usurped at Babylon by Marduk.

[Footnote 1: See the duplicate fragments described in the Index to
Ebeling, _Keilschrifttexte aus Assur_, Leipzig, 1919 fol.]

[Illustration: Excavations in Babylonia and Assyria.]



VARIANT FORMS OF THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF THE CREATION.

The views about the Creation which are described in the Seven Tablets
mentioned above were not the only ones current in Mesopotamia, and
certainly they were not necessarily the most orthodox. Though in the
version of the Legend already referred to the great god of creation
was Enlil, or Marduk, or Ashur, we know that in the Legend of
Gilgamish (Second Tablet) it was the goddess Aruru who created Enkidu
(Eabani) from a piece of clay moistened with her own spittle. And in
the so-called "bilingual" version[1] of the Legend, we find that this
goddess assisted Marduk as an equal in the work of creating the seed
of mankind. This version, although Marduk holds the position of
pre-eminence, differs in many particulars from that given by the Seven
Tablets, and as it is the most important of all the texts which deal
directly with the creation of the heavens and the earth, a rendering
of it is here given.

[Footnote 1: The text is found on a tablet from Abu Habbah, Brit.
Mus., No. 93,014 (82-5-22, 1048).]