[Footnote 2: See _Kur'an_, Surah vii, v. 179. That there were ninety-nine Beautiful Names of God rests on the authority of Abu Hurairah, who repeats the statement as made by Muhammad the Prophet.] The object of the writer of the Fifty Names was to show that Marduk was the "Lord of the gods," that the power, qualities and attributes of every god were enshrined in him, and that they all were merely forms of him. This fact is proved by the tablet (No. 47,406), [1] which contains a long list of gods who are equated with Marduk in his various forms.[2] The tendency in the later Babylonian religion to make Marduk the god above all gods has led many to think that monotheistic conceptions were already in existence among the Babylonians as early as the period of the First Dynasty, about 2000 B.C. It is indisputable that Marduk obtained his pre-eminence in the Babylonian Pantheon at this early period. But some authorities deny the existence of monotheistic conceptions among the Babylonians at that time, and attribute Marduk's kingship of the gods to the influence of the political situation of the time, when Babylon first became the capital of the country, and mistress of the greater part of the known world. Material for deciding this question is wanting, but it may be safely said that whatever monotheistic conceptions existed at that time, their acceptance was confined entirely to the priests and scribes. They certainly find no expression in the popular religious texts. [Footnote 1: Published by King, _Cuneiform Texts_, Part XXV, Plate 50.] [Footnote 2: Thus he is equated with En-Urta, Nergal, En-lil, Nabu, Sin, Shamash, Adad, etc.] Both the source of the original form of the Legend of the Fight between Ea and Apsu, and Marduk and Tiamat, and the period of its composition are unknown, but there is no doubt that in one form or another it persisted in Mesopotamia for thousands of years. The apocryphal book of "Bel and the Dragon" shows that a form of the Legend was in existence among the Babylonian Jews long after the Captivity, and the narrative relating to it associates it with religious observances. But there is no foundation whatsoever for the assertion which has so often been made that the Two Accounts of the Creation which are given in the early chapters in Genesis are derived from the Seven Tablets of Creation described in the preceding pages. It is true that there are many points of resemblance between the narratives in cuneiform and Hebrew, and these often illustrate each other, but the fundamental conceptions of the Babylonian and Hebrew accounts are essentially different. In the former the earliest beings that existed were foul demons and devils, and the God of Creation only appears at a later period, but in the latter the conception of God is that of a Being Who existed in and from the beginning, Almighty and Alone, and the devils of chaos and evil are His servants.