Mythology

while several are intended to explain various elements in Mesopotamian beliefs and practices. Underlying the epic as a whole is the theme which underlies several other Akkadian myths, the plaint of the human spirit before the fact of death and the loss of immortality. The Myth of Adapa The same theme underlies another myth which seems to have been popular beyond the limits of Mesopotamia, since a fragment of it was found among the Amarna archives in Egypt. The name of its hero, Adapa, has been equated by the Assyriologist, Ebeling, with the Hebrew name Adam, so that it may be regarded as a myth about the first man. Adapa, according to the myth, was the son of Ea, the god of wisdom. He was priest-king of Eridu, the oldest of the Babylonian cities. Ea had created him ‘as the model of man’, and had given him wisdom, but not eternal life. His priestly duties are described, and one of these was to provide fish for the table of the gods. One day he was fishing when the South Wind blew and overturned his boat. In rage he broke the wing of the South Wind so that it did not blow for seven days. Anu the high god observed this, and sent his messenger, Ilabrat, to inquire the reason for it. Ilabrat came back and told Anu what Adapa had done. Anu then ordered Adapa to be brought before him. Ea, ‘he who knows what pertains to heaven’, gave his son advice as to how he should proceed on approaching Anu. He told Adapa to put on mourning apparel and appear with hair disordered. When he reached the gate of heaven he would find it guarded by two gods, Tammuz and Ningizzida. They would ask him what he wanted and why he was in mourning. He was to reply that he was in mourning for two gods who had disappeared from the land, and when they asked him who these gods were, he was to reply, Tammuz and Ningizzida. Flattered by this they would speak favourably to Anu on his behalf and introduce him into the presence of the high god. But Ea warned his son that when he came before Anu, he would be offered bread of death and water of death; these he must refuse. He would also be offered a garment and anointing oil, which he might accept. All these injunctions he was to observe with care. Everything fell out as Ea had foretold, Adapa gained the favour of the gods who guarded the gate, and was brought before Anu who regarded him with favour and accepted his explanation of what had happened to the South Wind. Then. Anu asked the assembled gods what should be done for Adapa, and, presumably with the intention of conferring immortality upon him, ordered bread of life and water of life to be offered to him. Adapa, obeying his father’s orders, refused them, but put on the garment which was offered to him, and anointed himself with the oil which they gave him. Thereupon Anu laughed and asked Adapa why he had acted so strangely. When Adapa explained that it was by the advice of his father, Ea, that he had refused what was offered to him, Anu tells him that by his act he has deprived himself of the gift of immortality. The end of the tablet is broken, but it seems that Anu sent Adapa back to earth with certain privileges and disabilities. Eridu was to be freed from feudal obligations, and special dignity was conferred upon its priesthood; but misfortune and disease were to be the lot of mankind, allayed, however, by the ministrations of Ninkarrak, the goddess of healing. There are various points of interest in this remarkable myth. As frequently in these myths, the loss of immortality is ascribed to the jealousy of one or other of the gods, and the belief is expressed that the gods have reserved immortality for themselves. We also see from this myth that the disappearance of Tammuz is a recurrent element in Semitic mythology. It may be possible to see in the garment which is provided for the hero by the gods a link with the

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feature in the Hebrew story of the Fall in which Yahweh provides Adam and Eve with garments of skin. There is also the aetiological element explaining the origin of the special exemption from feudal dues enjoyed by the ancient priesthood of Eridu. The Myth of Etana and the Eagle Many of the Mesopotamian cylinder seals represent scenes which seem to be concerned with incidents in the myths. Several of them have been thought to represent the exploits of Gilgamesh, but very few of them can be identified with any certainty. There is a special interest. in the fact that the myth of Etana can be identified with certainty as depicted on an early seal. [18] In the early Sumerian king-lists the first dynasty after the Flood is the legendary dynasty of Kish, and the thirteenth king of Kish is listed as Etana the shepherd, who ascended to heaven. The seal represents a figure rising from the ground on the back of an eagle, while sheep graze, and two dogs gaze up at the ascending figure. The motive of several of the myths already dealt with recurs in a different form in the myth of Etana, in this instance connected with birth instead of death. In the course of transmission the myth has become interwoven with a folk-story of the eagle and the serpent. The myth opens with a description of the state of mankind after the Flood, without the guidance and shepherding of a king. The insignia of kinship, the sceptre, crown, tiara, and shepherd’s crook are laid up before Anu in heaven. Then the great Anunnaki, the deciders of destiny, decide that kingship shall be sent down from heaven. It is apparently to be inferred that Etana is the appointed king. But in order to secure the permanence of the kingship an heir was necessary, and Etana has no son. We are shown Etana daily offering sacrifices to Shamash and beseeching the god to grant him an heir. He cries to Shamash, ‘O Lord, may it issue from thy mouth, grant me the plant of birth, show me the plant of birth, remove my burden, and produce for me a name: Shamash tells the king to cross the mountain, there he will find a pit and in the pit an eagle imprisoned., He is to free the eagle, and the eagle will guide him to the plant of birth. Here the myth introduces the folk-story of the eagle and the serpent. According to the story, at the beginning of things the eagle and the serpent had sworn a solemn oath of friendship. The eagle had his nest and his young in the top of a tree, while the serpent and his young lived at its base. They undertook to protect and provide food for each other’s young. For a time all went well. But the eagle conceived evil in his heart, and broke his oath; while the serpent was away hunting, the eagle devoured the serpent’s young. When the serpent returned and found his home desolate, he appealed to Shamash for vengeance against the oath-breaker. Shamash showed him how to snare the eagle, break his wings, and imprison him in a pit. Here the eagle lay, miserably crying in vain to Shamash for help. Here, directed by Shamash, Etana enters, and delivers the eagle, who, in gratitude for his help, promises to carry him up to the throne of Ishtar from whom he may obtain the plant of birth. This is the point of the story depicted by the cylinder seal. The myth vividly describes the stages of the ascent, as the landscape diminishes and disappears. In the middle of the description of the descent the tablet breaks off; but as the king-list gives the name of Etana’s son and successor, the myth presumably had a fortunate ending. It may be remarked that the folk-tale of the eagle and the serpent contains one of the oldest elements of that type of literature. It represents the youngest of the eagle’s children as possessing wisdom, and warning his father against the danger of breaking his oath. The myth

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‘When 1 die, shall I not be like Enkidu? Woe has entered my belly. Fearing death, I roam over the steppe.’ He resolves to go in search of immortality, and the account of his adventures during the search constitutes the next section of the Epic. Gilgamesh is aware that his ancestor Utnapishtim is the only mortal who has acquired immortality, and he determines to find him in order to learn from him the secrets of death and life. At the outset of his journey he comes to the foot of the mountain range called Mashu, the entrance to which is guarded by a scorpion-man and his wife. The scorpion-man tells him that no mortal has ever crossed the mountain and braved its dangers, but when Gilgamesh discloses the object of his journey, the guardian lets him pass, and he travels along the sun’s road. For twelve leagues he journeys in darkness until he reaches Shamash, the sun-god. Shamash tells him that his quest is vain, ‘Gilgamesh, whither rovest thou, The life you pursue you shall not find.’ But he will not be dissuaded and goes on his way. He then comes to the shore of the sea and the waters of death. There he finds another guardian, the goddess Siduri, the ale-wife; she too endeavours to dissuade him from attempting to cross the deadly sea, and tells him that none but Shamash can cross that sea. She tells him to enjoy life while he may in words that strangely resemble the words of the Master of assemblies in Eccl. 9:7-9 ‘Gilgamesh, whither rove you? The life you pursue you shall not find. When the gods created mankind, Death for mankind they set aside, Life in their own hands retaining. You, Gilgamesh, let full be your belly, Make you merry by day and by night. Of each day make you a feast of rejoicing, Day and night dance you and play. Let your garments be sparkling and fresh, Your head be washed, bathe you in water. Pay heed to the little one that holds your hand, Let your spouse delight in thy bosom, For this is the task of mankind.’ [17] It is hard to resist the conclusion that the late Hebrew moralist was acquainted with this passage in the Epic. But the hero refuses to listen to Siduri with her jug of ale, and pushes on towards the last stage of his perilous journey. By the shore he meets Urshanabi who had been the steersman of Utnapishtim’s boat, and commands him to ferry him across the waters of death. Urshanabi tells him that he must go into the forest and cut down 120 poles each sixty cubits long. He is to use these as punt poles letting each drop as he uses it, so as not to touch the fatal waters of death. He follows Urshanabi’s advice, and comes at last to Utnapishtim’s dwelling-place. He immediately begs Utnapishtim to tell him how he has attained to the immortality which he himself is so eagerly seeking. In answer his ancestor tells him the story of the Flood, as we

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have already seen, and confirms what the scorpion-man, Shamash, and Siduri have already told him, that the gods have reserved immortality for themselves and have decreed death as the lot of mankind. Utnapishtim shows Gilgamesh that he cannot even resist sleep, much less the final sleep of death. As Gilgamesh prepares to depart disappointed, Utnapishtim, as a parting gift, tells him of a plant which has the property of making the old young again, but in order to get it he will have to dive to the bottom of the sea. Gilgamesh does so and brings up the wonder-working plant. On his way back to Erech he stops by a pool to bathe and change his clothes; while he is doing this a serpent smells the odour of the plant and carries it off, sloughing its skin as it goes. This feature of the story is clearly an aetiological myth explaining why the serpent is able to renew its life by casting its old skin. So the quest has failed, and the episode closes with the picture of Gilgamesh sitting by the shore and lamenting his misfortune. He returns empty-handed to Erech, and here the epic probably ended. But, in the form in which we have it now, an additional tablet has been appended, making the twelfth and final tablet. It has been shown by Professors Gadd and Kramer that this tablet is a direct translation from the Sumerian. It has also been shown that the beginning of the tablet is a continuation of another episode in the complex of Gilgamesh myths. This is the myth of Gilgamesh and the Huluppu-tree. It is evidently an aetiological myth explaining the origin of the sacred drum, the pukku, and its ritual use. According to this myth, Inanna, who is Ishtar, had taken a huluppu-tree from the banks of the Euphrates, and planted it in her garden, intending to make her bed and chair from its wood. When hostile forces prevented her from carrying out her purpose, Gilgamesh came to her help. In gratitude she gave him a pukku and a mikku made from the base and crown of the tree respectively. These two objects have been interpreted by scholars as a magic drum and a magic drum-stick. It may be remarked in passing that the big Lilissu-drum and its drum-sticks played an important part in Akkadian ritual; the description of its making and the rituals which accompanied it is given in Thureau-Dangin’s Rituels accadiens. Smaller drums were also used in Akkadian ritual, and the pukku may have been such a drum. Tablet twelve opens with Gilgamesh lamenting the loss of his pukku and his mikku, which have somehow disappeared into the underworld. Enkidu undertakes to go down into the underworld and recover the lost objects. Gilgamesh advises him as to the observance of certain rules of behaviour in order that he may not be seized and held there. Enkidu breaks all these rules and is seized and held in the underworld. Gilgamesh then appeals to Enlil for help, in vain, then to Sin, also in vain, and finally to Ea who tells Nergal to make a hole in the ground to allow the spirit of Enkidu to ascend. ‘The spirit of Enkidu, like a wind-puff, issued forth from the nether world.’ Gilgamesh begs Enkidu to describe the order of the underworld and the state of the dwellers therein. Enkidu tells Gilgamesh that the body which he has loved and embraced is devoured by vermin and filled with dust. Gilgamesh throws himself on the ground and weeps. The last part of the tablet is badly mutilated, but it appears to describe the difference between the lot in the underworld of those who have received proper funeral rites and the miserable state of those who have not. Here the Gilgamesh cycle ends. It clearly embodies a mass of early Sumerian and Akkadian myth and folklore. Some of the myths contained in it come under the head of ritual myths,

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trial of strength which ends in a compact of friendship. The two swear eternal comradeship. This ends the first episode of the Epic. Here we are inevitably reminded of the theme of Genesis 3, where the serpent promises Adam that he will become wise and like God, knowing good and evil, if he partakes of the forbidden fruit. It can hardly be doubted that the Epic in its present form is composed of various myths and folk-stories which have been brought together and artistically welded into a whole round the central figure of Gilgamesh. The next episode relates the adventures of Gilgamesh and Enkidu as they set out to attack and slay the fire-breathing giant Huwawa, or, as his name is given in the Assyrian version, Humbaba. The purpose of the enterprise is, as Gilgamesh says to Enkidu, ‘that all evil from the land we may banish’. It is possible that these stories of the adventures of Gilgamesh and his trusty comrade Enkidu may have helped to shape the Greek myth of the labours of Hercules, though some scholars deny this possibility. [15] In the Epic, Huwawa is represented as guarding the cedar forests of the Amanus stretching six thousand leagues. Enkidu endeavours to dissuade his friend from this perilous enterprise, but Gilgamesh is determined to attempt it, and, with the help of the gods, after a tremendous struggle they slay Huwawa and cut off his head. In the account of this episode the cedar forest is described as being the abode of the goddess Irnini, another name for Ishtar, and this forms the link with the next episode in the Epic. When Gilgamesh returns in triumph from his victory, the goddess Ishtar is attracted by his beauty and tries to induce him to become her lover. He rejects her advances with insults, and reminds her of the miserable fate of all her previous lovers. Enraged by his rejection, the goddess begs Anu to avenge her by creating the Bull of heaven and sending him to ravage the kingdom of Gilgamesh. The bull is sent down and wreaks havoc among the people of Erech, but is ultimately slain by Enkidu. As the result of this act the gods meet in council and decide that Enkidu must die. Enkidu has a dream in which he sees himself carried off to the underworld and transformed by Nergal into a ghost. The dream contains a description of the Semitic conception of the underworld which is worth quoting ‘He (the god) transformed me, So that my arms were like those of a bird. Looking at me, he leads me to the House of Darkness, The abode of Irkalla, To the house which none leave who have entered it, On the road from which there is no way back, To the house wherein the dwellers are bereft of light, Where dust is their fare and clay their food. They are clothed like birds, with wings for garments, And see no light, residing in darkness.’ [16] Enkidu then falls sick and dies, and we have a vivid description of the grief of Gilgamesh and the mourning ritual which he performs for his friend, reminding one of the mourning rites performed by Achilles for Patroclus. There is a suggestion in the Epic here that death is a new and dreadful experience. Gilgamesh is represented as dreading that he must become like Enkidu,

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myth undoubtedly rests upon the tradition of a flood of unusual severity, although, as its setting in the Gilgamesh Epic suggests, it has been linked up with funerary ritual and with the search for immortality. There is not, however, sufficient evidence to show that the Flood myth, like the Creation myth, became a ritual myth. We shall now describe the other Assyro- Babylonian myths which have been preserved in the various collections which the labours of archaeologists have made available in recent years. The Epic of Gilgamesh This very remarkable literary production in which, as we have already seen, the Flood myth is embedded, is partly myth and partly saga. It relates the adventures of a semi-mythical king of Erech who is named in the Sumerian king-lists as the fifth king of the first dynasty of Erech, and is said to have reigned 120 years. The work was extremely popular and widely distributed in the ancient Near East. Fragments of a Hittite translation have been found in the archives of Boghazkoy; also a fragment of a Hittite version. A fragment of the Akkadian version was found in the course of the American excavation of Megiddo. Professor Speiser’s words about the Epic are worth quoting. ‘For the first time in the history of the world a profound experience on such a heroic scale has found expression in a noble style. The scope and sweep of the epic, and its sheer poetic power, give it a timeless appeal. In antiquity, the influence of the poem spread to various tongues and cultures.’ [14] The Akkadian version consisted of twelve tablets, of which most of the fragments come from the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. The longest and best preserved fragment is tablet eleven containing the account of the Flood, which we have already discussed. The Epic opens with a description of the strength and heroic qualities of Gilgamesh. The gods have created him of superhuman size and valour; he is said to be two-thirds god and one-third man. But the nobles of Erech complain to the gods that Gilgamesh, who should be the shepherd of his people, is behaving in an arrogant and tyrannical manner. They beg the gods to create a being like Gilgamesh, against whom he may measure his strength, so that they may have peace. Accordingly the goddess Aruru fashions from clay the figure of Enkidu, a wild human creature of the steppes, of surpassing strength. He feeds on grass, is friendly to the wild beasts and drinks with them at their watering-places. He destroys the hunter’s snares and delivers the wild animals taken in them. When one of Gilgamesh’s hunters brings the report to him of the nature and strange behaviour of this wild man of the steppes, Gilgamesh tells the hunter to take a temple-prostitute to the watering-place where Enkidu is wont to drink with the wild animals that she may exercise her wiles upon him. The hunter does as he was commanded, and the woman lies in wait for Enkidu until he comes to drink with the wild beasts at the watering place. When he comes she displays her charms before him, and he is seized with desire for her. After seven days of amorous delight Enkidu awakes from his trance and finds that a change has taken place in him. The wild beasts now flee from him in terror, and the woman says to him, ‘You are wise, Enkidu, you have become like a god.’ She then tells him of the glories and delights of Erech, and of the strength and fame of Gilgamesh; she induces him to discard his clothing of skins, to shave and anoint himself, and leads him to Erech into the presence of Gilgamesh. Enkidu and Gilgamesh then engage in a

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Utnapishtim begins by telling Gilgamesh that the story which he is about to relate is ‘a hidden matter, a secret of the gods’. He describes himself as a man of Shuruppak, most ancient of the cities of Akkad. Ea reveals to him through the wall of his reed-but that the gods have decided to destroy all the seed of life by a flood, though the reason for their decision is not given. Ea instructs Utnapishtim to build a ship into which he is to bring ‘the seed of all living things’. The dimensions and shape of the ship are given, according to which it appears that the ship was to be a perfect cube. Utnapishtim asks Ea how he is to explain to the citizens of Shuruppak the reasons for his actions, and Ea tells him that he is to say that he has incurred the displeasure of Enlil and that he has been banished from Enlil’s territory. He tells them, ‘To the Deep I will therefore go down, to dwell with my lord Ea.’ He further tells them that Enlil is about to shower down abundance upon them; so that they are completely deceived as to the god’s real intentions. Then follows the account of the building of the ship and the loading of it: ‘(Whatever I had) I laded upon her; Whatever I had of silver I laded upon her; Whatever I (had) of gold I laded upon her; Whatever I had of all the living beings I (laded) upon her. All my family and kin I made go aboard the ship. The beasts of the field, the wild creatures of the field, All the craftsmen I made go aboard.’ [13] Then follows a vivid description of the storm. Adad thunders; Nergal tears down the doorposts of the gates that hold back the waters of the upper ocean; the Anunnaki lift up the torches, ’setting the land ablaze with their glare’. The gods themselves are alarmed and cower like dogs against the wall of heaven. Ishtar, who apparently had incited the gods to destroy mankind, lifts up her voice and bewails her action, while the rest of the gods weep with her. The storm rages for six days and nights. On the seventh day it subsides; Utnapishtim looks out and sees that the landscape is as level as a flat roof, and that ‘all of mankind had returned to clay’. The ship grounds on Mt Nisir. Utnapishtim waits seven days, and then sends out a dove which returns having found no resting place. He then sends out a swallow which also returns. Finally he sends out a raven which finds food and does not return. Then he lets out all that are in the ship and offers sacrifice. The gods smell the sweet savour and gather like flies to the sacrifice. Ishtar arrives, and lifts up her necklace of lapis-lazuli and swears by it never to forget what has happened. She upbraids Enlil for having caused the destruction of her people. Then Enlil arrives at the sacrifices and is furious that any one has been allowed to escape. Ninurta blames Ea for betraying the secret of the gods, and Ea expostulates with Enlil and intercedes for Utnapishtim. Enlil is appeased and blesses Utnapishtim and his wife and confers upon them immortality like the gods. He decrees that henceforth they shall dwell far away at the mouth of the rivers. There the account of the Flood ends, and the rest of the tablet, together with tablet twelve, belong to the Gilgamesh story, and will be dealt with later. While excavations at various Mesopotamian sites have shown evidence for severe floods at Ur, Kish, and Erech, there is no evidence for a flood covering the whole country; and the severity and date of the floods differ for each of the above-mentioned cities. Nevertheless the

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Then the gods build a temple for Marduk, the great Esagila temple in Babylon with its ziqqurat. At the command of Anu they proclaim the fifty great names of Marduk, a proceeding which occupies the rest of the poem. This is the outline of the Babylonian myth of creation, and the underlying Sumerian elements can easily be detected. But the elements which were scattered over a number of Sumerian myths have, in the Enuma elish, been brought together and welded into a coherent whole. We have no evidence that the various Sumerian myths ever formed part of a ritual. They can be explained, as Professor Thorkild Jacobsen has so ably done, on aetiological lines. But while the aetiological factor is still discernible in Enuma elish, the poem has now become a ritual myth; possessing magical potency, and playing a vital part in the Babylonian New Year Festival in connexion with the dramatic representation of the death and resurrection of the god. The Myth of the Flood The third of our basic myths is the myth of the Flood. In this case the somewhat fragmentary Sumerian myth has been considerably expanded in its Babylonian form and has been embedded in the Gilgamesh Epic. We shall deal with the Babylonian form of the saga of Gilgamesh later, but the Flood myth is linked up with the Gilgamesh Epic so as to form part of the adventures of its hero. A mythological theme almost entirely absent from Sumerian mythology so far as we know it at present, but very prominent in Semitic mythology, is the problem of the existence of death and sickness, and the quest for immortality. In the Gilgamesh Epic the problem is forced upon Gilgamesh by the death of his companion Enkidu, of whom we shall hear more when we deal with the other parts of the Epic; but at present we are concerned with the connexion between the Epic and the Flood myth. After the description of Enkidu’s death and the mourning of Gilgamesh for his companion, we are told that Gilgamesh is disturbed by the realization that he himself too must die, ‘When I die, shall I not be like Enkidu? Woe has entered my belly. Fearing death, I roam over the steppe.’ [12] The only mortal who is known to have escaped death and attained immortality is Gilgamesh’s ancestor Utnapishtim, the Babylonian equivalent of Ziusudra, the Sumerian hero of the Flood. Gilgamesh therefore resolves to go in search of his ancestor in order to discover the secret of immortality. He receives various warnings of the difficulties and dangers of the journey. He is told before he can reach his goal he will have to cross the mountains of Mashu and the waters of death, a journey which only the god Shamash has ever accomplished. Nevertheless, he braves the dangers and reaches Utnapishtim at last. The text is broken at the point where the two meet, and when it becomes legible again Utnapishtim is telling Gilgamesh that the gods have reserved to themselves the secret of death and life. Gilgamesh then asks Utnapishtim how he has attained the possession of immortality, and in reply Utnapishtim tells him the story of the Flood. This is contained in the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the longest and best preserved of the twelve tablets which comprise the Epic. That the myth was widely known in the ancient East is attested by the fact that Hittite and Hurrian fragments of the myth have been discovered.

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in stirring her up to take measures for the annihilation of Anu and his associates. She makes Kingu, her firstborn, the leader of the attack, arms him, and invests him with the tablets of destiny. She then begets a horde of monstrous beings, such as the scorpion-man and the centaur whom we find depicted on Babylonian seals and boundary-stones. She places Kingu at the head of this host, and prepares to avenge Apsu. The second tablet describes how the news of the coming attack is received by the assembly of the gods. Anshar is troubled and smites his thigh in dismay. He first reminds Ea of his previous victory over Apsu and suggests that he should deal with Tiamat in the same way; but Ea either refuses to go or is unsuccessful; the text is broken at this point, and what happens to Ea is not clear. Then Anu is sent armed with the authority of the assembly of the gods to turn Tiamat from her purpose, but he also returns unsuccessful. Then Anshar rises in the assembly of the gods and proposes that Marduk, the strong hero, should be entrusted with the task. Marduk’s father Ea advises him to accept the task, and Marduk agrees to undertake it on condition that he is given full and equal authority in the assembly of the gods, and that his word is to determine destiny unalterably. Here the second tablet ends. The third tablet, after recapitulating the decision of the gods, ends with a feast at which Marduk is to be officially invested with the authority which he had demanded. The fourth tablet begins with the enthronement of Marduk as king and his investment with the royal insignia. The gods require from him a proof that he possesses the power to carry out what he has undertaken. He thereupon causes his robe to disappear and then to reappear. The gods are satisfied and proclaim, ‘Marduk is king.’ Then Marduk arms himself for the combat; his weapons are bow and arrows, mace, lightning, and a net held at the corners by the four winds; he fills his body with flame, and creates the seven raging hurricanes; he mounts his storm-chariot, and advances against Tiamat and her host. He challenges Tiamat to single combat; he casts his net to enclose her, and when she opens her mouth to swallow him he drives in the evil wind to distend her and transfixes her with his arrow, splitting her heart. Her demon helpers flee, but are caught in the net and bound. Their leader, Kingu, also is caught and bound. Then Marduk takes from Kingu the tablets of destiny and fastens them upon his own breast, thus assuming supreme authority among the gods. His next act is to split the body of Tiamat in two; he places half of her above the earth as the sky, fixes it with bars, sets guards, and charges them not to let her waters escape. He then builds Esharra, the abode of the great gods, after the pattern of Ea’s abode Apsu, and causes Anu, Enlil, and Ea to occupy their places therein. Here ends the fourth tablet. The fifth tablet is too fragmentary to enable us to obtain from it a complete account of Marduk’s first steps in organizing the universe, but its opening lines show that his first care was the calendar, one of the most important responsibilities of a Babylonian king. Marduk is represented as establishing the course of the year and the order of the months by the moon’s changes. He also establishes the three celestial ‘ways’, the way of Enlil in the northern heavens, the way of Anu in the zenith, and the way of Ea in the south. The planet Jupiter is placed in charge of the heavenly order. In the sixth tablet we have the description of the creation of man. Marduk declares his intention of creating man for the service of the gods. By the advice of Ea it is decided that the leader of the rebellion, Kingu, shall die that mankind may be fashioned. Accordingly Kingu is slain, and from his blood mankind is created for the service of the gods, ‘to free them’, that is, to perform the menial tasks belonging to the temple ritual and to provide food for the gods.

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interesting differences. When Ishtar knocks at the gate of the underworld she threatens to batter down the gate if she is not admitted, and to set free the dead who are in the underworld. A vivid passage of the poem describes this scene: O gatekeeper, open your gate, Open your gate that I may enter! If you open not the gate so that I cannot enter, I will smash the door, I will shatter the bolt, I will smash the doorpost, I will move the doors, I will raise up the dead, eating the living, So that the dead will outnumber the living. [9] Ishtar, in this version of the myth, is a much more hostile and threatening figure than she is in the Sumerian version. We also find in Ishtar’s threat to let loose the dead upon the living an illustration of the Babylonian fear of ghosts which was such a marked feature of their religion and appears in so many of their incantations. As Ishtar passes through the seven gates she is stripped of some part of her apparel at each gate, as in the Sumerian version. The Babylonian version omits the grim description of her being turned into a corpse by the baleful ‘eyes of death’ however, she does not return, and then follows Papsukkal’s appeal to the great gods quoted above. In answer to this appeal Ea, who is Enki in the Sumerian version, creates Asushunamir the eunuch, and sends him down to induce Ereshkigal to give him the life-water bag. By his charm he succeeds in doing this, and Ereshkigal reluctantly orders her vizier Namtar to sprinkle Ishtar with the water of life. Ishtar is released and returns, receiving back those articles of adornment and apparel which had been taken from her as she passes through the seven gates on her return journey. But a reference is made to the ransom which she must pay. Ereshkigal says to Namtar, ‘If she does not give you her ransom price, bring her back.’ What this is to be is not specified, but the mention of Tammuz at the end of the myth seems to, imply his return from the underworld, although no indication has been given as to how he came there. We have already seen that there is a Sumerian myth of Enlil’s banishment to the underworld and of Inanna’s accompanying him there, and reference has been made to the identification of Tammuz with Enlil in the liturgies. Hence it would seem that in the course of the development of the myth the descent of Tammuz into the underworld came to assume increasing importance, and to be related to the death and rebirth of vegetation. When, in the course of time, the myth was carried into other countries, it was the death of Tammuz and the mourning for him that came to be emphasized at the expense of other features of the myth. Thus we have a reference in Ezekiel [10] to the women of Israel weeping for Tammuz, and the myth of Venus and Adonis represents the form in which the myth had passed into Greek mythology. Milton’s reference to the river Adonis running ‘purple to the sea, supposed with blood of Thammuz yearly wounded’, is a reminder of the Syrian form of the myth, and we shall see that the death of Baal in the Ugaritic mythology may represent an earlier stage of the development of the myth in its passage to Syria. The Creation Myth We have seen that in the Sumerian version of the second basic myth, the myth of Creation, the creative activities are shared among various gods, Enlil and Enki being the principal figures

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