him is an attendant god; under his foot is a young bull. To the right
of the goddess stand a hunting god, with a bow and lasso, and a
lion. From the seal-cylinder of Adda ..., in the British Museum. About
2500 B.C. [No. 89,115.]]

Then the gods saluted him as their king, and gave him the insignia of
royalty, namely, the sceptre, the throne and the _pala_, whatever that
may be. And as they handed to him these things they commanded him to go
and hack the body of Tiamat in pieces, and to scatter her blood to the
winds. Thereupon Marduk began to arm himself for the fight. He took a
bow, a spear, and a club; he filled his body full of fire and set the
lightning before him. He took in his hands a net wherewith to catch
Tiamat, and he placed the four winds near it, to prevent her from
escaping from it when he had snared her. He created mighty winds and
tempests to assist him, and grasped the thunderbolt in his hand; and
then, mounting upon the Storm, which was drawn by four horses, he went
out to meet and defeat Tiamat. It seems pretty certain that this
description of the equipment of Marduk was taken over from a very
ancient account of the Fight with Tiamat in which the hero was Enlil,
i.e., the god of the air, or of the region which lies between heaven
and hell. Marduk approached and looked upon the "Middle" or "Inside" or
"Womb" of Tiamat [1], and divined the plan of Kingu who had taken up his
place therein. In the Seventh Tablet (l. 108) Marduk is said to have
"entered into the middle of Tiamat," and because he did so he is called
"Nibiru," i.e., "he who entered in," and the "seizer of the middle."
What the words "middle of Tiamat" meant to the Babylonian we are not
told, but it is clear that Marduk's entry into it was a signal mark of
the triumph of the god. When Kingu from the "middle of Tiamat" saw
Marduk arrayed in his terrible panoply of war, he was terrified and
trembled, and staggered about and lost all control of his legs; and at