The last line but one is apparently the title, and is followed by the first line of the next tablet. From [pg 042] this we see that this text belonged to a series of at least two tablets, and that the tablet following the above had an introduction of an astronomical or astrological nature.
It will be noticed that this text not only contains an account of the creation of gods and men, and flora and fauna, but also of the great and renowned sites and shrines of the country where it originated. It is in this respect that it bears a likeness to the fragmentary portions of the intermediate tablets of the Semitic Babylonian story of the Creation, or Bêl and the Dragon, and this slight agreement may be held to justify, in some measure, its introduction here. The bilingual version, however, differs very much in style from that in Semitic only, and seems to lack the poetical form which characterizes the latter. This, indeed, was to be expected, for poetical form in a translation which follows the original closely is an impossibility, though the poetry of words and ideas which it contains naturally remains. It is not unlikely that the original Sumerian text is in poetical form, as is suggested by the cesura, and the recurring words.
In the bilingual account of the Creation one seems to get a glimpse of the pride that the ancient Babylonians felt in the ancient and renowned cities of their country. The writer's conception of the wasteness and voidness of the earth in the beginning seems to have been that the ancient cities Babel, Niffer, Erech and Eridu had not yet come into existence. For him, those sites were as much creations as the vegetation and animal life of the earth. Being, for him, sacred sites, they must have had a sacred, a divine foundation, and he therefore attributes their origin to the greatest of the gods, Merodach, who built them, brick, and beam, and house, himself. Their renowned temples, too, had their origin at the hands of the Divine Architect of the Universe.
A few words are necessary in elucidation of what [pg 043] follows the line, “When within the sea there was a stream.” “In that day,” it says, “Êridu was made, Ê-sagila was constructed—Ê-sagila which the god Lugal-du-azaga founded within the Abyss. Babylon he built, Ê-sagila was completed.” The connection of Ê-sagila, “the temple of the lofty head,” which was within the Abyss, with Êridu, shows, with little or no doubt, that the Êridu there referred to was not the earthly city of that name, but a city conceived as lying also “within the Abyss.” This Êridu, as we shall see farther on, was the “blessed city,” or Paradise, wherein was the tree of life, and which was watered by the twin stream of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
But there was another Ê-sagila than that founded by the god Lugal-du-azaga within the Abyss, namely the Ê-sagila at Babylon, and it is this fane that is spoken of in the phrase following that mentioning the temple so called within the Abyss. To the Babylonian, therefore, the capital of the country was, in that respect, a counterpart of the divine city that he regarded as the abode of bliss, where dwelt Nammu, the river-god, and the sun-god Dumuzi-Abzu, or “Tammuz of the Abyss.” Like Sippar too, Babylon was situated in what was called the plain, the edina, of which Babylonia mainly consisted, and which is apparently the original of the Garden of Eden.
The present text differs from that of the longer (Semitic) story of the Creation, in that it makes Merodach to be the creator of the gods, as well as of mankind, and all living things. This, of course, implies that it was composed at a comparatively late date, when the god Merodach had become fully recognized as the chief divinity, and the fact that Aa was his father had been lost sight of, and practically forgotten. The goddess Aruru is apparently introduced into the narrative out of consideration for the [pg 044] city Sippar-Aruru, of which she was patron. In another text she is called “Lady of the gods of Sippar and Aruru.” There is also a goddess (perhaps identical with her) called Gala-aruru, “Great Aruru,” or “the great one (of) Aruru,” who is explained as “Ištar the star,” on the tablet K. 2109.
After the account of the creation of the beasts of the field, the Tigris and the Euphrates, vegetation, lands, marshes, thickets, plantations and forests, which are named, to all appearance, without any attempt at any kind of order, “The lord Merodach” is represented as creating those things which, at first, he had not made, namely, the great and ancient shrines in whose antiquity and glorious memories the Babylonian—and the Assyrian too—took such delight. The list, however, is a short one, and it is to be supposed that, in the lines that are broken away, further cities of the kingdom of Babylon were mentioned. That this was the case is implied by the reverse, which deals mainly—perhaps exclusively—with the great shrine of Borsippa called Ê-zida, and identified by many with the Tower of Babel. How it was brought in, however, we have no means of finding out, and must wait patiently for the completion of the text that will, in all probability, ultimately be discovered.
The reverse has only the end of the text, which, as far as it is preserved, is in the form of an “incantation of Êridu,” and mentions “the glorious fountain of the Abyss,” which to was to “purify” or “make glorious” the pathway of the personified fane referred to. As it was the god Merodach, “the merciful one,” “he who raises the dead to life,” “the lord of the glorious incantation,” who was regarded by the Babylonians as revealing to mankind the “incantation of Êridu,” which he, in his turn, obtained from his father Aa, we may see in this final part of the legend not only a glorification of the chief deity of the Babylonians, but also a further testimony of the fact that the composition [pg 045] must belong to the comparatively late period in the history of Babylonian religion, when the worship of Merodach had taken the place of that of his father Aa.
Of course, it must not be supposed that the longer account of the Creation was told so shortly as the bilingual narrative that we have introduced here to supply the missing parts of the longer version. Everything was probably recounted at much greater length, and in confirmation of this there is the testimony of the small fragment of the longer account, translated on p. [28]. This simply contains the announcement that Merodach had made cunning plans, and decided to create man from his own blood, and [to form?] his bones, but there must have been, in the long gap which then ensues, a detailed account of the actual creation of the human race, probably with some reference to the formation of animals. One cannot base much upon this mutilated fragment, but, as the first translator has pointed out, the object in creating man was seemingly to ensure the performance of the service (or worship) of the gods, and the building of their shrines, prayer and sacrifice, with the fear of God, being duties from which there was no escape.
In the last tablet of the series—that recording the praises of Merodach and his fifty new names,—there are a few points that are worthy of examination. In the first place, the arrangement of the first part is noteworthy. The principal name that was given to him seems not to have been Merodach, as one would expect from the popularity of the name in later days, but Tutu, which occurs in the margin, at the head of six of the sections, and was probably prefixed to at least three more. This name Tutu is evidently an Akkadian reduplicate word, from the root tu, “to beget,” and corresponds with the explanation of the word given by the list of Babylonian gods, K. 2107; muâllid îlāni, mûddiš îlāni, “begetter of the gods, renewer [pg 046] of the gods”—a name probably given to him on account of his identification with his father, Aa, for, according to the legend, Merodach was rather the youngest than the oldest of the gods, who are even called, as will be remembered, “his fathers.” In the lost portion at the beginning of the final tablet he was also called, according to the tablet here quoted, Gugu = muttakkil îlāni, “nourisher of the gods”; Mumu = mušpiš îlāni, “increaser (?) of the gods”; Dugan = banî kala îlāni, “maker of all the gods”; Dudu = muttarrû îlāni, “saviour (?) of the gods”; Šar-azaga = ša šipat-su êllit, “he whose incantation is glorious”; and Mu-azaga = ša tû-šu êllit, “he whose charm is glorious” (cf. p. [31], l. 33). After this we have Ša-zu or Ša-sud = mûdê libbi īlāni or libbi rûḳu, “he who knoweth the heart of the gods,” or “the remote of heart” (p. [31], l. 35); Zi-uḳenna = napšat napḫar îlāni, “the life of the whole of the gods” (p. [30], l. 15); Zi-si = nasiḫ šabuti, “he who bringeth about silence” (p. [31], l. 41); Suḫ-kur = muballû aabi, “annihilator of the enemy” (p. [31], l. 43); and other names meaning muballû napḫar aabi, nasiḫ raggi, “annihilator of the whole of the enemy, rooter out of evil,” nasiḫ napḫar raggi, “rooter out of the whole of the evil,” êšû raggi, “troubler of the evil (ones),” and êšû napḫar raggi, “troubler of the whole of the evil (ones).” All these last names were probably enumerated on the lost part of the tablet between where the obverse breaks off and the reverse resumes the narrative, and the whole of the fifty names conferred upon him, which were enumerated in their old Akkadian forms and translated into Semitic Babylonian in this final tablet of the Creation, were evidently repeated in the form of a list of gods, on the tablet in tabular form from which the above renderings are taken.