The various cosmological speculations and beliefs of ancient Chaldea were collected together in later times and an attempt made to combine them into a philosophical system. What this was like we learn from the opening lines of the epic which recounted the story of the Creation. In the beginning, we are told, was the chaos of the deep, which was the mother of all things. Out of it came first the primeval gods, Lakhum and Lakhamu, whose names had been handed down from the Sumerian age. Then came An-sar and Ki-sar, the Upper and Lower Firmaments, and, lastly, the great gods of the Semitic faith, Anu, Bel of Nippur, and Ea. All was ready at last for the creation of the present heavens and earth. But a struggle had first to be carried on between the new gods of light and order and Tiamat, the dragon of the “Deep,” the impersonation of chaos. Merodach volunteered the task; Tiamat and her demoniac allies were overthrown and the sky formed out of her skin, while her blood became the rivers and springs. The deep was placed under fetters, that it might never again break forth and reduce the world to primeval chaos; laws were laid down for the heavenly bodies, which they were to keep forever and so provide a measure of time, and the plants and animals of the earth were created, with man at the head to rule over them. Though man was made of the dust, he was, nevertheless, the “son” of the gods, whose outward forms were the same as his. It is not to be supposed that this philosophizing of the old myths and legends made its way beyond the circle of the learned classes, but the myths and legends themselves were known to the people and served instead of a cosmology. The struggle between Tiamat and Merodach was depicted on the walls of the temple of Bel at Babylon, and the belief that this world has arisen out of a victory of order over chaos and anarchy was deeply implanted in the mind of the Babylonian. Perhaps it goes back to the time when the soil of Babylonia was won by the cultivator and the engineer from wild and unrestrained nature. Babylonian religion had its sacred books, and, like the official cosmology, a real knowledge of them was probably confined to the priests and educated classes. But a considerable part of their contents must have been more widely known.