Chapter 14

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 SEMITIC VERSION

"The people will I cause to . . . "I will make man, that man may in their settlements, (. . .). Cities . . . shall (man) build, I will create man who shall in their protection will I cause inhabit (. . .), him to rest, That he may lay the brick of our That the service of the gods may house in a clean spot, be established, and that (their) shrines (may be built). That in a clean spot he may But I will alter the ways of the establish our . . . !" 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 ša-ka-a ri-(ša-a-šu)_. Dr. Ebeling renders _ri-ša-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 _rîšâ_ 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- šu)_. 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-šu_ at the end of the line, but the sign is broken; perhaps the traces may prove to be those of _uzn⠚u_, "his ears", in which case _li-bit uz(nâ-šu)_ 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 "SEVEN TABLETS" I

{'Apason---Tauthe} Apsû---Tiamat | {Moumis} Mummu {Lakhos---Lakhe}(2) Lakhmu---Lakhamu {'Assoros---Kissare} Anshar---Kishar {'Anos, 'Illinos, 'Aos} Anu, ( ), Nudimmud (= Ea) {'Aos---Dauke} | {Belos}

(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 š(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 _ša_. 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 _šamâmu_, 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-šu-nu)_, "in the midst of (their waters)", corresponding to the form _mu-u- šu-nu_ in l. 5 of this duplicate. In the Assyrian Version _mé(pl)-šu-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.