What impressed the thinkers most in the universe was the regular working of the laws of nature. Ascribing these laws to Marduk, they naturally pictured the beginnings of things as a lawless period. Into the old and popular Marduk-Tiâmat nature myth, certain touches were thus introduced that changed its entire character. This once done, it was a comparatively simple matter to follow up the conflict of Marduk and Tiâmat by a series of acts on Marduk's part, completing the work of general creation. The old nature myth ended with the conquest of the rains and storm and the establishment of the sun's regular course, precisely as the deluge story in Genesis, which contains echoes of the Marduk-Tiâmat myth, ends with the promulgation of the fixed laws of the universe.[742]
What follows upon this episode in the Babylonian epic is the elaboration of the central theme, worked out in the schools of Babylonian thought and intended, on the one hand, to illustrate Marduk's position as creator and, on the other, to formulate the details of the cosmological system.
With the fifth tablet, therefore, we leave the domain of popular myth completely and pass into the domain of cosmological speculation. Fragmentary as the fifth tablet is, enough is preserved to show that it assumes the perfection of the zodiacal system of the Babylonian schools and the complete regulation[743] of the calendar. In this zodiacal system, as has been intimated and as will be more fully set forth in a special chapter, the planets and stars are identified with the gods. The gods have their 'stations' and their 'pictures' in the starry sky. The stars are the 'drawings' or 'designs of heaven.' It is Marduk again who is represented as arranging these stations:
He established the stations for the great gods.[744]
The stars, their likeness,[745] he set up as constellations.[746]
He fixed the year and marked the divisions.[747]
The twelve months he divided among three stars.
From the beginning of the year till the close (?)
He established the station of Nibir[748] to indicate their boundary.
So that there might be no deviation nor wandering away from the course