55 pages • 1 hour read
Leonard William King, ed.The Seven Tablets of Creation: The Enuma Elish
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“Other Accounts of the History of Creation”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
“Other Accounts of the History of Creation” Summary
King includes a series of five partial stories that are derivative of the Seven Tablets, each of which is similar to the original story but also contains major changes. In “Another Version of the Dragon Myth,” humanity pleads with the gods to do something about the dragon, which is 50 kaspu (about 300 miles) in length and one kaspu (six miles) high, with a six-cubit- (nine-foot-) wide mouth. The gods in heaven are also fearful of the dragon and grab the robe of the Moon-god in anxiety, asking who will save them. Much of this cuneiform is missing, but it does say that the dragon was killed and that its body bled for “three years, three months, one day and one night” (200). King spends a fair amount of time pointing out that the dragon’s mouth was disproportionately small for the dragon’s body in this account, implying that several different stories were compiled in the eventual cuneiform (200-01).
The tablet containing “A Reference to the Creation of the Cattle and the Beasts of the Field” describes the assembly of the gods creating the heavens and earth and populating the world with living creatures. They design “[…] the cattle of the field, and the beasts of the field, and the creatures of the city […]” (203). While some scholars held that this was part of the Seventh Tablet, King argues it cannot be because the final thrust has to do with the creation of two small creatures, one black and one white, which are insignificant in the scope of the creation tablets (203-04).
“A Reference to the Creation of the Moon and the Sun” tells of three gods, Ana, Enlil, and Enki, who establish the Moon-gods, the recurrent cycle of the moon and the month “and ordained the oracle of heaven and earth, the New Moon did Ana cause to appear […]” (208). Then there is a reference to the “great gods,” Anu, Bel, and Ea, fixing the boundaries of heaven and earth and entrusting them to the great gods so they could see: “The creation of the day and the renewal of the month which they might behold […]” (208). This allowed humanity to see the Sun-god “in the gate of his going forth” (208).
“An Address to the River of Creation” is a nine-line poem that is essentially like a psalm of praise for the River of Creation. The river is said to have been dug by the gods: “They set prosperity upon thy banks, within thee Ea, the King of the Deep, created his dwelling” (209). The river is imbued with “fire, and wrath, and splendour, and terror” as well as the ability to judge “the cause of mankind!” (209). The poem concludes with the river being called mighty, supreme, and righteous. King posits that this river is modeled on the Euphrates, which brings fertility throughout Babylon. The poem is quite similar to other river tributes in Egyptian and Hebrew sacred texts (209).
King calls “Another Version of the Creation of the World by Marduk” an incantation. It is essentially a hymn of praise to Marduk. It pushes the description of creation back to a time before any series of events and even the assembly of gods, before vegetation, before buildings, cities, any creature, or even “the deep” had been created: “At that time there was a movement in the sea […]” (212). The poet describes the creation of several gods and then the creation of Babylon before the assembly of the gods. Then “Marduk laid a reed upon the face of the waters, he formed dust and poured it out beside the reed” (213). After making paradise for the gods, together with the goddess Aruru, Marduk creates humanity. Following this he creates “the beasts of the field and living creatures in the field. He created the Tigris and the Euphrates, and he set them in their place” (213). After this he creates vegetation and all wild animals. After the order of Marduk’s work is established, it is summarily restated in praise language. A worshipful ceremony praising Marduk is conducted by the children of the gods. The section concludes with blessings for Marduk’s creative work and for creation itself (212-15).
“Other Accounts of the History of Creation” Analysis
The first benefit for readers of these five ancient portions of the Babylonian creation myth is the revelation they give into the sort of changes that different populations create within a shared sacred document over the course of time. It’s safe to assume that the shifts in the story were significant to the communities that shared the myth. For instance, in the document “Another Version of the Creation of the World by Marduk,” it is easy to see that citizens of Babylon would gain from the assertion that their city was created by the divine intention of the entire pantheon even prior to the creation of humanity.
A second important aspect about these five fragments is the recognition that they may actually be older than the Enuma Elish. As King demonstrates repeatedly, stories of Marduk and Tiamat were extant long before they were codified into the Creation Series. These five stories in some form may have existed prior to the first authoritative compilation that became the Enuma Elish in the same way that the story of a worldwide flood that was survived by a handful of people predates the biblical tale of Noah by centuries.
A third significant virtue of these fragments is the record they preserve of humans reacting to the gods. Prior to this point, King’s book has only dealt with gods creating people. The fourth and fifth stories contained in this portion are the first real exposure readers have to the manner in which people reacted to the actions of the gods and expressed their desires for divine intervention. In overhearing this prayer to the Euphrates River and to the gods of the pantheon for the purification and abundance, today’s readers gain insight into the piety of those who worshipped Marduk and the minor gods they believed he appointed to watch over nature and human affairs.
A fourth benefit of these fragments is the insight they give into the construction of the Enuma Elish, a process very much like the compilation of other religious texts. King quite clearly demonstrates that the Creation Series evolved from earlier stories and came into an accepted authoritative version around 2000 BCE, after which it continued to be adopted and adapted by other religious users. One of the most amazing things about the 49 authentic clay cuneiform tablets he translates is how stringently the scribes tried to adhere to the “authoritative” version of the Enuma Elish, which was already 1,400 years old when they committed it to clay. It is very likely that the inconsistencies mentioned above, like the differing birth orders in the First Tablet, are not the result of corrupt translation but rather the result of various threads of the story being pulled together in an attempt to make a coherent whole. Along the way, variations of stories were determined by religious leaders not to be worthy of inclusion for various reasons.
This process is significant in part because it can be seen that the same process was at work in the creation of both the Hebrew and the Christian Bibles. King’s continual comparison of the Babylonian creation myth to biblical scriptures both implies that their similarities should be analyzed and demonstrates that a similar process was a work in the evolution of Judaic as well as Babylonian scriptures. It is clear from a cursory examination of Christian scriptures that the same processes were at play in the formation of the Christian Bible as well.
Biblical translators recognized by the late 19th century CE that the inconsistencies in the Hebrew Bible were the result of four different oral and written traditions melding together. This recognition, which is now called JEDP Source Theory, emerged from Jewish biblical scholars around 1875. They demonstrated that the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Pentateuch or the Torah, were an amalgam of different sources, which is why there are two distinct accounts of creation in the book of Genesis. While Judaism as a faith can readily be traced back to around 1700 BCE, the different strains of Hebrew law, history, and creation stories only began to be written down around 925 BCE. The codification of the four sources only fully came together in the Torah as it is known today around 400 BCE.
As was the case with the Babylonian Enuma Elish, pulling the various traditions and stories of the Hebrew Bible together meant that some elements were left out, just as the five Babylonian creation stories in this section were omitted from the seven tablets of creation. Among Bible scholars, the collections of these unapproved documents go by different names, but they may be referred to as extra-testimental literature or the Apocrypha. One example of such a document is of particular interest to those studying the Enuma Elish.: “Bel and the Dragon,” whose main character is the familiar biblical figure Daniel. The book of Daniel that is included in the Bible depicts him as quite strait-laced and unwaveringly devout. Despite his being in Babylonian exile from Judah (the southern portion of Israel) and working side-by-side with a number of Babylonian rulers, Daniel’s close adherence to his Jewish faith gets him tossed into the lion’s den. The extra-testimental version of Daniel portrays him in a very different light. In “Bel and the Dragon,” Daniel is something of a smart-alecky whistleblower who is known to the Babylonian king not so much for his Jewish piety as for revealing the hypocrisy of the priests of Bel (the colloquial name for the god Marduk). The biblical Daniel goes out of his way to make sure no person, guilty or innocent, is killed by the king. The Apocryphal Daniel intentionally places the priests of Marduk, along with their wives and children, in such a position that the king is disposed to kill them. It would clearly serve the purposes of those who selected the books of the Hebrew Bible to use the “righteous” depiction of Daniel rather than the other.
The same processes were at work when religious leaders chose the books that made up the Christian Bible as well. The 27 books that make up the Christian holy scriptures were officially selected at the Council of Hippo in 393 CE, about 350 years after the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. As with the Hebrew Bible, so the official Christian collection excluded some early documents as being unacceptable.
