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Page 10
[Footnote 1: See Naville, _La Litanie du Soleil_, Paris, 1875,
Plate ii ff.]
[Footnote 2: See _Kur'�n_, Surah vii, v. 179. That there were
ninety-nine Beautiful Names of God rests on the authority of Ab�
Hurairah, who repeats the statement as made by Muhammad the Prophet.]
The object of the writer of the Fifty Names was to show that Marduk
was the "Lord of the gods," that the power, qualities and attributes
of every god were enshrined in him, and that they all were merely
forms of him. This fact is proved by the tablet (No. 47,406), [1]
which contains a long list of gods who are equated with Marduk in his
various forms.[2] The tendency in the later Babylonian religion to
make Marduk the god above all gods has led many to think that
monotheistic conceptions were already in existence among the
Babylonians as early as the period of the First Dynasty, about 2000
B.C. It is indisputable that Marduk obtained his pre-eminence in the
Babylonian Pantheon at this early period. But some authorities deny
the existence of monotheistic conceptions among the Babylonians at
that time, and attribute Marduk's kingship of the gods to the
influence of the political situation of the time, when Babylon first
became the capital of the country, and mistress of the greater part of
the known world. Material for deciding this question is wanting, but
it may be safely said that whatever monotheistic conceptions existed
at that time, their acceptance was confined entirely to the priests
and scribes. They certainly find no expression in the popular
religious texts.
[Footnote 1: Published by King, _Cuneiform Texts_, Part XXV,
Plate 50.]
[Footnote 2: Thus he is equated with En-Urta, Nergal, En-lil, Nab�,
Sin, Shamash, Adad, etc.]
Both the source of the original form of the Legend of the Fight
between Ea and Apsu, and Marduk and Ti�mat, and the period of its
composition are unknown, but there is no doubt that in one form or
another it persisted in Mesopotamia for thousands of years. The
apocryphal book of "Bel and the Dragon" shows that a form of the
Legend was in existence among the Babylonian Jews long after the
Captivity, and the narrative relating to it associates it with
religious observances. But there is no foundation whatsoever for the
assertion which has so often been made that the Two Accounts of the
Creation which are given in the early chapters in Genesis are derived
from the Seven Tablets of Creation described in the preceding
pages. It is true that there are many points of resemblance between
the narratives in cuneiform and Hebrew, and these often illustrate
each other, but the fundamental conceptions of the Babylonian and
Hebrew accounts are essentially different. In the former the earliest
beings that existed were foul demons and devils, and the God of
Creation only appears at a later period, but in the latter the
conception of God is that of a Being Who existed in and from the
beginning, Almighty and Alone, and the devils of chaos and evil are
His servants.
[Illustration: Marduk destroying Ti�mat, who is here represented in the
form of a huge serpent. From a seal-cylinder in the British Museum.
[No. 89,589.]]
Among the primitive Semitic peoples there were probably many versions of
the story of the Creation; and the narrative told by the Seven Tablets
is, no doubt, one of them in a comparatively modern form. It is quite
clear that the Account of the Creation given in the Seven Tablets is
derived from very ancient sources, and a considerable amount of literary
evidence is now available for reconstructing the history of the Legend.
Thus in the Sumerian Account the narrative of the exploits of the hero
called ZIUSUDU [1] begins with a description of the Creation and then
goes on to describe a Flood, and there is little doubt that certain
passages in this text are the originals of the Babylonian version as
given in the Seven Tablets. In the Story of ZIUSUDU, however, there is
no mention of any Dragon. And there is reason to think that the Legend
of the Dragon had originally nothing whatever to do with the Creation,
for the texts of fragments of two distinct Accounts [2] of the Creation
describe a fight between a Dragon and some deity other than Marduk. In
other Accounts the Dragon bears a strong resemblance to the Leviathan of
Psalm civ, 26; Job xli, 1. In the one text he is said to be 50 _biru_
[3] in length, and 1 _biru_ in thickness; his mouth was 6 cubits (about
9 feet) wide, and the circumference of his ears 12 cubits (18 feet). He
was slain by a god whose name is unknown, and the blood continued to
flow from his body for three years, three months, one day and one night.
In the second text the Dragon is 60 _biru_ long and his thickness is 30
_biru_; the diameter of each eye is half a _biru_, and his paws are 20
_biru_ long. Thus there is every reason for believing that the Legend as
it is given in the Seven Tablets is the work of some editor, who added
the Legend of the Creation to the Legend of the Dragon in much the same
way as the editor of the Gilgamish Legends included an account of the
Deluge in his narrative of the exploits of his hero. All forms of the
Legend of the Creation and of the Dragon were popular in Babylonia, and
one of them achieved so much notoriety that the priest employed recited
it as an incantation to charm away the toothache.
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