were heaped upon years: Anu, Inlil, and Ea were born in their turn, for
Anshar and Kishar had given them birth." As the generations emanated one
from the other, their vitality increased, and the personality of each
became more clearly defined; the last generation included none but
beings of an original character and clearly marked individuality. 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 deduced from himself. Other divinities sprang from these
fruitful pairs, and the impulse once given, the world was rapidly
peopled by their descendants. Sin, Shamash, and Kamman, who presided
respectively over the moon, the sun, and the air, were all three of
equal rank; next came the lords of the planets, Ninib, Merodach, Nergal,
the warrior-goddess Ishtar, and Nebo; then a whole army of lesser
deities, who ranged themselves around Anu as round a supreme master.
Tiâmat, finding her domain becoming more and more restricted owing
to the activity of the others, desired to raise battalion against
battalion, and set herself to create unceasingly; but her offspring,
made in her own image, appeared like those incongruous phantoms which
men see in dreams, and which are made up of members borrowed from a
score of different animals. They appeared in the form of bulls with
human heads, of horses with the snouts of dogs, of dogs with quadruple
bodies springing from a single fish-like tail. Some of them had the beak
of an eagle or a hawk; others, four wings and two faces; others, the
legs and horns of a goat; others, again, the hind quarters of a horse
and the whole body of a man. Tiâmat furnished them with terrible
weapons, placed them under the command of her husband Kingu, and set out
to war against the gods.