Lecture VI. Cosmologies. 359
deep”were kept firmly barred. This is in flagrant contradiction
with the cosmogony of the Introduction, but it is probable that
it was derived from Nippur, where En-lil was perhaps described
as creating the heavens and earth in a similar fashion. When the
creative functions of En-lil were usurped by Merodach, the old
myth was transferred to the god of Babylon; and accordingly,
in the pæan which seems to form the end of the Epic, Bel of
Nippur is declared to have bestowed upon Merodach his name
of“lord of the earth,”and therewith the powers and functions
which accompanied it. [392]
The struggle between Tiamât, the dragon of darkness, and
Merodach, the god of light, must originally have symbolised
the dispersion of the black rain-cloud and raging tempest by the
rays of the sun. But the author of the poem evidently regards it
from a cosmological point of view. For him it is the victory of
order over chaos, of the present creation over the formless world
of the past, and of fixed law over anarchy and confusion. The
conception of a law, governing the universe and unable to be
broken, lay deep in the Babylonian mind. Even the gods could
not escape it; they too had to submit to that inexorable destiny
which distinguished the world in which we live from the world of
chaos. All they could do was to interpret and reveal the decrees
of fate; the decrees themselves were unalterable. It was not Bel
who issued them; they were contained in the tablets of destiny
which he wore on his breast as the symbol of his supremacy, and
which enabled him to predict the future. These were, indeed, the
Urim and Thummim which, like the high priest of Israel, he was
privileged to consult.^311 What they did was not to make him the
(^311) It is possible that the Hebrew Urim and Thummim were really connected
with the Babylonian“tablets of destiny.”The latter were fastened“on the
breast,”according to the Epic of the Creation, like the Urim and Thummim
of the Israelitish high priest. InWAI.iv. 18, No. 3, Ea describes a sort of
magical breastplate, made of gold, which was to be set with precious stones
and fastened to the breast. Nine stones are named, which seem to have been
carved into figures of the gods, like Egyptian amulets, since they are said to