The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

358 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

Babylonian theologians transformed them into abstractions, or
rather into Platonic archetypes of the heaven and earth. Their
appearance meant that the world had at last taken form and
substance; the reign of chaos was over, and limits had been set
which should never again be overpassed. The earth and the sky
bounded and defined one another; the age of formlessness was
ended, and an orderly universe was being prepared fit to receive
the present creation.
But the work of preparation was a long one, and not until it
was finished could the gods of Semitic Babylonia be born. But
even they have ceased to be gods for the philosophic cosmologist.
They are replaced and represented by the triad of Anu, Bel, and
Ea, who thus become mere symbols of the sky, the earth, and the
[391] water, the elements which Babylonian philosophy regarded as
constituting the present world. Doubtless, did we possess the rest
of the tablet, we should read how the other“great gods”were
sprung from them.
The later tablets of the Epic, which are devoted to the
glorification of Merodach, are for the most part of little interest
for the cosmologist. They describe at wearisome length and
with tedious reiteration the challenge of Tiamât to the gods, the
arming of Merodach, and his victory over the dragon. Religions
and mythological conceptions of all kinds have been laid under
contribution, and confusedly mingled together. It was necessary
that Merodach, the supreme god of Babylon, should have been
the creator of the world; and it was therefore also necessary
that the creative acts of the other creator gods of Babylonia
should be transferred to him, however diverse they may have
been. Hence, in the course of the poem, Merodach is described
as destroying and creating by his word alone,—a cosmological
conception which reminds us of that of the Egyptian school of
Hermopolis, while after the destruction of Tiamât he is said
to have cut her in half like a flat fish, forming the canopy of
heaven with one half, above which the“fountains of the great