CREATION, EPIC OF. The Babylonian Epic of Creation consisted originally of six books or tablets, the longest being tab let I., 161 lines, and the shortest, tablet II., 129 lines; latterly a hymn on the divine titles of Marduk, the hero of the epic, in 142 or more lines was added as tablet VII. The composition is a prod uct of the priests of Babylon, in which the local god Marduk is glorified as the only deity who was able to defeat Tiamat, dragon of chaos and personification of the primeval salt water seas. The legend states that in the beginning only two entities existed. Apsu, the deity of fresh water, and the female dragon Tiamat, whose waters were mingled in a chaos, but from their union sprang the gods of heaven and earth, who rebelled and sought to create an orderly universe. This version attributed the defeat of the male deity of chaos, Apsu, to the god Nudimmud, or Ea, who then be came the deity of fresh water. But in the great conflict with the female dragon, Tiamat, both Anu, the heaven god, and Ea, the water god, fled before her and only Marduk, son of Ea, went forth to battle with Kingu, leader of Tiamat's hosts, and then with Tia mat herself. There is a long description of the birth of Marduk in Book I. The Assyrian version substitutes Ashur for Marduk but this revision is not consistently carried out in the Assyrian copies. In her determination to destroy the gods of light and order Tia mat created II monsters, and Kingu, her husband, was their leader. These II monsters were identified later with constella tions, Hydra, Leo, Scorpio, etc., after they had been bound by Marduk and chained to the stars.
Marduk, who was at first an inferior deity, had to be raised to the rank of a great god in the divine assembly, whereby he ac quired the power to decree fates and to work miracles. He then defeated Tiamat and her host and bound Kingu and the Ir mon sters. The body of Tiamat he divided and with half of it he made the canopy of heaven, and with the other half the abode of the Apsu. Tablet V. contains an astronomical poem, in which Marduk fixed the movements of the planets in the ecliptic, the motions of the moon, and the positions of the signs of the zodiac. The sixth tablet describes the creation of man by Ea, from the blood of the slain Kingu, the assigning of the various spheres of influence to the gods, the building of Babylon and its temples, and the institution of the Babylonian New Year's festival.
In certain other sources there are references to an older Sume rian legend of the primeval conflict of the dragons of darkness and the gods of light and order, in which not Marduk, but the war god Ninurta was the champion of the gods, and the bird-god, Zu, called the "Storm-bird" was the dragon of chaos, who is identified with both Pegasus and Scorpio. There are also obscure references to Kingu and the dragons having been bound and cast into hell fire by Marduk, a legend which has been compared with the burning of the beast in Daniel 7 and in the Apocalypse of John 20. The reci tation of the Epic of Creation formed part of the ceremony of the New Year's festival at Babylon. In its present form it cannot antedate the period of the first Babylonian dynasty (2169-1870), when it was probably written. The texts are all from the late Babylonian and Assyrian period. The epic had more influence upon the rituals and theological views of the Semitic races of Western Asia than any other Babylonian literary work.
(S. L.)