* Literally, Anu.
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He seized the spear and pierced her stomach,
He cut through her organs and slit open her heart. He bound her and cut off her life.
He cast down her carcass and stood upon it.’
The followers of Tiamat, dismayed at the over- throw of their leader, take to flight; but Bel- Marduk surrounds them, and captures them all in the net. He takes from Kingu the ‘tablets of fate’ and hangs them around his own breast— thus establishing his prerogative as the decreer of destinies for all future times.
At this point the composite character of the narrative is again revealed, for Marduk is repre- sented as returning to Tiamat to stand upon her, to smash her skull, and to drive her blood, car- ried away by the north wind to secret places, out of her body. It is evident that various tradi- tions existed as to what Bel-Marduk did with Tiamat.
The close of the fourth tablet directs the current of the narrative into a new channel, and introduces us to Bel-Marduk as the creator of heaven, and as the establisher of law and order in the Universe. Out of one half of the carcass of Tiamat, flattened out by him ‘like a flat fish,’ he makes a covering for the heaven—a kind of door provided with a bolt—and with a watchman to stand guard against the pouring forth of the waters from above. Corresponding to the watchman placed over the waters of heaven, Nudimmud or Ea is assigned to the centre of ‘ Apsu’—here no longer used as ‘chaos,’ but as the watery deep, which is con- ceived as a structure, the limits of which are fixed by Bel-Marduk. Corresponding to this ‘subter- ranean’ mansion, a similar structure, which he calls E-sharra, is built in heaven, and Anu, Bel, and Ea are assigned to their respective districts.
The narrative thus leads us to the astrological system perfected by the Babylonian priests, and standing in close relation to their cosmology. According to this system, which rests on the identification of the gods with the sun, moon, and stars, the heavens constitute a structure provided for the gods. The regularity of the movements of the sun and moon and the course of the planets within defined limits, were accounted for by the theory which assigned to some god the distinction of having established the fixed order of events in the upper firmament. It is natural to suppose that Anshar should have been the one to do so ; but, since he relinquishes his authority to Bel-M arduk, the latter is accorded the distinction 3 and, since Marduk is identified with the sun, a further change had to be introduced into the narrative by omitting all references to the creation of the sun. More important, however, than the assump- tion in the present form of the narrative, that it is the sun-god Marduk who creates the heavens and assigns to the gods their positions and functions, is the system itself, which is revealed at the close of the fourth tablet, and further developed at the beginning of the fifth tablet. The triad, Anu, Bel, and Ka, in this astrological system are not the old local deities who bear that name from the centres in which they were worshipped, nor do they sum up the control of the Universe, but they are simply certain sections of the ecliptic chosen as guides for determining the position and courses of the stars and planets respectively, Anu being the middle strip of the ecliptic, Bel the northern sec- tion, and Ea a star in the southern section.* With these as guiding points, the positions are assigned for the great gods; and the identification of the latter with the stars being specifically set forth, the seven /wmashi stars or constellations of the zodiac are specially referred to, by means of which
_* See Mahler, ‘Die Wege des Anu, Bel, und Ea’ (Orientalis- tische Literaturzeitwng, vol. vi. No. 4 (pp. 155-160)),
RELIGION OF BABYLONIA
the divisions of the year are determined. At each end of the great structure E-sharra gates are placed, through which the sun passes in and out on his daily march across the expanse ; and to the moon-god the control of the night is entrusted, by means of which the days are to be calculated. Further details as to the manner in which this calculation is to be made are given, so that inci- dentally the basis of the Babylonian calendar is furnished as another feature of the cosmology. Indeed, the entire theology enters into the narra- tive of the creation—(a) the systematized pan- theon ; (0) the astrological system upon which was built up the science of determining the intentions of the gods by observing their movements as represented in the planets and stars with which they were identified ; (c) the lunar calendar.
nfortunately, that part of the work of creation which would be of special interest to us—the formation of the earth, with its vegetation—is lacking, though it was, in all probability, con- tained in the fifth tablet, which, like the second, is very defective. Whether this part of creation was also attributed to Bel-Marduk alone, or to the gods in common, must for the present remain an open question. We have a fragmentary tablet* in which, incidental to a story assigning a prominent réle to a god Nin-igi-azag, a reference is introduced to the creation of ‘living creatures,’ ‘cattle of the field,’ ‘beasts of the field, creatures of the city,’ which are described as having been produced by the gods in their assembly ; but this may represent another version, whereas in the Creation narrative under discussion Marduk probably appeared as the creator of the earth,+ just as in the sixth tablet the creation of man is assigned to him. The reason given for the creation of man is that the gods desired worshippers; and this view is ascribed in the narrative to none other than Marduk himself, who, in an address to Ea, says—