55 pages • 1 hour read
Leonard William King, ed.The Seven Tablets of Creation: The Enuma Elish
Fiction | Scripture | Adult | BCEA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Preface-IntroductionChapter Summaries & Analyses
Preface Summary
Leonard William King opens The Seven Tablets of Creation: The Enuma Elish with a lengthy Preface intended to explain the history of what he calls the “Creation Series,” of previous attempts to translate them, and of why he authored this version. He explains that the tablets he and other translators are working with are cuneiforms, clay bricks upon which Babylonian and Assyrian words are transcribed. The tablets date to the seventh century BCE, approximately 2,700 years before King began working with them. The ancient cuneiforms that contained the Babylonian creation story appeared in a piecemeal fashion, with no obvious progression. The British Museum acquired the tablets gradually over many years, with more tablets and tablet fragments brought into the collection.
King explains that the first significant attempt at a comprehensive translation of the Enuma Elish came in from George Smith in 1875. Smith called his version of the Creation Series The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1). Smith had access only to 21 tablets and tablet fragments. King writes of the difficulty Smith faced in piecing together the elements of the cuneiforms and thus the creation story (1).
Over the next 27 years, the museum acquired more ancient cuneiforms, such that King could identify 49 authentic tablets and fragments of the Enuma Elish. This process allowed him to determine the proper order of the tablets and thus to translate the myth in sequential order. He reports that he finds confirmation for his compilation and translation in part because it closely follows the order of Babylonian creation story as transcribed by the sixth-century-CE Greek historian and scholar Damascius (6). In light of the discoveries of new fragments and the possibility of a comprehensible translation of the Creation Series, King writes, he realized he should write an updated translation of the Enuma Elish. As he says, “In view of the additional information as to the form and contents of the poem which this new material afforded, it was clearly necessary that a new translation of the Creation Legends should be made, and this I undertook forthwith” (4).
King expresses his appreciation for the scholarship of his contemporary colleagues who, like him, are investing themselves in reassembling the lost elements of the Creation Series. Like Smith, King focuses on the similarities between the Babylonian myth and the biblical creation account in Genesis and returns to it at several points during the Preface.
In the heart of the Preface, King systematically reviews what the newly discovered tablets and fragments have revealed about the Enuma Elish. He describes the many new revelations about the Creation Series that he achieved as he pieced the elements together. Through the compilation and comparison process, King also discovered fragments within the collection that did not properly belong within the series (8).
Introduction Summary
King opens his 118-page Introduction to The Seven Tablets of Creation with a definition of the creation myth’s historical title, the Enuma Elish: “The great Assyrian poem, or series of legends, which narrates the story of the Creation of the world and man, was termed by the Assyrians and Babylonians Enuma Elish, ‘When in the height,’ from the two opening words of the text” (13). He goes on to give a basic description of the Creation Series: seven tablets and 994 lines, with each tablet bearing about 142 lines. King explains that the existing cuneiform tablets from which he worked date from around 668 BCE and are written in Assyrian. Other, later copies of tablets exist that are written in Neo-Babylonian.
King offers a detailed rendering of previous scholars and contemporaries who worked on translating and compiling the Creation Series. He gives a meticulous breakdown of how the tablets were acquired and pieced together. He introduces the term “practice-tablets,” which were cuneiforms used by ancient Assyrian and Babylonian students who learned to write by transcribing portions of the Enuma Elish. These practice-tablets occasionally filled in portions of the story that were missing from older cuneiform transcriptions of the myth (13).
King describes the seven tablets as being composed of five major strands: “(1) the Birth of the gods; parts (2) The Legend of Ea and Apsu; (3) The Dragon-Myth; (4) The actual account of Creation; and (5) The Hymn to Marduk under his fifty titles” (34). Drawing on the work of his predecessor, George Smith, King gives a lengthy discussion of the First Tablet’s theogony of the Babylonian gods and their relationship to one another (16-18). The precise birth order of the gods and their relative importance at the beginning of the myth is difficult to ascertain directly from the text itself. The god Ea is quite significant both in the way he is described and in his early heroic actions, while his son, Marduk, who is not even mentioned until into well into the myth, eventually supersedes him (17).
King examines a particular lengthy passage that is repeated four times within the Enuma Elish recounting the preparations of the goddess Tiamat for war with the other gods. In addition to conveying the rage and deadly intent of the dragon Tiamat, the passage contains descriptions of many horrible mythological monsters of her own creation. King compares this Creation Series passage to that which was recorded by Berossus, a Babylonian writer from the third century BCE who recorded the ancient myths of Marduk and the other gods in Greek, noting that Berossus, a priest of Bel (Marduk), downplayed the importance of other gods and elevated the importance of Marduk (21).
The account of Berossus, King observes, closely resembles his reconstructed account of Tiamat’s death and Marduk’s creation of the heavens and the earth from her corpse. King points out that Marduk’s celestial heaven contains a “mansion,” similar to the mansion that was assumed to dwell in the “depths,” the ocean. Marduk names the heavens “E-shara” (23-24).
King relies on the Berossus version of the Creations Series to a great extent when it comes to the description of Marduk bringing vegetation to the earth, saying much of that part of the Enuma Elish is missing from the cuneiforms. The creation of man, King notes, was not viewed in the story as being a natural progression of the creation of the heavens and earth. Marduk cleverly decides to create human beings as “the solution to a difficulty” Marduk encounters: the discontent of the gods (24). King reports that the creation of man seemed to have appeared in two separate places in earlier compilations of the Creation Series. By piecing together insights from several different sources, however, King is able to determine where the creation of humans fits in the myth (25).
To achieve the creation of humanity, King writes, Marduk orders another god to cut off Marduk’s head. Marduk mixes the resulting blood with dirt to bring about human and animal life. He notes that scholars have disagreed about this part of the story, expressing the idea that it was Tiamat’s head or the head of the executioner god that was severed. King, however, documents Marduk saying that he will use his own blood to make human beings. This view is in accord with the ancient version Berossus wrote as well (25-27). King argues that the god who severed the head of Marduk to give life to humans was Ea, Marduk’s father (27).
King describes the conclusion of the Enuma Elish as a second gathering of the assembly of gods during which Marduk officially receives the power that has been promised to him. The gods summarily bestow upon him 50 different titles that describe his accomplishments, his glory, and his powerful abilities. The last name the gods bestow upon him is Hansha, literally meaning “Fifty.” The Enuma Elish concludes with 18 lines of admonitions to human beings, saying that readers should praise Marduk and adhere to his commands (30-32).
King focuses on the struggle between Marduk and Tiamat as the “central episode of the poem” (35). He says, “there is evidence to prove that this legend existed in other forms than that under which it occurs in the Creation Series” (35). For instance, he notes, the library of the ancient Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, dating from the mid-seventh century BCE, contained a legend in which a god besides Marduk conquered a dragon, though it was not before the creation of humanity. King postulates that many Babylonian cities possessed their own local dragon myths (35-36). It’s also the case, King points out, that there were other ancient Babylonian and Assyrian creation myths that did not involve any battle with a dragon but describe civilizations coming into being “in consequence of a movement in the waters” (36). Even though those legends don’t record Marduk battling a dragon, he is still regarded as the creator because he places a reed on the waters and forms dust, from which he creates human beings (36).
King expresses the desire to discover the earliest time in which the Enuma Elish as he has compiled it came together in the form that is recorded in the seven cuneiform tablets. The tablets and fragments, he asserts, do not date any earlier than the seventh century BCE, when King Ashur-bani-pal organized his library. He says that these ancient tablets are copies of much earlier versions of the Creation Series. While no certain date can be determined, King says, there is evidence that the creation myths, as written in the tablets, were in existence at least in the ninth century BCE in the form of limestone sculptures of Marduk battling Tiamat in a temple built before 860 BCE. There are also engraved “cylinder-seals” portraying Marduk fighting the dragon, some of which seem to have come from a time earlier than the seventh century BCE. The legends go even further back in time with the inscriptions found in the E-sagil temple, which came into being no later than 1600 BCE. These inscriptions clearly show Marduk and the dragon (37-39). King holds that there are other forms of evidence that push the creation myth even further into the past, to 2300 BCE (40). As part of his effort to date the Creation Series, King turns his attention to the introduction of Semitic tribes into the Sumerian world of the ancient Near East. The Enuma Elish is Sumerian in origin. The inclusion of Semitic elements into the narrative and the adoption of Sumerian elements into Semitic customs also prove to be a way of time-stamping the development of the creation myth (42). King expresses his opinion that the Seven Tablets of Creation came into being as the ultimate Babylonian description of creation around 2000 BCE (43).
After establishing the probable date at which the Enuma Elish was compiled, King begins to compare the Babylonian/Assyrian creation myths to those of other ancient Near Eastern civilizations, notably the Philistines, Egyptians, and Jews. While he notes some distinctive common elements between the Philistinian and Egyptian cosmogonies, he gives his primary attention to the similarities between the Babylonian Creation Series and the Jewish creation stories. King systematically reviews the seven “acts of creation” listed in the first chapter of the biblical book of Genesis and relates elements from each of them to the Enuma Elish. He portrays the Genesis writers both as drawing from the Babylonian story and as reacting against it in the biblical versions of creation. The primary distinction between the two, as King puts it, is that the Babylonian version is directed toward the gods and their concerns while the Jewish version is directed toward humanity and its concerns (44-50).
King points out that the number “seven” holds religious significance for the ancient Babylonian and Jewish cultures. He argues that the institution of the seventh day as the sabbath, or holy day, originated with the Babylonians (50-51). He also argues that the Jewish notion of seven days of creation probably originated from the Enuma Elish: “The supposition, then, is perhaps not too fanciful, that the connection of the Sabbath with the story of Creation was suggested by the mystical number of the Tablets upon which the Babylonian poem was inscribed” (52-53). King goes on at length to point out various Hebrew Bible passages that clearly refer to Babylonian mythology. He argues that, as a result of the Jewish exile in Babylon, the Hebrew biblical writers made changes to their own ancient texts that previous generations of Hebrew storytellers borrowed from the Babylonians (53-54). King deduces that the various tribal groups around Palestine were quite familiar with the Babylonian myths and had “naturalized” them by absorbing them into their own cultural heritages (54).
King concludes the Introduction with a 34-page breakdown of the various tablets that make up the Creation Series. He delves into the manner in which the tablets mesh together to make up the entire series of the Enuma Elish. King comments on the ancient variants of the Babylonian, Assyrian, biblical Hebrew, and Koine Greek languages found among the tablets he studied as well as the ancient writers who recorded variations of the creation myth. He also discusses the titles given to the various epochs before, during, and after the Creation Series came into being. King gives a scholarly commentary on each of the 49 tablets and tablet fragments he used to compile, translate, and transliterate the Enuma Elish (56-90).
Following his academic discussion of the individual portions of the cuneiforms, King proceeds with an additional 31 pages of footnotes. He uses these to reflect on and compare his scholarship of the tablets to that of other researchers, both his contemporaries and his predecessors. King frequently launches into the languages of the tablets, especially Babylonian and Assyrian, and also regularly quotes the writings of other scholars in the languages of their documents, such as French, German, and Greek (91-122).
Preface-Introduction Analysis
Rather than naming his book The Enuma Elish or The Babylonian Creation Myth, Leonard William King asserts a major scholarly discovery simply by titling this book The Seven Tablets of Creation. The title itself not only promises an engaging and accurate translation of previously disjointed ancient Babylonian and Assyrian texts but also implies the solving of an academic mystery: How many tablets existed in the Enuma Elish and in what order did they belong? In his very opening sentence, King describes the great interest that existed at the beginning of the 20th century in recovering and understanding ancient texts such as the Babylonian creation myths. He writes, “Perhaps no section of Babylonian literature has been more generally studied than the legends which record the Creation of the world” (1). King’s book, therefore, contains two intimately connected but distinct stories. One is the 4,000-year-old story of gods struggling against one another to determine which of them would establish the ultimate direction of creation. The other is an intricate, scholarly, 20th-century detective story of a researcher acquiring enough clues to piece this story of warring gods together in a correct, comprehensible fashion. The Preface and Introduction of the book detail the academic story.
To understand the difficulty King and other researchers face as they attempt to compile and translate the Enuma Elish, a reader must first know that the myths were recorded in cuneiform. Cuneiform is an alphabet made up of wedge-shaped letters. This alphabet was used in the ancient Near East, the area we know today as Asia Minor, the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, and Turkey. Cuneiform writings from as early as 3200 BCE still exist today, though they are mostly those carved in stone. The appearance of individual cuneiform symbols gradually changed over the centuries, a fact that helps scholars determine the time period in which a particular document was written. By 100 CE, the cuneiforms alphabet had disappeared, with new alphabets taking its place. As scribes stopped using cuneiform, however, scholars also lost the ability to translate it. It was only in 1857 CE that the researchers regained the ability to read and translate cuneiform.
Assyrian and Babylonian scribes recorded the Enuma Elish in cuneiforms on clay rather than stone tablets. King and other scholars date the earliest of these tablets to around 686 BCE. While clay tablets are easier to create and more portable than stone slabs, they are also much more fragile. Adding to their fragility, clay cuneiform tablets were seldom placed in kilns to harden them. This is a primary reason that King faced the daunting task of utilizing 49 separate tablets and tablet fragments to piece together what was originally inscribed on seven tablets of about 142 lines each. His Introduction is full of descriptions of the painstaking process of reading small portions of tablets and comparing them to other tablets to gain the fullest possible account of what the seven tablets originally contained. In many cases, partial or entire lines of text disappeared from tablets. King and other scholars make conjectures in those cases about what was written. They base their suppositions from partial lines, from texts by other ancient writers who describe the Enuma Elish, and from practice tablets created by students who learned cuneiform by copying the Creation Series.
King points out he was the first to recognize that the Enuma Elish was originally written on seven tablets and he was the first to determine the correct procession of the story as he has transcribed it in his book. King is quick to give credit to his contemporaries, such as Dr. Wallis Budge “for his friendly suggestions” and other esteemed scholars who were also working to achieve a full, comprehensible translation of the Babylonian creation myth (9). He is self-effacing when he writes that George Smith, the original British researcher who attempted the translation, did not have at hand all the resources that became available to King. “It is true that the Babylonian legends which had been recovered and were first published by him were very fragmentary,” King says, “and that the exact number and order of the Tablets, or sections, of which they were composed were quite uncertain […]” (1).
The true measure of what King accomplished may most clearly be seen in the way his work has stood the test of time. Even though The Seven Tablets of Creation came into print in 1902, it remains the definitive translation and interpretation of the Enuma Elish. Given the broad scientific advances made in every field of endeavor, including ancient Near Eastern studies, during the 20th and 21st centuries, it is difficult to imagine any academic achievement from 1902 measuring up to current scientific standards. Still, King’s scholarly insights and his translation continue to hold sway. Those scholars who currently investigate and write about the Enuma Elish tend to use King’s work as the foundation for their own investigations.
King devotes a generous portion of his study to parallels and inclusions of the Creation Series within the Hebrew Bible. He goes so far as to break down the individual creative acts ascribed to Yahweh, God of the Hebrews, in each of the seven days of creation and compare them to similar events in the Babylonian myth (45-48). Moreover, King frequently lists elements from other ancient Babylonian and Assyrian mythic stories and points out the manner in which they were dealt with in Hebrew scripture. One of the more frequently recognized similarities between ancient Near Eastern mythology and biblical text is the Gilgamesh story of a worldwide flood from which only a handful of people chosen by the gods survive. King relates this to the biblical account of Noah and the flood found in Genesis 6-7 (52).
King’s references to the Hebrew scriptures are so prevalent that they may be seen as a constant backdrop or contrast to everything he writes about the Creation Series. This raises the question of why King devotes so much of his scholarship to the comparison of the Hebrew Bible to the Enuma Elish. In part, the answer is surely that his predecessors and other scholars of his day were intently focused upon the same subjects. King’s footnotes often mention the Babylonian-Hebrew sacred text connections discovered by other researchers. It’s important to note as well that scholarly research on Hebrew and Christian biblical scriptures abounded during the time King assembled the Creation Series. There is no doubt, as he compiled and refined The Seven Tablets of Creation, that King recognized the profound impact his research would have on the study of biblical literature and origins. This recognition had an impact on King as well, impacting the tone of and direction of his writing at the end of the book.
King is not completely comprehensive in listing every touchstone between the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and the Enuma Elish, and reading the Creation Series may stir remembrance of biblical passages for those who are familiar with the Bible. One clear example of this is Psalm 82, in which God—the God of the Hebrews—stands in the midst of an assembly of gods and condemns their injustice, saying, “I say, ‘You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince’” (New Revised Standard Version, 82:6-7). Scholars of Jewish scriptures categorically refer to this as one of the oldest poems of the 150 psalms in the Hebrew Bible. In that Judaism is monotheistic, the notion of Yahweh standing in the midst of other gods must come from a source outside Judaism. This biblical passage clearly harkens back to the confrontations that take place in the Babylonian pantheon.
Even more intriguing, the Christian Bible records Jesus of Nazareth quoting this passage in John 10:34b. In his usage, Jesus is cleverly comparing the religious authorities who are about to stone him to the Babylonian gods who were condemned by Yahweh in Psalm 82. The inclusion of indirect references to the Enuma Elish in the Christian Bible raises the question of why doesn’t mention the influence of Babylonian mythology upon early Christian literature. By the time Christian literature and scriptures began to emerge, in the second half of the first century CE, the god Marduk had evolved to be called Bel and from that to Baal, whom Bible readers will recognize as a regional Palestinian fertility god. Though Baal is a common foil of the Hebrew Bible prophets, he is only mentioned by name once in the Christian Bible. In Christian scriptures, Baal is addressed as Satan, which is a translation of the Canaanite word Beelzebub, meaning “prince of demons.” Thus, the ancient Babylonian high god is still a boss in the Christian Bible, only he’s the lord of evil supernatural beings. This concept is carried to its fullest, ironically, in the Revelation of John, the final book of the Christian Bible, in which Satan is identified as a dragon in heaven who battles against the archangel Michael and loses, summarily being thrown to earth. The heavenly struggle in Revelation takes place in the eschaton, that is, at the end of time or of the current age. As such, it a sort of reverse creation story in which the god who defeated the dragon in the Enuma Elish has become the dragon who is defeated. The similarity between the two accounts is undeniable, though King does not address it in The Seven Tablets of Creation.
It is also worthy of mention that certain distinctly Christian acts recorded in the Christian Bible have a precedent in the Enuma Elish. For instance, there is the notion of the dying god. Jesus—the son of the greater God—willingly sacrificing his life upon the cross is preceded by the intentional death of Marduk, who instructs his father, an older god, to take his life. Marduk uses his blood and bone to create human beings. Jesus expresses that he is present in his blood as symbolized by wine and bread, and he instructs his followers to become part of him by partaking of his body and blood.
There is a cosmogony contained within the Christian Bible as well. It is found in the Gospel of John 1:1-18. In this passage, the Gospel writer does not focus on the mechanics of creation but upon the primacy of the monotheistic God, saying there was one who was with God at the beginning of all things, that one being incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth. The writer goes on to equate Jesus with “word,” implying that the absolute authority of God is contained within Jesus. During the remainder of the 18 verses, the writer equates Jesus with light, power, glory, divine grace, and truth. King does not deal with Christian cosmogony in his work on the Enuma Elish. This is not simply an oversight or a subject too vast for King to evaluate in this book. In the analysis of the last section of the book, King’s closing comments afford the opportunity to return to this topic and give us insight into the forces he was facing that might have mitigated against his discussion of Babylonian influence on Christian scripture.
In regard to cosmogonies, King discusses three distinct ancient creation stories in his book. As mentioned, he fleshes out the Babylonian Creation Series and walks readers through the Hebrew Bible account of creation. He also discusses the Egyptian creation myths, but not to the extent he devotes to Babylonian or Hebrew mythology. This is because, apart from a few similarities, King reports, there is not the profound influence or interplay between Egyptian and Babylonian cosmogony that exists between the Babylonian and Jewish versions of creation (43).
The Egyptian creation myth is similar to the Babylonian in that the world emerges from a swell of water, which is identified as a river. In the Enuma Elish, that river is the Huber (Euphrates), while in Egyptian mythology the source river is the Hap or Hapi, the ancient name of the Nile (116). Understanding a great river as the source of earth and life likely comes from the annual flow of fertile silt that flooded the rivers’ deltas, which would be exceedingly significant for cultures that were transitioning to an agricultural economy.
The Egyptian creation story is similar to the Babylonian, as opposed to the Hebrew creation story, in that it is polytheistic and the gods in both myths are anthropomorphic, meaning they act like human beings in their motivations and actions. Another way in which the Babylonian and Egyptian creation stories are similar is that they treat the advent of human beings as relatively insignificant compared to the divine actions taking place; King writes, “It’s worthy to note that in this story of creation, as well as Egyptian cosmogonies, the creation of mankind is almost treated as an after-thought” (221). In both myths, the ultimate purpose of humanity is to serve and worship the gods. The Egyptian myth differs from the Enuma Elish in that it does not depict a violent struggle among the gods.
In the lengthy Introduction to his book, King helps readers understand the scope of the creation myth and his work in several ways. By discussing the historical epochs from which the creation myth emerged, he reveals the manner in which ancient tales were transmitted from one locale to another, with each new community or tribe adopting and adapting these very primitive stories to their own purposes (42-43). As a particular city-state, such as Babylon or Nineveh, became more important, its local god would ascend in importance and supplant the local gods of other communities within the informally shared stories. King demonstrates how this phenomenon continued across centuries.
In this light, the Enuma Elish is actually only one version of a number of ancient creations myths, and King touches upon other variations of the creation story later in the book. Among all other ancient Near Eastern theogonies, the Babylonian Creation Series stands out as authoritative. Perhaps in large measure, this is because Babylon became the dominant city-state in the region from around 1900 until 1600 BCE. While Babylon’s influence wavered over the following millennium, it once again emerged as the most powerful force throughout Asia Minor in 605 BCE during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II. This period saw the reinstatement of earlier Babylonian religious and cultural practices, and it was during this time that scribes worked faithfully to record and pass down the ancient creation myths.
The location in which this myth attained prominence is quite significant, not just for antiquity but for the course of human development. Readers may recognize this geographical region by the name “the Fertile Crescent.” World History Encyclopedia details the borders of this large area and its importance:
The Fertile Crescent, often called the ‘Cradle of Civilization,’ is the region in the Middle East which curves, like a quarter-moon shape, from the Persian Gulf, through modern-day southern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and northern Egypt. The region has long been recognized for its vital contributions to world culture stemming from the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant which included the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians, all of whom were responsible for the development of civilization. (Mark, Joshua J. “Fertile Crescent.” World History Encyclopedia, 28 Mar. 2018, www.ancient.eu/Fertile_Crescent/.)
A large portion of this Fertile Crescent area is historically referred to as ancient Mesopotamia, meaning literally “between two rivers,” referring to the Tigris and Euphrates. As King points out in his Introduction, when the Enuma Elish refers to the River of Creation, it is a reference to the Euphrates River, which was considered by Babylonians to be the source of all the fertility of their region (53). Mesopotamia is typically regarded as the part of the world where the notion of “city” first came into being. Thus, the greatest city in Mesopotamia, Babylon, exported its creation story throughout the Fertile Crescent during those centuries when human civilization was first developing dramatically and exponentially. As the above-cited encyclopedia entry indicates, humanity’s first conceptions of medicine, agriculture, science, mathematics, technology, time, literature, and even the wheel can be traced to this area and epoch. Indeed, humanity is still unpacking a great many conceptions that first emerged in ancient Mesopotamian civilization. Accordingly, when we read and react to the Enuma Elish, we are still engaging with that civilization’s cosmogony as well.
Another important aspect of the geographic mix in the Fertile Crescent is the commingling of cultures. King points out in his Introduction that the Creation Series began as a Sumerian cultural conception that eventually became entwined with the Semitic tribes of Asia Minor (53). Seen from the historical perspective, Mesopotamia’s first notable civilization was that of the Sumerians around 6000 BCE. Semitic tribes began to make incursions into the region around 3000 BCE. The Babylonians, who were a Semitic people, retained the official language of the Sumerians when they attained the height of their power, thus opening the door for the ancient Sumerian myths of creation to meld with Babylonian religious conceptions and become the default cosmogony of the most powerful city-state in the ancient Near East. The ironic reality is that Marduk became the most powerful god of the Near East because Babylon, the most influential city, adopted him as its local god.
The Fertile Crescent was fertile not merely in an agricultural sense, but also in terms of human development. Technological advances like the use of the wheel that first began in the Fertile Crescent continued to spread and evolve. This area and time period were religiously fertile as well: Judaism, Christianity and Islam all emerged from Semitic roots in the Fertile Crescent. That these religions share common roots not only with one another but also with Babylonian mythology is another important reason to study the Enuma Elish.
