The Old Testament In the Light of The Historical Records and Legends Part 4

122 The whole of my p.r.o.nouncements he, (even) he, shall make known."

123 By the appellation "fifty" the great G.o.ds

124 His fifty names proclaimed, and they caused his career to be great (beyond all).

125 May they be accepted, and may the primaeval one make (them) known,

126 May the wise and understanding altogether well consider (them),

127 May the father repeat and teach to the son,

128 May they open the ears of the shepherd and leader.

129 May they rejoice for the lord of the G.o.ds, Merodach,

130 May his land bear in plenty; as for him, may he have peace.

131 His word standeth firm; his command changeth not-

132 No G.o.d hath yet made to fail that which cometh forth from his mouth.

133 If he frown down in displeasure, he turneth not his neck,

134 In his anger, there is no G.o.d who can withstand his wrath.

135 Broad is his heart, vast is the kindness (?) of (his) ...

136 The sinner and evildoer before him are (ashamed?)."

The remains of some further lines exist, but they are very uncertain, the beginnings and ends being broken away. All that can be said is, that the poem concluded in the same strain as the last twelve lines preserved.

In the foregoing pages the reader has had placed before him all the princ.i.p.al details of the Babylonian story of the Creation, and we may now proceed to examine the whole in greater detail.

If we may take the explanation of Damascius as representing fairly the opinion of the Babylonians concerning the creation of the world, it seems clear that they regarded the matter of which it was formed as existing in the beginning under the two forms of Tiamtu (the sea) and _Apsu_ (the deep), and from these, being wedded, proceeded "an only begotten son,"

_Mummu_ (Moumis), conceived by Damascius to be "no other that the intelligible world proceeding from the two principles," _i.e._ from Tiamtu and _Apsu_. From these come forth, in successive generations, the other G.o.ds, ending with Marduk or Merodach, also named Bel (Bel-Merodach), the son of Aa (Ea) and his consort Damkina (the Aos and Dauke of Damascius).

Judging from the material that we have, the Babylonians seemed to have believed in a kind of evolution, for they evidently regarded the first creative powers (the watery waste and the abyss) as the rude and barbaric beginnings of things, the divine powers produced from these first principles (La?mu and La?amu, Anar and Kiar, Anu, Ellila, and Aa, and finally Marduk), being successive stages in the upward path towards perfection, with which the first rude elements of creation were ultimately bound to come into conflict; for Tiamtu, the chief of the two rude and primitive principles of creation, was, notwithstanding this, ambitious, and desired still to be the creatress of the G.o.ds and other inferior beings that were yet to be produced. All the divinities descending from Tiamtu were, to judge from the inscriptions, creators, and as they advanced towards perfection, so also did the things that they created advance, until, by contrast, the works of Tiamtu became as those of the Evil Principle, and when she rebelled against the G.o.ds who personified all that was good, it became a battle between them of life and death, which only the latest-born of the G.o.ds, elected in consequence of the perfection of his power, to be king and ruler over "the G.o.ds his fathers," was found worthy to wage. The glorious victory gained, and the Dragon of Evil subdued and relegated to those places where her exuberant producing power, which, to all appearance, she still possessed, would be of use, Merodach, in the fulness of his power as king of the G.o.ds, perfected and ordered the universe anew, and created his crowning work, Mankind. Many details are, to all appearance, wanting on account of the incompleteness of the series, but those which remain seem to indicate that the motive of the whole story was as outlined here.

In Genesis, however, we have an entirely different account, based, apparently, upon a widely different conception of the origin of the Universe, for one principle only appears throughout the whole narrative, be it Elohistic, Jehovistic, or priestly. "In the beginning G.o.d created the heavens and the earth," and from the first verse to the last it is He, and He alone, who is Creator and Maker and Ruler of the Universe. The only pa.s.sage containing any indication that more than one person took part in the creation of the world and all that therein is, is in verse 26, where G.o.d is referred to as saying, "Let US make man," but that this is simply the plural of majesty, and nothing more, seems to be proved by the very next verse, where the wording is, "and G.o.d made man in HIS own image,"

etc. There is, therefore, no trace of polytheistic influence in the whole narrative.

Let us glance awhile at the other differences.

To begin with, the whole Babylonian narrative is not only based upon an entirely different theory of the beginning of all things, but upon an entirely different conception of what took place ere man appeared upon the earth. "In the beginning G.o.d created the heavens and the earth," implies the conception of a time when the heavens and the earth existed not. Not so, seemingly, with the Babylonian account. There the heavens and the earth are represented as existing, though in a chaotic form, from the first. Moreover, it is not the external will and influence of the Almighty that originates and produces the forms of the first creatures inhabiting the world, but the productive power residing in the watery waste and the deep:

"The primaeval ocean (_apsu restu_) was their producer (lit.

seeder); Mummu Tiamtu was _she who brought forth_ the whole of them."

It is question here of "seeding" (_zaru_) and "bearing" (_aladu_), not of creating.

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 at the earliest period is all that is vouchsafed to us.

At that time none of the G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds La?mu and La?amu, Anar and Kiar, with the others, came into existence, as already related, after which the record, which is mutilated, goes on to speak of Tiamtu, Apsu, and Mummu.

These deities of the Abyss were evidently greatly disquieted on account of the existence and the work of the G.o.ds of heaven. They therefore took counsel together, and Apsu 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 doc.u.ments, 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 G.o.d 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 doc.u.ments, and the king of the G.o.ds, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.ds at once proceeded to exercise.

Pa.s.sing through the heavens, he surveyed them, and built a palace called e-arra, "The house of the host," for the G.o.ds 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-acc.u.mulations, 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 enough, also refers to the city of Aur, though this city (which did not, apparently, belong to Nimrod's kingdom) can hardly have been a primaeval city in the same sense as "Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh."

The text of the Semitic Creation-story is here so mutilated as to be useless for comparative purposes, and in these circ.u.mstances the bilingual story of the Creation, published by me in 1891, practically covering, as it does, the same ground, may be held, in a measure, to supply its place.

Instead, therefore, of devoting to this version a separate section, I insert a translation of it here, together with a description of the tablet upon which it is written.

This second version of the Creation-story is inscribed on a large fragment (about four and a half inches high) of a tablet found by Mr. Ra.s.sam at Sippar (Abu Habbah) in 1882. The text is very neatly written in the Babylonian character, and is given twice over, that is, in the original (dialectic) Akkadian, with a Semitic (Babylonian) translation. As it was the custom of the Babylonian and a.s.syrian scribes, for the sake of giving a nice appearance to what they wrote, to spread out the characters in such a way that the page (as it were) was "justified," and the ends of the lines ranged, like a page of print, it often happens that, when a line is not a full one, there is a wide s.p.a.ce, in the middle, without writing. In the Akkadian text of the bilingual Creation-story, however, a gap is left in _every_ line, sufficiently large to accommodate, in slightly smaller characters, the whole Semitic Babylonian translation. The tablet therefore seems to be written in three columns, the first being the first half of the Akkadian version, the second (a broad one) the Semitic translation, and the third the last half of the Akkadian original text, separated from the first part to allow of the Semitic version being inserted between.

The reason of the writing of the version already translated and in part commented upon is not difficult to find-it was to give an account of the origin of the world and the G.o.ds whom they worshipped. The reason of the writing of the bilingual story of the Creation, however, is not so easy to decide, the account there given being the introduction to one of those bilingual incantations for purification, in which, however, by the mutilation of the tablet, the connecting-link is unfortunately lost. But whatever the reason of its being prefixed to this incantation, the value and importance of the version presented by this new doc.u.ment is incontestable, not only for the legend itself, but also for the linguistic material which a bilingual text nearly always offers.

The following is a translation of this doc.u.ment-

"Incantation: The glorious house, the house of the G.o.ds, in a glorious place had not been made, A plant had not grown up, a tree had not been created, A brick had not been laid, a beam had not been shaped, A house had not been built, a city had not been constructed, A city had not been made, no community had been established, Niffer had not been built, e-kura had not been constructed, Erech had not been built, e-ana had not been constructed, The Abyss had not been made, eridu had not been constructed, (As for) the glorious house, the house of the G.o.ds, its seat had not been made- The whole of the lands were sea.

When within the sea there was a stream, In that day Eridu was made, e-sagila was constructed- e-sagila, which the G.o.d Lugal-du-azaga founded within the Abyss.

Babylon he built, e-sagila was completed.

He made the G.o.ds (and) the Anunnaki together, The glorious city, the seat of the joy of their hearts, supremely he proclaimed.

Merodach bound together a foundation before the waters, He made dust, and poured (it) out beside the foundation, That the G.o.ds might sit in a pleasant place.

He made mankind- Aruru made the seed of mankind with him.

He made the beasts of the field and the living creatures of the desert, He made the Tigris and the Euphrates, and set (them) in (their) place- Well proclaimed he their name.

Gra.s.s, the marsh-plant, the reed and the forest, he made, He made the verdure of the plain, The lands, the marsh, the thicket also, The wild cow (and) her young the steer; the ewe (and) her young-the sheep of the fold, Plantations and forests also.

The goat and the wild goat multiplied for him (?).

Lord Merodach on the sea-sh.o.r.e made a bank, ... (which) at first he made not, ... he caused to be.

(He caused the plant to be brought forth), he made the tree, (Everything?) he made in (its) place.

(He laid the brick), he made the beams, (He constructed the house), he built the city, (He built the city), the community exercised power, (He built the city Niffer), he built e-kura, the temple, (He built the city Erech, he built e-a)na, the temple,"