Lecture VI. Cosmologies. 361
He made the moon appear illuminating the night;
he established it as the luminary of night that the days might
be known.”Here it will be noticed that, as in Genesis, the heavenly
bodies are regarded as already in existence. What the creator
did was to establish them in their stations, and appoint them [394]
to mark and register time. In fact, as soon as Ansar—the
upper firmament—appeared, they appeared also, though in an
embryonic form. Merodach is thus an arranger rather than a
creator, the founder of astronomy and the calendar rather than
the maker of the stars. It is significant, however, that there is no
reference to the sun; the sun-god could hardly fix for himself the
laws he had to obey.
It has usually been supposed that the account of the orderly
arrangement of the stars was followed by that of the creation
of animals. But the tablet on which the latter is found is a
mere fragment, and Professor Zimmern may be right in thinking
that it belongs to a different story of the creation. At any rate,
the creation in it is assigned to“the gods”generally“in their
assembly”rather than to Merodach alone. On the other hand, as
we have seen, the author of the Epic did not hesitate to introduce
into it cosmological myths and ideas which agreed but badly
together, and it is not likely that he would have omitted to notice
the creation of animate things.
But a description of the creation of the world, or even of
the great struggle between the gods of light and the dragon of
darkness, was not the main purpose of the Babylonian poem.
This was the glorification of the god of Babylon. The story of the
creation was introduced into it because it was necessary that the
supreme god of the universe should also be its creator, and it was
for the same reason that the overthrow of the powers of darkness
and anarchy was assigned to Merodach alone. He usurped and
moon-god of Harran (e.g.Lajard,Culte de Mithra, 54, 4).