The legend is too defective to enable us to find out anything as to the Babylonian idea concerning the formation of the dry land. Testimony as to its non-existence [pg 036] at the earliest period is all that is vouchsafed to us. At that time none of the gods had come forth, seemingly because (if the restoration be correct) “the fates had not been determined.” There is no clue, however, as to who was then the determiner of the fates.
Then, gradually, and in the course of long-extended ages, the gods Laḫmu and Laḫamu, Anšar and Kišar, with the others, came into existence, as already related, after which the record, which is mutilated, goes on to speak of Tiamtu, Apsū, and Mummu.
These deities of the Abyss were evidently greatly disquieted on account of the existence and the work of the gods of heaven. They therefore took counsel together, and Apsū complained that he could not rest either night or day on account of them. Naturally the mutilated state of the text makes the true reason of the conflict somewhat uncertain. Fried. Delitzsch regarded it as due to the desire, on the part of Merodach, to have possession of the “Tablets of Fate,” which the powers of good and the powers of evil both wished to obtain. These documents, when they are first spoken of, are in the hands of Tiamtu (see p. [19]), and she, on giving the power of changeless command to Kingu, her husband, handed them to him. In the great fight, when Merodach overcame his foes, he seized these precious records, and placed them in his breast—
“And Kingu, who had become great over (?) them—
He bound him, and with Ugga (the god of death) ... he counted him;
From him then he took the Fate-tablets, which were not his,
With his ring he pressed them, and took them to his breast.”
To all appearance, Tiamtu and Kingu were in unlawful possession of these documents, and the king [pg 037] of the gods, Merodach, when he seized them, only took possession of what, in reality, was his own. What power the “Tablets of Fate” conferred on their possessor, we do not know, but in all probability the god in whose hands they were, became, by the very fact, creator and ruler of the universe for ever and ever.
This creative power the king of the gods at once proceeded to exercise. Passing through the heavens, he surveyed them, and built a palace called Ê-šarra, “The house of the host,” for the gods who, with himself, might be regarded as the chief in his heavenly kingdom. Next in order he arranged the heavenly bodies, forming the constellations, marking off the year; the moon, and probably the sun also, being, as stated in Genesis, “for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years,” though all this is detailed, in the Babylonian account, at much greater length. Indeed, had we the whole legend complete, we should probably find ourselves in possession of a detailed description of the Babylonian idea of the heavens which they studied so constantly, and of the world on which they lived, in relation to the celestial phenomena which they saw around them.
Fragments of tablets have been spoken of that seem to belong to the fifth and sixth of the series, and one of them speaks of the building of certain ancient cities, including that now represented by the mounds known by the name of Niffer, which must, therefore, apart from any considerations of paleographic progression in the case of inscriptions found there, or evidence based on the depth of rubbish-accumulations, be one of the oldest known. It is probably on account of this that the Talmudic writers identified the site with the Calneh of Gen. x. 10, which, notwithstanding the absence of native confirmation, may very easily be correct, for the Jews of those days were undoubtedly in a better position to know than we are, after a lapse of two thousand years. The same text, strangely [pg 038] enough, also refers to the city of Aššur, though this city (which did not, apparently, belong to Nimrod's kingdom) can hardly have been a primæval city in the same sense as “Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh.”