The Historians' History of the World 01

I will create man who shall inhabit [the earth]

That the service of the gods may be established and that [their] shrines [may be built].

But I will alter the ways of the gods, and I will change [their paths];

Together shall they be oppressed, and unto evil shall [they......]”

And Ea answered him and spake the word:

The rest of the tablet is too fragmentary for translation. The seventh contains the fifty titles of Marduk.

Besides these seven tablets there are some which contain other accounts of the creation. One of these refers to the creation of cattle and the beasts of the field.a

When the gods in their assembly had made [the world]

And had created the heavens and had formed [the earth]

And had brought living creatures into being [......]

And [had fashioned] the cattle of the field, and the beasts of the field, and the creatures [of

the city],—

After [they had........] unto the living creatures [.......]c

The rest is too mutilated for comprehension of anything besides single words.

THE BABYLONIAN RELIGION

The fact that these tablets as well as so many others of Babylonian origin were found in an Assyrian library, shows that the Assyrians took their religion like the rest of their culture from the Babylonians. Indeed the Assyrian myths, religious doctrines, and observances are so similar to those of the mother-country that in speaking of Babylonian religion the Assyrian is usually to be understood as well. The Babylonian religion in turn was largely influenced by the Summerian which was an astral religion. The names of the gods are found written with the same ideograms although they were doubtless pronounced differently. Many of the texts are found written in Summerian with interlinear Assyrian translations.

Babylonian religion as we first see it is in the form of local cults. Each city with its surrounding district had its own god, whose authority was supreme. Thus Anu was worshipped in Erech, Bel in Nippur, Ea in Eridu, Sin in Uru, Shamash in Larsa and Sippar. When these cities began to be welded together into political systems, the gods also were put together into an organised pantheon in which political situations influenced the relations the gods were made to bear to each other. Thus when Babylon became the capital of the empire its special god, Marduk, became leader among the gods.

A second characteristic feature of the Babylonian religion is that it is based on natural phenomena. The myths are nature myths. The story of the original creation was in a way the prototype of what happened every year. The earth is covered with water from the winter rains (state of chaos). The spring sun (Marduk) fights with and overcomes the water (Tiamat); the earth appears, green things of all kinds and life are produced. The story of the flood may have referred to the annual inundation, with perhaps the added element of severe winds and a tidal wave from the south. Such inundations have occurred in historic times. Ishtar’s descent into the lower world marks the autumn when everything is dry and has been burned up by the fierce summer sun. Ishtar goes to seek the water of life, which in the Babylonian world was a most appropriate metaphor, because water actually was the life of the country. Without it the land was arid and desolate as to-day; with it, its luxuriant vegetation caused the region about Babylon to be called the garden of the gods (Karaduniash).

The creation legend as we have it must have been written after the consolidation of the empire with Babylon as its capital, because in the story Marduk, although one of the younger gods, is made the champion and leader of the others. The tablets on which the legend is contained now usually go by the name of enuma elish, “when above,” from the opening words. The opening lines of the story relating the creation of the gods, and the latter part telling of the creation of animals and man, we have already seen. The version of creation given here is practically the one Berosus gives of the Babylonians, which is found in Eusebius and which he quotes from Polyhistor (see Appendix A).