3. "No brick had been laid, no structure of brick had been erected.
4. "No house had been made, no city had been built.
[Illustration: The Bilingual Version of the Creation Legend. [No. 93,014.]]
5. "No city had been made, no creature had been constituted.
6. "Enlil's city, (i.e., Nippur) had not been made, E-kur had not been
built,
7. "Erech had not been made, E-Aena had not been built,
8. The Deep[1] (or Abyss) had not been made, Eridu had not been built.
[Footnote 1: APSU. It is doubtful if APSU here really means the great
abyss of waters from out of which the world was called. It was, more
probably, a ceremonial object used in the cult of the god, something
like the great basin, or "sea," in the court of the temple of King
Solomon, mentioned in I Kings, vii, 23; 2 Kings, xxv, 13, etc.]
9. "Of the holy house, the house of the gods, the dwelling-place had
not been made.
10. "All the lands were sea
11. "At the time that the mid-most sea was [shaped like] a trough,
12. "At that time Eridu was made, and E-sagil was built,
13. "The E-sagil where in the midst of the Deep the god
Lugal-dul-azaga [1] dwelleth,
[Footnote 1: This is a name under which Marduk was worshipped at
Eridu.]
14. "Babylon was made, E-sagil was completed.
15. "The gods the Anunnaki he created at one time.
16. "They proclaimed supreme the holy city, the dwelling of their
heart's happiness.
17. "Marduk laid a rush mat upon the face of the waters,
18. "He mixed up earth and moulded it upon the rush mat,
19. "To enable the gods to dwell in the place where they fain would
be.
20. "He fashioned man.
21. "The goddess Aruru with him created the seed of mankind.
22. "He created the beasts of the field and [all] the living things in
the field.
23. "He created the river Idiglat (Tigris) and the river Purattu
(Euphrates), and he set them in their places,
24. "He proclaimed their names rightly.
[Illustration: Terra-cotta figure of a god. From a foundation deposit
at Babylon. [No. 90,9961]]
25. "He created grass, the vegetation of the marsh, seed and shrub;
26. "He created the green plants of the plain,
27. "Lands, marshes, swamps,
28. "The wild cow and the calf she carried, the wild calf, the sheep
and the young she carried, the lamb of the fold,
29. "Plantations and shrub land,
30. "The he-goat and the mountain goat ...
31. "The lord Marduk piled up a dam in the region of the sea (i.e., he
reclaimed land)
32. "He ... a swamp, he founded a marsh.
33. "... he made to be
34. "Reeds he created, trees he created,
35. "... in place he created
36. "He laid bricks, he built a brick-work,
37. "He constructed houses, he formed cities.
38. "He constructed cities, creatures he set [therein].
39. "Nippur he made, E-Kur he built.
40. "[Erech he made, E-Anna] he built.
[The remainder of the text is fragmentary, and shows that the text
formed part of an incantation which was recited in the Temple of
E-Zida, possibly the great temple of Nabu at Borsippa.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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