At the beginning of all things, according to the legend, Apsu and Tiamat were water deities and typified chaos; to these were born Lahmu and Lahamu, and later appeared Anshar and Kishar, and still later Anu and other gods came into being. One of the fragments of the first tablet mentions the birth of Nudimmud (Ea), and shows that Marduk, who is made to take the leading part in the later tablets of creation, was supposed to be in existence, like Mummu and Gaga. In the earlier episodes of the crea tion story, it is Ea and not Marduk who is the hero, and it was Apsu, a god of chaos, who re belled against the gods. Apsu disliked the new order of things and the creation of the universe for the simple reason that the beings who formed members of the new world disturbed his peace and rest; as soon as he had made up his mind as to what was likely to happen, he called Mummu, his minister, and with him went to Tiamat and took counsel with her, and com plained that ahe could get rest neither by day nor by night') The putting of the house of the world into order by the gods destroyed his peace of mind. Of the conflict which took place between Ea and Apsu and his ally Mummu we know little, but that the great god did not succeed in inflicting a decisive defeat on Apsu and his allies is clear from the fact that, later, Anshar found it necessary to exhort Marduk to do battle with Tiamat. Marduk slew her and split her body into halves. The actual account of the creation of the world by Marduk begins toward the end of the fourth tablet, where it is said that one-half of the body of Tiamat formed a covering for heaven, and that Marduk, having formed E-shara, made the great trinity of Anu, Bel and Ea to dwell therein.
In the fifth tablet we hear of the fixing of the constellations of the zodiac, the founding of the year, etc., and it seems as if this section contained an account of the creation of vegeta tion. The sixth tablet told the story of the cre ation of man, and it seems as if Marduk made man with the view both of punishing the gods and of providing a creature who should at all times worship him. Marduk, or Bel, instructed
Ea to cut off his (Marduk's) head, and the man was formed out of the blood which flowed from the god's body. Marduk is made to tell Ea that he intends to create man from his own blood and from the °bone which he will create. The Assyrian word for ((bone' is issimtu, which is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew esem abone,n which occurs in Genesis ii, 23, in connec tion with the account of the creation of woman.
The creation of man was the final act of creation, and when this was accomplished, the gods assembled in their council chamber in Upshukkinaku, with Marduk at their head, and they sung to him a hymn of praise, the text of which forms the seventh section of the creation story and contains 50 addresses to the god. How Marduk managed to survive his decapita tion is not told us, and we can only surmise that he met the gods in their council chamber in some sort of spiritual body. The parallels which may be drawn between parts of this legend and the book of Genesis are taken by many scholars to prove that the Jews borrowed large portions of their religious literature from their kinsmen, the Babylonians, and that the seven days of creation were imagined long be fore the days of Abraham. Consult Johns, C. H. W., 'A short bibliography of works on the Babylonian stories of creation and the flood> (Manchester, England, 1913); Ball, Sir R. S., 'The Earth's Beginning' (New York 1902) ; Bergson, H., 'Creative Evolution' (New York 1911) ; Hastings, H. L., 'Was Moses Mistaken? or Creation and Evolution' (Boston 1895); Muss-Arnolt, W., 'The cuneiform account of the Creation and the Deluge' (Chicago 1894) ; Gridley, A. L., The first chapter of Genesis as the rock foundation for science and religion' (Boston 1913).