Legends of Babylon and Egypt in Relation to Hebrew Tradition

by L. W. King

(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.