flow from his body for three years, three months, one day and one night.
In the second text the Dragon is 60 _biru_ long and his thickness is 30
_biru_; the diameter of each eye is half a _biru_, and his paws are 20
_biru_ long. Thus there is every reason for believing that the Legend as
it is given in the Seven Tablets is the work of some editor, who added
the Legend of the Creation to the Legend of the Dragon in much the same
way as the editor of the Gilgamish Legends included an account of the
Deluge in his narrative of the exploits of his hero. All forms of the
Legend of the Creation and of the Dragon were popular in Babylonia, and
one of them achieved so much notoriety that the priest employed recited
it as an incantation to charm away the toothache.

[Footnote 1: See Poebel, _Historical Texts_, No. 1.]

[Footnote 2: See King, _Cuneiform Texts_, Part XIII, Plate 33;
and Ebellog, _Assurtexte_, I, No. 6.]

[Footnote 3: The _biru_ was the distance which a man would travel
in two hours.]

The literary form of the text of the Seven Tablets fulfils the
requirements of Semitic poetry in general. The lines usually fall into
couplets, the second line being the antiphon of the first, e.g.:--

"When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name."

Each line, or verse, falls into two halves, and a well-marked caesura
divides each line, or verse, into two equally accented parts. And the
half-lines can be further resolved into two halves, each containing a