Lecture VI. Cosmologies. 345
surface of the earth. The cosmology of Nippur would naturally
concern itself with the land rather than with the sea; the earth and
not the water would have been the first in order of existence, and
habitation of the gods would be sought on the summit of a Mount
Olympus rather than in the depths of an encircling ocean.^293
In the chaos of Tiamât, accordingly, I see the last relics of [377]
a cosmology which emanated from Nippur, and was accepted
wherever the influence of Nippur prevailed. It has been modified
by the cosmological ideas of Eridu; and in the story of the struggle
between Tiamât and Merodach an attempt has been made to
harmonise the two conflicting conceptions of the universe, and
to weld them into a compact whole. The world of Tiamât has
first been transformed into a watery abyss like that which the
theologians of Eridu believed to be the origin of the universe, and
then has been absorbed by the deep over which Ea held sway.
The creator Ea has taken the place of the spirit of destruction, the
culture-god of the dragon of darkness.
But a curious legend, which has been much misunderstood,
still preserves traces of the old cosmology of the great sanctuary
of Northern Babylonia. It describes the war made against a king
of Babylonia by the powers of darkness, the gnome-like beings
who dwelt“in the ground,”where Tiamât had suckled them, and
where they had multiplied in the cavernous depths of a mountain
land. They were, we are told, composite monsters,“warriors with
the bodies of birds, men with the faces of ravens,”over whom
ruled a king and his wife and their seven sons.^294 Year after year
(^293) El-lil, it should be noted, was called“the great mountain”(Kur-gal, Sadu-
rabu in Semitic), and the name of his temple was Ê-kur,“the house of the
mountain.”It is probable that the belief in the Kharsag-kurkurra, or“mountain
of the world,”on which the gods lived, originated at Nippur. From Isa. xiv. 13
we gather that it was placed in the north. Nin-lil, the wife of En-lil, is called
Nin-kharsag,“the lady of the mountain,”by Samsu-iluna, who describes her
as“the mother who created me”(Brit. Mus., pl. 199, 1. 41).
(^294) These are the creatures described by Berossos as sprung from the bosom
of Tiamât—winged men, with four or two faces, or with the feet of horses