Legends of Babylon and Egypt in Relation to Hebrew Tradition.pdf

Here we have the definite statement that before Creation all the world was sea. And it is important to note that the
primaeval water is not personified; the ordinary Sumerian word for "sea" is employed, which the Semitic translator has
faithfully rendered in his version of the text.[4] The reference to a channel in the sea, as the cause of Creation, seems
at first sight a little obscure; but the word implies a "drain" or "water-channel", not a current of the sea itself, and the
reference may be explained as suggested by the drainage of a flood- area. No doubt the phrase was elaborated in the
original myth, and it is possible that what appears to be a second version of Creation later on in the text is really part
of the more detailed narrative of the first myth. There the Creator himself is named. He is the Sumerian god Gilimma,
and in the Semitic translation Marduk's name is substituted. To the following couplet, which describes Gilimma's
method of creation, is appended a further extract from a later portion of the text, there evidently displaced, giving
additional details of the Creator's work:
Gilimma bound reeds in the face of the waters, He formed soil and poured it out beside the reeds.[5] [He][6] filled in a
dike by the side of the sea, [He . . .] a swamp, he formed a marsh. [. . .], he brought into existence, [Reeds he
form]ed,[7] trees he created.
[1] The composite nature of the text is discussed by Professor Jastrow in his /Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions/, pp.
89 ff.; and in his paper in the /Journ. Amer. Or. Soc./, Vol. XXXVI (1916), pp. 279 ff.; he has analysed it into two
main versions, which he suggests originated in Eridu and Nippur respectively. The evidence of the text does not appear
to me to support the view that any reference to a watery chaos preceding Creation must necessarily be of Semitic
origin. For the literature of the text (first published by Pinches, /Journ. Roy. Asiat. Soc./, Vol. XXIII, pp. 393 ff.), see
/Sev. Tabl./, Vol. I, p. 130.
[2] Obv., ll. 5-12.
[3] Sum. /nigin-kur-kur-ra-ge/, Sem. /nap-har ma-ta-a-tu/, lit. "all lands", i.e. Sumerian and Babylonian expressions
for "the world".
[4] Sum. /a-ab-ba/, "sea", is here rendered by /tâmtum/, not by its personified equivalent Tiamat.
[5] The suggestion has been made that /amu/, the word in the Semitic version here translated "reeds", should be
connected with /ammatu/, the word used for "earth" or "dry land" in the Babylonian Creation Series, Tabl. I, l. 2, and
given some such meaning as "expanse". The couplet is thus explained to mean that the god made an expanse on the
face of the waters, and then poured out dust "on the expanse". But the Semitic version in l. 18 reads /itti ami/, "beside
the /a./", not /ina ami/, "on the /a./"; and in any case there does not seem much significance in the act of pouring out
specially created dust on or beside land already formed. The Sumerian word translated by /amu/ is written /gi-dir/, with
the element /gi/, "reed", in l. 17, and though in the following line it is written under its variant form /a-dir/ without /gi/,
the equation /gi-a-dir/ = /amu/ is elsewhere attested (cf. Delitzsch, /Handwörterbuch/, p. 77). In favour of regarding
/amu/ as some sort of reed, here used collectively, it may be pointed out that the Sumerian verb in l. 17 is /kešda/, "to
bind", accurately rendered by /rakašu/ in the Semitic version. Assuming that l. 34 belongs to the same account, the
creation of reeds in general beside trees, after dry land is formed, would not of course be at variance with the god's use
of some sort of reed in his first act of creation. He creates the reed-bundles, as he creates the soil, both of which go to
form the first dike; the reed-beds, like the other vegetation, spring up from the ground when it appears.
[6] The Semitic version here reads "the lord Marduk"; the corresponding name in the Sumerian text is not preserved.
[7] The line is restored from l. 2 o the obverse of the text.
Here the Sumerian Creator is pictured as forming dry land from the primaeval water in much the same way as the early
cultivator in the Euphrates Valley procured the rich fields for his crops. The existence of the earth is here not really
presupposed. All the world was sea until the god created land out of the waters by the only practical method that was
possible in Mesopotamia.
In another Sumerian myth, which has been recovered on one of the early tablets from Nippur, we have a rather
different picture of beginnings. For there, though water is the source of life, the existence of the land is presupposed.
But it is bare and desolate, as in the Mesopotamian season of "low water". The underlying idea is suggestive of a