[Illustration: Marduk destroying Tiamat, who is here represented in the form of a huge serpent. From a seal-cylinder in the British Museum. [No. 89,589.]] Among the primitive Semitic peoples there were probably many versions of the story of the Creation; and the narrative told by the Seven Tablets is, no doubt, one of them in a comparatively modern form. It is quite clear that the Account of the Creation given in the Seven Tablets is derived from very ancient sources, and a considerable amount of literary evidence is now available for reconstructing the history of the Legend. Thus in the Sumerian Account the narrative of the exploits of the hero called ZIUSUDU [1] begins with a description of the Creation and then goes on to describe a Flood, and there is little doubt that certain passages in this text are the originals of the Babylonian version as given in the Seven Tablets. In the Story of ZIUSUDU, however, there is no mention of any Dragon. And there is reason to think that the Legend of the Dragon had originally nothing whatever to do with the Creation, for the texts of fragments of two distinct Accounts [2] of the Creation describe a fight between a Dragon and some deity other than Marduk. In other Accounts the Dragon bears a strong resemblance to the Leviathan of Psalm civ, 26; Job xli, 1. In the one text he is said to be 50 _biru_ [3] in length, and 1 _biru_ in thickness; his mouth was 6 cubits (about 9 feet) wide, and the circumference of his ears 12 cubits (18 feet). He was slain by a god whose name is unknown, and the blood continued to flow from his body for three years, three months, one day and one night. In the second text the Dragon is 60 _biru_ long and his thickness is 30 _biru_; the diameter of each eye is half a _biru_, and his paws are 20 _biru_ long. Thus there is every reason for believing that the Legend as it is given in the Seven Tablets is the work of some editor, who added the Legend of the Creation to the Legend of the Dragon in much the same way as the editor of the Gilgamish Legends included an account of the Deluge in his narrative of the exploits of his hero. All forms of the Legend of the Creation and of the Dragon were popular in Babylonia, and one of them achieved so much notoriety that the priest employed recited it as an incantation to charm away the toothache. [Footnote 1: See Poebel, _Historical Texts_, No. 1.] [Footnote 2: See King, _Cuneiform Texts_, Part XIII, Plate 33; and Ebellog, _Assurtexte_, I, No. 6.] [Footnote 3: The _biru_ was the distance which a man would travel in two hours.] The literary form of the text of the Seven Tablets fulfils the requirements of Semitic poetry in general. The lines usually fall into couplets, the second line being the antiphon of the first, e.g.:-- "When in the height heaven was not named, And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name."