistent ascription to him of the creation of
heaven, and his familiar title, "the Father of the Gods", suggest
that he once possessed a corresponding body of myth in Eanna, his
temple at Erech. Enki, the third of the creating gods, was
naturally credited, as God of Wisdom, with special creative
activities, and fortunately in his case we have some independent
evidence of the varied forms these could assume.

According to one tradition that has come down to us,[1] after Anu
had made the heavens, Enki created Apsû or the Deep, his own
dwelling-place. Then taking from it a piece of clay[2] he proceeded
to create the Brick-god, and reeds and forests for the supply of
building material. From the same clay he continued to form other
deities and materials, including the Carpenter-god; the Smith-god;
Arazu, a patron deity of building; and mountains and seas for all
that they produced; the Goldsmith-god, the Stone-cutter-god, and
kindred deities, together with their rich products for offerings;
the Grain-deities, Ashnan and Lakhar; Siris, a Wine-god;
Ningishzida and Ninsar, a Garden-god, for the sake of the rich
offerings they could make; and a deity described as "the High
priest of the great gods," to lay down necessary ordinances and
commands. Then he created "the King", for the equipment probably of
a particular temple, and finally men, that they might practise the
cult in the temple so elaborately prepared.

[1] See Weissbach, /Babylonische Miscellen/, pp. 32 ff.

[2] One of the titles of Enki was "the Potter"; cf. /Cun. Texts in
the Brit. Mus., Pt. XXIV, pl. 14 f., ll. 41, 43.

It will be seen from this summary of Enki's creative activities,
that the text from which it is taken is not a general Creation
myth, but in all probability the introductory paragraph of a
composition which celebrated the building or restoration of a
particular temple; and the latter's foundation is represented, on
henotheistic lines, as the main object of creation. Composed with
that special purpose, its narrative is not to be regarded as an
exhaustive account of the creation of the world. The incidents are
eclective, and only such gods and materials are mentioned as would
have been required for the building and adornment of the temple and
for the provision of its offerings and cult. But even so its
mythological background is instructive. For while Anu's creation of
heaven is postulated as the necessary precedent of Enki's
activities, the latter creates the Deep, vegetation, mountains,
seas, and mankind. Moreover, in his character as God of Wisdom, he
is not only the teacher but the creator of those deities who were
patrons of man's own constructive work. From such evidence we may
infer that in his temple at Eridu, now covered by the mounds of Abu
Shahrain in the extreme south of Babylonia, and regarded in early
Sumerian tradition as the first city in the world, Enki himself was
once celebrated as the sole creator of the universe.

The combination of the three gods Anu, Enlil, and Enki, is
persistent in the tradition; for not only were they the great gods
of the universe, representing respectively heaven, earth, and the
watery abyss, but they later shared the heavenly sphere between
them. It is in their astrological character that we find them again
in creative activity, though without the co-operation of any
goddess, when they appear as creators of the great light-gods and
as founders of time divisions, the day and the month. This Sumerian
myth, though it reaches us only in an extract or summary in a
Neo-Babylonian schoolboy's exercise,[1] may well date from a
comparatively early period, but probably from a time when the
"Ways" of Anu, Enlil, and Enki had already been fixed in heaven and
their later astrological characters had crystallized.

[1] See /The Seven Tablets of Creation/, Vol. I, pp. 124 ff. The
tablet gives extracts from two very similar Sumerian and Semitic
texts. In both of them Anu, Enlil, and Enki appear as creators
"through their sure counsel". In the Sumerian extract they create
the Moon and ordain its monthly course, while in the Semitic text,
after establishing heaven and earth, they create in addition to the
New Moon the bright Day, so that "men beheld the Sun-god in the
Gate of his going forth".

The idea that a goddess should take part with a god in man's
creation is already a familiar feature of Babylonian mythology.
Thus the goddess Aruru, in co-operation with Marduk, might be
credited with the creation of the human race,[1] as she might also
be pictured creating on her own initiative an individual hero such
as Enkidu of the Gilgamesh Epic. The /rôle/ of mother of mankind
was also shared, as we have seen, by the Semitic Ishtar. And though
the old Sumerian goddess, Ninkharsagga, the "Lady of the
Mountains", appears in our Sumerian text for the first time in the
character of creatress, some of the titles we know she enjoyed,
under her synonyms in the great God List of Babylonia, already
reflected her cosmic activities.[2] For she was known as

"The Builder of that which has Breath",
"The Carpenter of Mankind",
"The Carpenter of the Heart",
"The Coppersmith of the Gods",
"The Coppersmith of the Land", and
"The Lady Potter".

[1] Op. cit., p. 134 f.

[2] Cf. /Cun. Texts in the Brit. Mus./, Pt. XXIV, pl. 12, ll. 32,
26, 27, 25, 24, 23, and Poebel, /Hist. Texts/, p. 34.

In the myth we are not told her method of creation, but from the
above titles it is clear that in her own cycle of tradition
Ninkhasagga was conceived as fashioning men not only from clay but
also from wood, and perhaps as employing metal for the manufacture
of her other works of creation. Moreover, in the great God List,
where she is referred to under her title Makh, Ninkhasagga is
associated with Anu, Enlil, and Enki; she there appears, with her
dependent deities, after Enlil and before Enki. We thus have
definite proof that her association with the three chief Sumerian
gods was widely recognized in the early Sumerian period and
dictated her position in the classified pantheon of Babylonia.
Apart from this evidence, the important rank assigned her in the
historical and legal records and in votive inscriptions,[1]
especially in the early period and in Southern Babylonia, accords
fully with the part she here plays in the Sumerian Creation myth.
Eannatum and Gudea of Lagash both place her immediately after Anu
and Enlil, giving her precedence over Enki; and even in the Kassite
Kudurru inscriptions of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries, where
she is referred to, she takes rank after Enki and before the other
gods. In Sumer she was known as "the Mother of the Gods", and she
was credited with the power of transferring the kingdom and royal
insignia from one king to his successor.

[1] See especially, Poebel, op. cit., pp. 24 ff.

Her supreme position as a goddess is attested by the relative
insignificance of her husband Dunpae, whom she completely
overshadows, in which respect she presents a contrast to the
goddess Ninlil, Enlil's female counterpart. The early clay
figurines found at Nippur and on other sites, representing a
goddess suckling a child and clasping one of her breasts, may well
be regarded as representing Ninkharsagga and not Ninlil. Her
sanctuaries were at Kesh and Adab, both in the south, and this fact
sufficiently explains her comparative want of influence in Akkad,
where the Semitic Ishtar took her place. She does indeed appear in
the north during the Sargonic period under her own name, though
later she survives in her synonyms of Ninmakh, "the Sublime Lady",
and Nintu, "the Lady of Child-bearing". It is under the latter
title that Hammurabi refers to her in his Code of Laws, where she
is tenth in a series of eleven deities. But as Goddess of Birth she
retained only a pale reflection of her original cosmic character,
and her functions were gradually specialized.[1]

[1] Cf. Poebel, op. cit., p. 33. It is possible that, under one of
her later synonyms, we should identify her, as Dr. Poebel suggests,
with the Mylitta of Herodotus.

From a consideration of their characters, as revealed by
independent sources of evidence, we thus obtain the reason for the
co-operation of four deities in the Sumerian Creation. In fact the
new text illustrates a well-known principle in the development of
myth, the reconciliation of the rival claims of deities, whose
cults, once isolated, had been brought from political causes into
contact with each other. In this aspect myth is the medium through
which a working pantheon is evolved. Naturally all the deities
concerned cannot continue to play their original parts in detail.
In the Babylonian Epic of Creation, where a single deity, and not a
very prominent one, was to be raised to pre-eminent rank, the
problem was simple enough. He could retain his own qualities and
achievements while borrowing those of any former rival. In the
Sumerian text we have the result of a far more delicate process of
adjustment, and it is possible that the brevity of the text is here
not entirely due to compression of a longer narrative, but may in
part be regarded as evidence of early combination. As a result of
the association of several competing deities in the work of
creation, a tendency may be traced to avoid discrimination between
rival claims. Thus it is that the assembled gods, the pantheon as a
whole, are regarded as collectively responsible for the creation of
the universe. It may be added that this use of /ilâni/, "the gods",
forms an interesting linguistic parallel to the plural of the
Hebrew divine title Elohim.

It will be remembered that in the Sumerian Version the account of
Creation is not given in full, only such episodes being included as
were directly related to the Deluge story. No doubt the selection
of men and animals was suggested by their subsequent rescue from
the Flood; and emphasis was purposely laid on the creation of the
/niggilma/ because of the part it played in securing mankind's
survival. Even so, we noted one striking parallel between the
Sumerian Version and that of the Semitic Babylonians, in the reason
both give for man's creation. But in the former there is no attempt
to explain how the universe itself had come into being, and the
existence of the earth is presupposed at the moment when Anu,
Enlil, Enki, and Ninkharsagga undertake the creation of man. The
Semitic-Babylonian Version, on the other hand, is mainly occupied
with events that led up to the acts of creation, and it concerns
our problem to inquire how far those episodes were of Semitic and
how far of Sumerian origin. A further question arises as to whether
some strands of the narrative may not at one time have existed in
Sumerian form independently of the Creation myth.

The statement is sometimes made that there is no reason to assume a
Sumerian original for the Semitic-Babylonian Version, as recorded
on "the Seven Tablets of Creation";[1] and this remark, though true
of that version as a whole, needs some qualification. The composite
nature of the poem has long been recognized, and an analysis of the
text has shown that no less than five principal strands have been
combined for its formation. These consist of (i) The Birth of the
Gods; (ii) The Legend of Ea and Apsû; (iii) The principal Dragon
Myth; (iv) The actual account of Creation; and (v) the Hymn to
Marduk under his fifty titles.[2] The Assyrian commentaries to the
Hymn, from which considerable portions of its text are restored,
quote throughout a Sumerian original, and explain it word for word
by the phrases of the Semitic Version;[3] so that for one out of
the Seven Tablets a Semitic origin is at once disproved. Moreover,
the majority of the fifty titles, even in the forms in which they
have reached us in the Semitic text, are demonstrably Sumerian, and
since many of them celebrate details of their owner's creative
work, a Sumerian original for other parts of the version is
implied. Enlil and Ea are both represented as bestowing their own
names upon Marduk,[4] and we may assume that many of the fifty
titles were originally borne by Enlil as a Sumerian Creator.[5]
Thus some portions of the actual account of Creation were probably
derived from a Sumerian original in which "Father Enlil" figured as
the hero.

[1] Cf., e.g., Jastrow, /Journ. of the Amer. Or. Soc./, Vol. XXXVI
(1916), p. 279.

[2] See /The Seven Tablets of Creation/, Vol. I, pp. lxvi ff.; and
cf. Skinner, /Genesis/, pp. 43 ff.

[3] Cf. /Sev. Tabl./, Vol. I, pp. 157 ff.

[4] Cf. Tabl. VII, ll. 116 ff.

[5] The number fifty was suggested by an ideogram employed for
Enlil's name.

For what then were the Semitic Babylonians themselves responsible?
It seems to me that, in the "Seven Tablets", we may credit them
with considerable ingenuity in the combination of existing myths,
but not with their invention. The whole poem in its present form is
a glorification of Marduk, the god of Babylon, who is to be given
pre-eminent rank among the gods to correspond with the political
position recently attained by his city. It would have been quite
out of keeping with the national thought to make a break in the
tradition, and such a course would not have served the purpose of
the Babylonian priesthood, which was to obtain recognition of their
claims by the older cult-centres in the country. Hence they chose
and combined the more important existing myths, only making such
alterations as would fit them to their new hero. Babylon herself
had won her position by her own exertions; and it would be a
natural idea to give Marduk his opportunity of becoming Creator of
the world as the result of successful conflict. A combination of
the Dragon myth with the myth of Creation would have admirably
served their purpose; and this is what we find in the Semitic poem.
But even that combination may not have been their own invention;
for, though, as we shall see, the idea of conflict had no part in
the earlier forms of the Sumerian Creation myth, its combination
with the Dragon /motif/ may have characterized the local Sumerian
Version of Nippur. How mechanical was the Babylonian redactors'
method of glorifying Marduk is seen in their use of the description
of Tiamat and her monster brood, whom Marduk is made to conquer. To
impress the hearers of the poem with his prowess, this is repeated
at length no less than four times, one god carrying the news of her
revolt to another.

Direct proof of the manner in which the later redactors have been
obliged to modify the original Sumerian Creation myth, in
consequence of their incorporation of other elements, may be seen
in the Sixth Tablet of the poem, where Marduk states the reason for
man's creation. In the second lecture we noted how the very words
of the principal Sumerian Creator were put into Marduk's mouth; but
the rest of the Semitic god's speech finds no equivalent in the
Sumerian Version and was evidently inserted in order to reconcile
the narrative with its later ingredients. This will best be seen by
printing the two passages in parallel columns:[1]

[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

"The people will I cause to . . . in their settlements,

Cities . . . shall (man) build, in their protection will I cause him
to rest,

That he may lay the brick of our house in a clean spot,
That in a clean spot he may establish our . . . !"

SEMITIC VERSION

"I will make man, that man may [. . .].

I will create man who shall inhabit [. . .],

That the service of the gods may be established, and that [their]
shrines [may be built].

But I will alter the ways of the 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 Apsû, 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 Apsû, 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 /bêru/[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 /bêru/ 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 /bêru/ is his length;
Thirty /bêru/ high is his he[ad].[2]
For half (a /bêru/) each stretches the surface of his ey[es];[3]
For twenty /bêru/ 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 bêru sa-ka-a ri-[sa-a-su]/. Dr. Ebeling
renders /ri-sa-a/ as "heads" (Köpfe), 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 /rîsâ/ 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 ên[a-su]/. Dr.
Ebeling translates, "auf je eine Hälfte 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
/ênâ-su/ at the end of the line, but the sign is broken; perhaps
the traces may prove to be those of /uznâ su/, "his ears", in which
case /li-bit uz[nâ-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 /bêru/.

[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 Apsû, 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, /Découvertes en Chaldée/, pl. xliv, Fig. 2,
and Heuzey, /Catalogue des antiquités chaldéennes/, 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, Apsû, 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

{'Apason---Tauthe}
{Moumis}
{Lakhos---Lakhe}[2]
{'Assoros---Kissare}
{'Anos, 'Illinos, 'Aos}
{'Aos---Dauke}
{Belos}

"SEVEN TABLETS" I

Apsû---Tiamat
Mummu
Lakhmu---Lakhamu
Anshar---Kishar
Anu, [ ], Nudimmud (= Ea)

[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 Apsû 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 Apsû 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 /samâmu/, 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 /mé(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,
Apsû 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.

[2] Obv., ll. 5-12.

[3] Sum. /nigin-kur-kur-ra-ge/, Sem. /nap-har ma-ta-a-tu/, lit.
"all lands", i.e. Sumerian and Babylonian expressions for "the
world".

[4] Sum. /a-ab-ba/, "sea", is here rendered by /tâmtum/, not by its
personified equivalent Tiamat.

[5] The suggestion has been made that /amu/, the word in the
Semitic version here translated "reeds", should be connected with
/ammatu/, the word used for "earth" or "dry land" in the Babylonian
Creation Series, Tabl. I, l. 2, and given some such meaning as
"expanse". The couplet is thus explained to mean that the god made
an expanse on the face of the waters, and then poured out dust "on
the expanse". But the Semitic version in l. 18 reads /itti ami/,
"beside the /a./", not /ina ami/, "on the /a./"; and in any case
there does not seem much significance in the act of pouring out
specially created dust on or beside land already formed. The
Sumerian word translated by /amu/ is written /gi-dir/, with the
element /gi/, "reed", in l. 17, and though in the following line it
is written under its variant form /a-dir/ without /gi/, the
equation /gi-a-dir/ = /amu/ is elsewhere attested (cf. Delitzsch,
/Handwörterbuch/, p. 77). In favour of regarding /amu/ as some sort
of reed, here used collectively, it may be pointed out that the
Sumerian verb in l. 17 is /kesda/, "to bind", accurately rendered
by /rakasu/ in the Semitic version. Assuming that l. 34 belongs to
the same account, the creation of reeds in general beside trees,
after dry land is formed, would not of course be at variance with
the god's use of some sort of reed in his first act of creation. He
creates the reed-bundles, as he creates the soil, both of which go
to form the first dike; the reed-beds, like the other vegetation,
spring up from the ground when it appears.

[6] The Semitic version here reads "the lord Marduk"; the
corresponding name in the Sumerian text is not preserved.

[7] The line is restored from l. 2 o the obverse of the text.

Here the Sumerian Creator is pictured as forming dry land from the
primaeval water in much the same way as the early cultivator in the
Euphrates Valley procured the rich fields for his crops. The
existence of the earth is here not really presupposed. All the
world was sea until the god created land out of the waters by the
only practical method that was possible in Mesopotamia.

In another Sumerian myth, which has been recovered on one of the
early tablets from Nippur, we have a rather different picture of
beginnings. For there, though water is the source of life, the
existence of the land is presupposed. But it is bare and desolate,
as in the Mesopotamian season of "low water". The underlying idea
is suggestive of a period when some progress in systematic
irrigation had already been made, and the filling of the dry canals
and subsequent irrigation of the parched ground by the rising flood
of Enki was not dreaded but eagerly desired. The myth is only one
of several that have been combined to form the introductory
sections of an incantation; but in all of them Enki, the god of the
deep water, plays the leading part, though associated with
different consorts.[1] The incantation is directed against various
diseases, and the recitation of the closing mythical section was
evidently intended to enlist the aid of special gods in combating
them. The creation of these deities is recited under set formulae
in a sort of refrain, and the divine name assigned to each bears a
magical connexion with the sickness he or she is intended to
dispel.[2]

[1] See Langdon, Univ. of Penns. Mus. Publ., Bab. Sect., Vol. X,
No. 1 (1915), pl. i f., pp. 69 ff.; /Journ. Amer. Or. Soc./, Vol.
XXXVI (1916), pp. 140 ff.; cf. Prince, /Journ. Amer. Or. Soc./,
Vol. XXXVI, pp. 90 ff.; Jastrow, /Journ. Amer. Or. Soc./, Vol.
XXXVI, pp. 122 ff., and in particular his detailed study of the
text in /Amer. Journ. Semit. Lang./, Vol. XXXIII, pp. 91 ff. Dr.
Langdon's first description of the text, in /Proc. Soc. Bibl.
Arch./, Vol. XXXVI (1914), pp. 188 ff., was based on a
comparatively small fragment only; and on his completion of the
text from other fragments in Pennsylvania. Professor Sayce at once
realized that the preliminary diagnosis of a Deluge myth could not
be sustained (cf. /Expos. Times/, Nov., 1915, pp. 88 ff.). He,
Professor Prince, and Professor Jastrow independently showed that
the action of Enki in the myth in sending water on the land was not
punitive but beneficent; and the preceding section, in which
animals are described as not performing their usual activities, was
shown independently by Professor Prince and Professor Jastrow to
have reference, not to their different nature in an ideal existence
in Paradise, but, on familiar lines, to their non-existence in a
desolate land. It may be added that Professor Barton and Dr. Peters
agree generally with Professor Prince and Professor Jastrow in
their interpretation of the text, which excludes the suggested
biblical parallels; and I understand from Dr. Langdon that he very
rightly recognizes that the text is not a Deluge myth. It is a
subject for congratulation that the discussion has materially
increased our knowledge of this difficult composition.

[2] Cf. Col. VI, ll. 24 ff.; thus /Ab/-u was created for the
sickness of the cow (/ab/); Nin-/tul/ for that of the flock
(u-/tul/); Nin-/ka/-u-tu and Nin-/ka/-si for that of the mouth
(/ka/); Na-zi for that of the /na-zi/ (meaning uncertain); /Da
zi/-ma for that of the /da-zi/ (meaning uncertain); Nin-/til/ for
that of /til/ (life); the name of the eighth and last deity is
imperfectly preserved.

We have already noted examples of a similar use of myth in magic,
which was common to both Egypt and Babylonia; and to illustrate its
employment against disease, as in the Nippur document, it will
suffice to cite a well-known magical cure for the toothache which
was adopted in Babylon.[1] There toothache was believed to be
caused by the gnawing of a worm in the gum, and a myth was used in
the incantation to relieve it. The worm's origin is traced from
Anu, the god of heaven, through a descending scale of creation;
Anu, the heavens, the earth, rivers, canals and marshes are
represented as each giving rise to the next in order, until finally
the marshes produce the worm. The myth then relates how the worm,
on being offered tempting food by Ea in answer to her prayer, asked
to be allowed to drink the blood of the teeth, and the incantation
closes by invoking the curse of Ea because of the worm's misguided
choice. It is clear that power over the worm was obtained by a
recital of her creation and of her subsequent ingratitude, which
led to her present occupation and the curse under which she
laboured. When the myth and invocation had been recited three times
over the proper mixture of beer, a plant, and oil, and the mixture
had been applied to the offending tooth, the worm would fall under
the spell of the curse and the patient would at once gain relief.
The example is instructive, as the connexion of ideas is quite
clear. In the Nippur document the recital of the creation of the
eight deities evidently ensured their presence, and a demonstration
of the mystic bond between their names and the corresponding
diseases rendered the working of their powers effective. Our
knowledge of a good many other myths is due solely to their magical
employment.

[1] See Thompson, /Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia/, Vol. II,
pp. 160 ff.; for a number of other examples, see Jastrow,
/J.A.O.S./, Vol. XXXVI, p. 279, n. 7.

Perhaps the most interesting section of the new text is one in
which divine instructions are given in the use of plants, the fruit
or roots of which may be eaten. Here Usmû, a messenger from Enki,
God of the Deep, names eight such plants by Enki's orders, thereby
determining the character of each. As Professor Jastrow has pointed
out, the passage forcibly recalls the story from Berossus,
concerning the mythical creature Oannes, who came up from the
Erythraean Sea, where it borders upon Babylonia, to instruct
mankind in all things, including "seeds and the gathering of
fruits".[1] But the only part of the text that concerns us here is
the introductory section, where the life-giving flood, by which the
dry fields are irrigated, is pictured as following the union of the
water-deities, Enki and Ninella.[2] Professor Jastrow is right in
emphasizing the complete absence of any conflict in this Sumerian
myth of beginnings; but, as with the other Sumerian Versions we
have examined, it seems to me there is no need to seek its origin
elsewhere than in the Euphrates Valley.

[1] Cf. Jastrow, /J.A.O.S./, Vol. XXXVI, p. 127, and /A.J.S.L./,
Vol. XXXIII, p. 134 f. It may be added that the divine naming of
the plants also presents a faint parallel to the naming of the
beasts and birds by man himself in Gen. ii. 19 f.

[2] Professor Jastrow (/A.J.S.L./, Vol. XXXIII, p. 115) compares
similar myths collected by Sir James Frazer (/Magic Art/, Vol. II,
chap. xi and chap. xii, § 2). He also notes the parallel the
irrigation myth presents to the mist (or flood) of the earlier
Hebrew Version (Gen. ii. 5 f). But Enki, like Ea, was no rain-god;
he had his dwellings in the Euphrates and the Deep.

Even in later periods, when the Sumerian myths of Creation had been
superseded by that of Babylon, the Euphrates never ceased to be
regarded as the source of life and the creator of all things. And
this is well brought out in the following introductory lines of a
Semitic incantation, of which we possess two Neo-Babylonian
copies:[1]

O thou River, who didst create all things,
When the great gods dug thee out,
They set prosperity upon thy banks,
Within thee Ea, King of the Deep, created his dwelling.
The Flood they sent not before thou wert!

Here the river as creator is sharply distinguished from the Flood;
and we may conclude that the water of the Euphrates Valley
impressed the early Sumerians, as later the Semites, with its
creative as well as with its destructive power. The reappearance of
the fertile soil, after the receding inundation, doubtless
suggested the idea of creation out of water, and the stream's slow
but automatic fall would furnish a model for the age-long evolution
of primaeval deities. When a god's active and artificial creation
of the earth must be portrayed, it would have been natural for the
primitive Sumerian to picture the Creator working as he himself
would work when he reclaimed a field from flood. We are thus shown
the old Sumerian god Gilimma piling reed-bundles in the water and
heaping up soil beside them, till the ground within his dikes dries
off and produces luxuriant vegetation. But here there is a hint of
struggle in the process, and we perceive in it the myth-redactor's
opportunity to weave in the Dragon /motif/. No such excuse is
afforded by the other Sumerian myth, which pictures the
life-producing inundation as the gift of the two deities of the
Deep and the product of their union.

But in their other aspect the rivers of Mesopotamia could be
terrible; and the Dragon /motif/ itself, on the Tigris and
Euphrates, drew its imagery as much from flood as from storm. When
therefore a single deity must be made to appear, not only as
Creator, but also as the champion of his divine allies and the
conqueror of other gods, it was inevitable that the myths attaching
to the waters under their two aspects should be combined. This may
already have taken place at Nippur, when Enlil became the head of
the pantheon; but the existence of his myth is conjectural.[1] In a
later age we can trace the process in the light of history and of
existing texts. There Marduk, identified wholly as the Sun-god,
conquers the once featureless primaeval water, which in the process
of redaction has now become the Dragon of flood and storm.

[1] The aspect of Enlil as the Creator of Vegetation is emphasized
in Tablet VII of the Babylonian poem of Creation. It is significant
that his first title, Asara, should be interpreted as "Bestower of
planting", "Founder of sowing", "Creator of grain and plants", "He
who caused the green herb to spring up" (cf. /Seven Tablets/, Vol.
I, p. 92 f.). These opening phrases, by which the god is hailed,
strike the key-note of the whole composition. It is true that, as
Sukh-kur, he is "Destroyer of the foe"; but the great majority of
the titles and their Semitic glosses refer to creative activities,
not to the Dragon myth.

Thus the dualism which is so characteristic a feature of the
Semitic-Babylonian system, though absent from the earliest Sumerian
ideas of Creation, was inherent in the nature of the local rivers,
whose varied aspects gave rise to or coloured separate myths. Its
presence in the later mythology may be traced as a reflection of
political development, at first probably among the warring cities
of Sumer, but certainly later in the Semitic triumph at Babylon. It
was but to be expected that the conqueror, whether Sumerian or
Semite, should represent his own god's victory as the establishment
of order out of chaos. But this would be particularly in harmony
with the character of the Semitic Babylonians of the First Dynasty,
whose genius for method and organization produced alike Hammurabi's
Code of Laws and the straight streets of the capital.

We have thus been able to trace the various strands of the
Semitic-Babylonian poem of Creation to Sumerian origins; and in the
second lecture we arrived at a very similar conclusion with regard
to the Semitic-Babylonian Version of the Deluge preserved in the
Epic of Gilgamesh. We there saw that the literary structure of the
Sumerian Version, in which Creation and Deluge are combined, must
have survived under some form into the Neo-Babylonian period, since
it was reproduced by Berossus. And we noted the fact that the same
arrangement in Genesis did not therefore prove that the Hebrew
accounts go back directly to early Sumerian originals. In fact, the
structural resemblance presented by Genesis can only be regarded as
an additional proof that the Sumerian originals continued to be
studied and translated by the Semitic priesthood, although they had
long been superseded officially by their later descendants, the
Semitic epics. A detailed comparison of the Creation and Deluge
narratives in the various versions at once discloses the fact that
the connexion between those of the Semitic Babylonians and the
Hebrews is far closer and more striking than that which can be
traced when the latter are placed beside the Sumerian originals. We
may therefore regard it as certain that the Hebrews derived their
knowledge of Sumerian tradition, not directly from the Sumerians
themselves, but through Semitic channels from Babylon.

It will be unnecessary here to go in detail through the points of
resemblance that are admitted to exist between the Hebrew account
of Creation in the first chapter of Genesis and that preserved in
the "Seven Tablets".[1]It will suffice to emphasize two of them,
which gain in significance through our newly acquired knowledge of
early Sumerian beliefs. It must be admitted that, on first reading
the poem, one is struck more by the differences than by the
parallels; but that is due to the polytheistic basis of the poem,
which attracts attention when compared with the severe and
dignified monotheism of the Hebrew writer. And if allowance be made
for the change in theological standpoint, the material points of
resemblance are seen to be very marked. The outline or general
course of events is the same. In both we have an abyss of waters at
the beginning denoted by almost the same Semitic word, the Hebrew
/tehôm/, translated "the deep" in Gen. i. 2, being the equivalent
of the Semitic-Babylonian /Tiamat/, the monster of storm and flood
who presents so striking a contrast to the Sumerian primaeval
water.[2] The second act of Creation in the Hebrew narrative is
that of a "firmament", which divided the waters under it from those
above.[3] But this, as we have seen, has no parallel in the early
Sumerian conception until it was combined with the Dragon combat in
the form in which we find it in the Babylonian poem. There the body
of Tiamat is divided by Marduk, and from one half of her he
constructs a covering or dome for heaven, that is to say a
"firmament", to keep her upper waters in place. These will suffice
as text passages, since they serve to point out quite clearly the
Semitic source to which all the other detailed points of Hebrew
resemblance may be traced.

[1] See /Seven Tablets/, Vol. I, pp. lxxxi ff., and Skinner,
/Genesis/, pp. 45 ff.

[2] The invariable use of the Hebrew word /tehôm/ without the
article, except in two passages in the plural, proves that it is a
proper name (cf. Skinner, op. cit., p. 17); and its correspondence
with /Tiamat/ makes the resemblance of the versions far more
significant than if their parallelism were confined solely to
ideas.

[3] Gen. i. 6-8.

In the case of the Deluge traditions, so conclusive a demonstration
is not possible, since we have no similar criterion to apply. And
on one point, as we saw, the Hebrew Versions preserve an original
Sumerian strand of the narrative that was not woven into the
Gilgamesh Epic, where there is no parallel to the piety of Noah.
But from the detailed description that was given in the second
lecture, it will have been noted that the Sumerian account is on
the whole far simpler and more primitive than the other versions.
It is only in the Babylonian Epic, for example, that the later
Hebrew writer finds material from which to construct the ark, while
the sweet savour of Ut-napishtim's sacrifice, and possibly his
sending forth of the birds, though reproduced in the earlier Hebrew
Version, find no parallels in the Sumerian account.[1] As to the
general character of the Flood, there is no direct reference to
rain in the Sumerian Version, though its presence is probably
implied in the storm. The heavy rain of the Babylonian Epic has
been increased to forty days of rain in the earlier Hebrew Version,
which would be suitable to a country where local rain was the sole
cause of flood. But the later Hebrew writer's addition of "the
fountains of the deep" to "the windows of heaven" certainly
suggests a more intimate knowledge of Mesopotamia, where some
contributary cause other than local rain must be sought for the
sudden and overwhelming catastrophes of which the rivers are
capable.

[1]For detailed lists of the points of agreement presented by the
Hebrew Versions J and P to the account in the Gilgamesh Epic, see
Skinner, op. cit., p. 177 f.; Driver, /Genesis/, p. 106 f.; and
Gordon, /Early Traditions of Genesis/ (1907), pp. 38 ff.

Thus, viewed from a purely literary standpoint, we are now enabled
to trace back to a primitive age the ancestry of the traditions,
which, under a very different aspect, eventually found their way
into Hebrew literature. And in the process we may note the changes
they underwent as they passed from one race to another. The result
of such literary analysis and comparison, so far from discrediting
the narratives in Genesis, throws into still stronger relief the
moral grandeur of the Hebrew text.

We come then to the question, at what periods and by what process
did the Hebrews become acquainted with Babylonian ideas? The
tendency of the purely literary school of critics has been to
explain the process by the direct use of Babylonian documents
wholly within exilic times. If the Creation and Deluge narratives
stood alone, a case might perhaps be made out for confining
Babylonian influence to this late period. It is true that during
the Captivity the Jews were directly exposed to such influence.
They had the life and civilization of their captors immediately
before their eyes, and it would have been only natural for the more
learned among the Hebrew scribes and priests to interest themselves
in the ancient literature of their new home. And any previous
familiarity with the myths of Babylonia would undoubtedly have been
increased by actual residence in the country. We may perhaps see a
result of such acquaintance with Babylonian literature, after
Jehoiachin's deportation,, in an interesting literary parallel that
has been pointed out between Ezek. xiv. 12-20 and a speech in the
Babylonian account of the Deluge in the Gilgamesh Epic, XI, ll.
180-194. [1] The passage in Ezekiel occurs within chaps. i-xxiv,
which correspond to the prophet's first period and consist in the
main of his utterances in exile before the fall of Jerusalem. It
forms, in fact, the introduction to the prophet's announcement of
the coming of "four sore judgements upon Jerusalem", from which
there "shall be left a remnant that shall be carried forth".[2] But
in consequence, here and there, of traces of a later point of view,
it is generally admitted that many of the chapters in this section
may have been considerably amplified and altered by Ezekiel himself
in the course of writing. And if we may regard the literary
parallel that has been pointed out as anything more than
fortuitous, it is open to us to assume that chap. xiv may have been
worked up by Ezekiel many years after his prophetic call at
Tel-abib.

[1] See Daiches, "Ezekiel and the Babylonian Account of the
Deluge", in the /Jewish Quarterly Review/, April 1905. It has of
course long been recognized that Ezekiel, in announcing the
punishment of the king of Egypt in xxxii. 2 ff., uses imagery which
strongly recalls the Babylonian Creation myth. For he compares
Pharaoh to a sea-monster over whom Yahweh will throw his net (as
Marduk had thrown his over Tiamat); cf. Loisy, /Les mythes
babyloniens et les premiers chaptires de la Genèse/ (1901), p. 87.

[2] Ezek. xiv. 21 f.

In the passage of the Babylonian Epic, Enlil had already sent the
Flood and had destroyed the good with the wicked. Ea thereupon
remonstrates with him, and he urges that in future the sinner only
should be made to suffer for his sin; and, instead of again causing
a flood, let there be discrimination in the divine punishments sent
on men or lands. While the flood made the escape of the deserving
impossible, other forms of punishment would affect the guilty only.
In Ezekiel the subject is the same, but the point of view is
different. The land the prophet has in his mind in verse 13 is
evidently Judah, and his desire is to explain why it will suffer
although not all its inhabitants deserved to share its fate. The
discrimination, which Ea urges, Ezekiel asserts will be made; but
the sinner must bear his own sin, and the righteous, however
eminent, can only save themselves by their righteousness. The
general principle propounded in the Epic is here applied to a
special case. But the parallelism between the passages lies not
only in the general principle but also in the literary setting.
This will best be brought out by printing the passages in parallel
columns.

Gilg. Epic, XI, 180-194

Ea opened his mouth and spake,
He said to the warrior Enlil;
Thou director of the gods! O warrior!
Why didst thou not take counsel but didst cause a flood?
On the transgressor lay his transgression!
Be merciful, so that (all) be not destroyed! Have patience, so that
(all) be not [cut off]!
Instead of causing a flood,
Let /lions/[1] come and diminish mankind!
Instead of causing a flood,
Let /leopards/[1] come and diminish mankind!
Instead of causing a flood,
Let /famine/ be caused and let it smite the land!
Instead of causing a flood,
Let the /Plague-god/ come and [slay] mankind!

Ezek. xiv. 12-20

And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
Son of man, when a land sinneth against me by committing a trespass,
and I stretch out mine hand upon it, and break the staff of the bread
thereof, and send /famine/ upon it, and cut off from it man and beast;
though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should
deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord
God.
If I cause /noisome beasts/ to pass through the land, and they spoil
it, so that it be desolate, that no man may pass through because of
the beasts; though these three men were in it, as I live, saith the
Lord God, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters; they only
shall be delivered, but the land shall be desolate.
Or if I bring a /sword/ upon that land, and say, Sword, go through the
land; so that I cut off from it man and beast; though these three men
were in it, as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither
sons nor daughters, but they only shall be delivered themselves.
Or if I send a /pestilence/ into that land, and pour out my fury upon
it in blood, to cut off from it man and beast; though Noah, Daniel,
and Job, were in it, as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver
neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by
their righteousness.

[1] Both Babylonian words are in the singular, but probably used
collectively, as is the case with their Hebrew equivalent in Ezek.
xiv. 15.

It will be seen that, of the four kinds of divine punishment
mentioned, three accurately correspond in both compositions. Famine
and pestilence occur in both, while the lions and leopards of the
Epic find an equivalent in "noisome beasts". The sword is not
referred to in the Epic, but as this had already threatened
Jerusalem at the time of the prophecy's utterance its inclusion by
Ezekiel was inevitable. Moreover, the fact that Noah should be
named in the refrain, as the first of the three proverbial examples
of righteousness, shows that Ezekiel had the Deluge in his mind,
and increases the significance of the underlying parallel between
his argument and that of the Babylonian poet.[1] It may be added
that Ezekiel has thrown his prophecy into poetical form, and the
metre of the two passages in the Babylonian and Hebrew is, as Dr.
Daiches points out, not dissimilar.

[1] This suggestion is in some measure confirmed by the /Biblical
Antiquities of Philo/, ascribed by Dr. James to the closing years
of the first century A.D.; for its writer, in his account of the
Flood, has actually used Ezek. xiv. 12 ff. in order to elaborate
the divine speech in Gen. viii. 21 f. This will be seen from the
following extract, in which the passage interpolated between verses
21 and 22 of Gen. viii is enclosed within brackets: "And God said:
I will not again curse the earth for man's sake, for the guise of
man's heart hath left off (sic) from his youth. And therefore I
will not again destroy together all living as I have done. [But it
shall be, when the dwellers upon earth have sinned, I will judge
them by /famine/ or by the /sword/ or by fire or by /pestilence/
(lit. death), and there shall be earthquakes, and they shall be
scattered into places not inhabited (or, the places of their
habitation shall be scattered). But I will not again spoil the
earth with the water of a flood, and] in all the days of the earth
seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and autumn, day and
night shall not cease . . ."; see James, /The Biblical Antiquities
of Philo/, p. 81, iii. 9. Here wild beasts are omitted, and fire,
earthquakes, and exile are added; but famine, sword, and pestilence
are prominent, and the whole passage is clearly suggested by
Ezekiel. As a result of the combination, we have in the /Biblical
Antiquities/ a complete parallel to the passage in the Gilgamesh
Epic.

It may of course be urged that wild beasts, famine, and pestilence
are such obvious forms of divine punishment that their enumeration
by both writers is merely due to chance. But the parallelism should
be considered with the other possible points of connexion, namely,
the fact that each writer is dealing with discrimination in divine
punishments of a wholesale character, and that while the one is
inspired by the Babylonian tradition of the Flood, the other takes
the hero of the Hebrew Flood story as the first of his selected
types of righteousness. It is possible that Ezekiel may have heard
the Babylonian Version recited after his arrival on the Chebar. And
assuming that some form of the story had long been a cherished
tradition of the Hebrews themselves, we could understand his
intense interest in finding it confirmed by the Babylonians, who
would show him where their Flood had taken place. To a man of his
temperament, the one passage in the Babylonian poem that would have
made a special appeal would have been that quoted above, where the
poet urges that divine vengeance should be combined with mercy, and
that all, righteous and wicked alike, should not again be
destroyed. A problem continually in Ezekiel's thoughts was this
very question of wholesale divine punishment, as exemplified in the
case of Judah; and it would not have been unlikely that the
literary structure of the Babylonian extract may have influenced
the form in which he embodied his own conclusions.

But even if we regard this suggestion as unproved or improbable,
Ezekiel's reference to Noah surely presupposes that at least some
version of the Flood story was familiar to the Hebrews before the
Captivity. And this conclusion is confirmed by other Babylonian
parallels in the early chapters of Genesis, in which oral tradition
rather than documentary borrowing must have played the leading
part.[1] Thus Babylonian parallels may be cited for many features
in the story of Paradise,[2] though no equivalent of the story
itself has been recovered. In the legend of Adapa, for example,
wisdom and immortality are the prerogative of the gods, and the
winning of immortality by man is bound up with eating the Food of
Life and drinking the Water of Life; here too man is left with the
gift of wisdom, but immortality is withheld. And the association of
winged guardians with the Sacred Tree in Babylonian art is at least
suggestive of the Cherubim and the Tree of Life. The very side of
Eden has now been identified in Southern Babylonia by means of an
old boundary-stone acquired by the British Museum a year or two
ago.[3]

[1] See Loisy, /Les mythes babyloniens/, pp. 10 ff., and cf. S.
Reinach, /Cultes, Mythes et Religions/, t. II, pp. 386 ff.

[2] Cf. especially Skinner, /Genesis/, pp. 90 ff. For the latest
discussion of the Serpent and the Tree of Life, suggested by Dr.
Skinner's summary of the evidence, see Frazer in /Essays and
Studies presented to William Ridgeway/ (1913), pp. 413 ff.

[3] See /Babylonian Boundary Stones in the British Museum/ (1912),
pp. 76 ff., and cf. /Geographical Journal/, Vol. XL, No. 2 (Aug.,
1912), p. 147. For the latest review of the evidence relating to
the site of Paradise, see Boissier, "La situation du paradis
terrestre", in /Le Globe/, t. LV, Mémoires (Geneva, 1916).

But I need not now detain you by going over this familiar ground.
Such possible echoes from Babylon seem to suggest pre-exilic
influence rather than late borrowing, and they surely justify us in
inquiring to what periods of direct or indirect contact, earlier
than the Captivity, the resemblances between Hebrew and Babylonian
ideas may be traced. One point, which we may regard as definitely
settled by our new material, is that these stories of the Creation
and of the early history of the world were not of Semitic origin.
It is no longer possible to regard the Hebrew and Babylonian
Versions as descended from common Semitic originals. For we have
now recovered some of those originals, and they are not Semitic but
Sumerian. The question thus resolves itself into an inquiry as to
periods during which the Hebrews may have come into direct or
indirect contact with Babylonia.

There are three pre-exilic periods at which it has been suggested
the Hebrews, or the ancestors of the race, may have acquired a
knowledge of Babylonian traditions. The earliest of these is the
age of the patriarchs, the traditional ancestors of the Hebrew
nation. The second period is that of the settlement in Canaan,
which we may put from 1200 B.C. to the establishment of David's
kingdom at about 1000 B.C. The third period is that of the later
Judaean monarch, from 734 B.C. to 586 B.C., the date of the fall of
Jerusalem; and in this last period there are two reigns of special
importance in this connexion, those of Ahaz (734-720 B.C.) and
Manasseh (693-638 B.C.).

With regard to the earliest of these periods, those who support the
Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch may quite consistently assume
that Abraham heard the legends in Ur of the Chaldees. And a simple
retention of the traditional view seems to me a far preferable
attitude to any elaborate attempt at rationalizing it. It is
admitted that Arabia was the cradle of the Semitic race; and the
most natural line of advance from Arabia to Aram and thence to
Palestine would be up the Euphrates Valley. Some writers therefore
assume that nomad tribes, personified in the traditional figure of
Abraham, may have camped for a time in the neighbourhood of Ur and
Babylon; and that they may have carried the Babylonian stories with
them in their wanderings, and continued to preserve them during
their long subsequent history. But, even granting that such nomads
would have taken any interest in traditions of settled folk, this
view hardly commends itself. For stories received from foreign
sources become more and more transformed in the course of
centuries.[1] The vivid Babylonian colouring of the Genesis
narratives cannot be reconciled with this explanation of their
source.

[1] This objection would not of course apply to M. Naville's
suggested solution, that cuneiform tablets formed the medium of
transmission. But its author himself adds that he does not deny its
conjectural character; see /The Text of the Old Testament/
(Schweich Lectures, 1915), p. 32.

A far greater number of writers hold that it was after their
arrival in Palestine that the Hebrew patriarchs came into contact
with Babylonian culture. It is true that from an early period Syria
was the scene of Babylonian invasions, and in the first lecture we
noted some newly recovered evidence upon this point. Moreover, the
dynasty to which Hammurabi belonged came originally from the
north-eastern border of Canaan and Hammurabi himself exercised
authority in the west. Thus a plausible case could be made out by
exponents of this theory, especially as many parallels were noted
between the Mosaic legislation and that contained in Hammurabi's
Code. But it is now generally recognized that the features common
to both the Hebrew and the Babylonian legal systems may be
paralleled to-day in the Semitic East and elsewhere,[1] and cannot
therefore be cited as evidence of cultural contact. Thus the
hypothesis that the Hebrew patriarchs were subjects of Babylon in
Palestine is not required as an explanation of the facts; and our
first period still stands or falls by the question of the Mosaic
authorship of the Pentateuch, which must be decided on quite other
grounds. Those who do not accept the traditional view will probably
be content to rule this first period out.

[1] See Cook, /The Laws of Moses and the Code of Hammurabi/, p. 281
f.; Driver, /Genesis/, p. xxxvi f.; and cf. Johns, "The Laws of
Babylonia and the Laws of the Hebrew Peoples/ (Schweich Lectures,
1912), pp. 50 ff.

During the second period, that of the settlement in Canaan, the
Hebrews came into contact with a people who had used the Babylonian
language as the common medium of communication throughout the Near
East. It is an interesting fact that among the numerous letters
found at Tell el-Amarna were two texts of quite a different
character. These were legends, both in the form of school
exercises, which had been written out for practice in the
Babylonian tongue. One of them was the legend of Adapa, in which we
noted just now a distant resemblance to the Hebrew story of
Paradise. It seems to me we are here standing on rather firmer
ground; and provisionally we might place the beginning of our
process after the time of Hebrew contact with the Canaanites.

Under the earlier Hebrew monarchy there was no fresh influx of
Babylonian culture into Palestine. That does not occur till our
last main period, the later Judaean monarchy, when, in consequence
of the westward advance of Assyria, the civilization of Babylon was
once more carried among the petty Syrian states. Israel was first
drawn into the circle of Assyrian influence, when Arab fought as
the ally of Benhadad of Damascus at the battle of Karkar in 854
B.C.; and from that date onward the nation was menaced by the
invading power. In 734 B.C., at the invitation of Ahaz of Judah,
Tiglath-Pileser IV definitely intervened in the affairs of Israel.
For Ahaz purchased his help against the allied armies of Israel and
Syria in the Syro-Ephraimitish war. Tiglath-pileser threw his
forces against Damascus and Israel, and Ahaz became his vassal.[1]
To this period, when Ahaz, like Panammu II, "ran at the wheel of
his lord, the king of Assyria", we may ascribe the first marked
invasion of Assyrian influence over Judah. Traces of it may be seen
in the altar which Ahaz caused to be erected in Jerusalem after the
pattern of the Assyrian altar at Damascus.[2] We saw in the first
lecture, in the monuments we have recovered of Panammu I and of
Bar-rekub, how the life of another small Syrian state was
inevitably changed and thrown into new channels by the presence of
Tiglath-pileser and his armies in the West.

[1] 2 Kings xvi. 7 ff.

[2] 2 Kings xvi. 10 ff.

Hezekiah's resistance checked the action of Assyrian influence on
Judah for a time. But it was intensified under his son Manasseh,
when Judah again became tributary to Assyria, and in the house of
the Lord altars were built to all the host of heaven.[1] Towards
the close of his long reign Manasseh himself was summoned by
Ashur-bani-pal to Babylon.[2] So when in the year 586 B.C. the
Jewish exiles came to Babylon they could not have found in its
mythology an entirely new and unfamiliar subject. They must have
recognized several of its stories as akin to those they had
assimilated and now regarded as their own. And this would naturally
have inclined them to further study and comparison.

[1] 2 Kings xxi. 5.

[2] Cf. 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11 ff.

The answer I have outlined to this problem is the one that appears
to me most probable, but I do not suggest that it is the only
possible one that can be given. What I do suggest is that the
Hebrews must have gained some acquaintance with the legends of
Babylon in pre-exilic times. And it depends on our reading of the
evidence into which of the three main periods the beginning of the
process may be traced.

So much, then, for the influence of Babylon. We have seen that no
similar problem arises with regard to the legends of Egypt. At
first sight this may seem strange, for Egypt lay nearer than
Babylon to Palestine, and political and commercial intercourse was
at least as close. We have already noted how Egypt influenced
Semitic art, and how she offered an ideal, on the material side of
her existence, which was readily adopted by her smaller neighbours.
Moreover, the Joseph traditions in Genesis give a remarkably
accurate picture of ancient Egyptian life; and even the Egyptian
proper names embedded in that narrative may be paralleled with
native Egyptian names than that to which the traditions refer. Why
then is it that the actual myths and legends of Egypt concerning
the origin of the world and its civilization should have failed to
impress the Hebrew mind, which, on the other hand, was so
responsive to those of Babylon?

One obvious answer would be, that it was Nebuchadnezzar II, and not
Necho, who carried the Jews captive. And we may readily admit that
the Captivity must have tended to perpetuate and intensify the
effects of any Babylonian influence that may have previously been
felt. But I think there is a wider and in that sense a better
answer than that.

I do not propose to embark at this late hour on what ethnologists
know as the "Hamitic" problem. But it is a fact that many striking
parallels to Egyptian religious belief and practice have been
traced among races of the Sudan and East Africa. These are perhaps
in part to be explained as the result of contact and cultural
inheritance. But at the same time they are evidence of an African,
but non-Negroid, substratum in the religion of ancient Egypt. In
spite of his proto-Semitic strain, the ancient Egyptian himself
never became a Semite. The Nile Valley, at any rate until the
Moslem conquest, was stronger than its invaders; it received and
moulded them to its own ideal. This quality was shared in some
degree by the Euphrates Valley. But Babylonia was not endowed with
Egypt's isolation; she was always open on the south and west to the
Arabian nomad, who at a far earlier period sealed her Semitic type.

To such racial division and affinity I think we may confidently
trace the influence exerted by Egypt and Babylon respectively upon
Hebrew tradition.

2. http://www.worldwideschool.org/