[Footnote 2: It is probable that the idea of this Tablet is perpetuated
in the "Preserved Tablet" of the Kur'an (Surah x, 62), on which the
destiny of every man was written at or before the creation of the world.
Nothing that is written (_maktub_) there can be erased, or altered, or
fail to take effect.]

[Footnote 3: (_Cun. Texts_, Part XXIV, Plate 44, l. 142).]

[Illustration: Terra-cotta plaque with a Typhonic animal in
relief. [No. 103,381.]]

In the consultation which took place between APSU and TIAMAT, their
messenger MU-UM-MU took part; of the history and attributes of this
last-named god nothing is known. The result of the consultation was that
a long struggle began between the demons and the gods, and it is clear
that the object of the powers of darkness was to destroy the light. The
whole story of this struggle is the subject of the Seven Tablets of
Creation. The gods are deifications of the sun, moon, planets and other
stars, and APSU, or CHAOS, and his companions the demons, are
personifications of darkness, night and evil. The story of the fight
between them is nothing more nor less than a picturesque allegory of
natural phenomena. Similar descriptions are found in the literatures of
other primitive nations, and the story of the great fight between
Her-ur, the great god of heaven, and Set, the great captain of the hosts
of darkness, may be quoted as an example. Set regarded the "order" which
Her-ur was bringing into the universe with the same dislike as that
with which APSU contemplated the beneficent work of Sin, the Moon-god,
Shamash, the Sun-god, and their brother gods. And the hostility of Set
and his allies to the gods, like that of Tiamat and her allies, was
everlasting.