(The tablet is too broken for connected translation, until nearly the end, where it continues:) 107. Truly he holds their beginning and ending .......... 108. Saying, “He who passed through the midst of Tiâmat [without resting], 109. Let his name be Neberu, who seizes the midst, 110. Who the stars of heaven--their ways he upholds; 111. As a flock verily the gods pasture, all of them.” 112. He bound Tiâmat, her life he apportioned, he ended. 113. In the future, people, old in years, 114. Shall renew unceasingly, “let him be lord forever!” 115. Because he created the places and fashioned the fastnesses 116. “Lord of countries” Bel, his father, named him. 117. The names the Igigi named, all of them, 118. Ea heard, and his heart rejoiced: 119. “He whose name his fathers have magnified 120. He, even like me, shall be named Ea. 121. The binding of all my commands shall he control, 122. All my decrees shall he proclaim!” 123. By the name “Fifty” did the great gods 124. His fifty names make known, they made his path pre-eminent. 125. May they be held fast and the first men reveal them, 126. The wise, the understanding shall consider them together; 127. May the father repeat them and the son lay hold upon them, 128. So that shepherd and herdsman may open their ears, 129. And may rejoice in Marduk, the lord of the gods, 130. That his land may be fertile, that he may have prosperity. 131. His word is established, his command unfailing, 132. The word of his mouth, no god hath annulled. 133. He casts his glance without turning his neck, 134. When he roars, no god can face his anger. 135. Wide is his heart, great his goodness; 136. The sinner and transgressor in his presence .......... 137. They received instruction, they spake before him. (The concluding lines are too broken for connected translation.) =2. The First Chapter of Genesis and the Foregoing Creation Epic.= The Babylonian Creation Epic, in the form in which we know it, took shape in the city of Babylon. Naturally, therefore, the god Marduk is made the central figure. It is he only who was sufficiently powerful to overcome the primeval dragon, it was he who created the heavens and the earth, it was he whom at the end gods and men adored. A Babylonian priest, Berossos, in a work composed after the time of Alexander the Great, gives an account of Babylonian ideas of the creation of the world, which is but the tradition of the epic in a slightly different form. A neoplatonic philosopher, Damascius, who lived about 560 A. D., has also preserved a part of the tradition in a form almost identical with that of the epic.