who was their first father, and Chaos-Tiamat, who gave birth to them
all, mingled their waters in one, reeds which were not united, rushes
which bore no fruit. In the time when the gods were not created, Lakhmu
and Lakhamu were the first to appear and waxed great for ages."

Then came Anu, the sunlit sky by day, the starlit firmament by night;
Inlil-Bel, the king of the earth; Ea, the sovereign of the waters and
the personification of wisdom. Each of them duplicated himself, Anu into
Anat, Bel into Belit, Ea into Damkina, and united himself to the spouse
whom he had produced from himself. Other divinities sprang from these
fruitful pairs, and, the impulse once given, the world was rapidly
peopled by their descendants. Sin, Samash and Ramman, who presided
respectively over the sun, moon and air, were all three of equal rank;
next came the lords of the planets, Ninib, Merodach, Nergal, Ishtar, the
warrior-goddess, and Nebo; then a whole army of lesser deities who
ranged themselves around Anu as around a supreme master.

Discord arose. The first great battle of the gods was between Tiamat and
Merodach. In this fearful conflict Tiamat was destroyed. Splitting her
body into halves, the conqueror hung up one on high, and this became the
heavens; the other he spread out under his feet to form the earth, and
made the universe as men have known it. Merodach regulated the movements
of the sun and divided the year into twelve months.

The heavens having been put in order, he set about peopling the earth.
Many such fables concerning the cosmogony were current among the races
of the lower Euphrates, who seem to have belonged to three different
types. The most important were the Semites, who spoke a dialect akin to
Armenian, Hebrew and Phoenician. Side by side with these the monuments
give evidence of a race of ill-defined character, whom we provisionally