In the beginning nothing whatever existed except APSU, which may be described as a boundless, confused and disordered mass of watery matter; how it came into being is unknown. Out of this mass there were evolved two orders of beings, namely, demons and gods. The demons had hideous forms, even as Berosus said, which were part animal, part bird, part reptile and part human. The gods had wholly human forms, and they represented the three layers of the comprehensible world, that is to say, heaven or the sky, the atmosphere, and the underworld. The atmosphere and the underworld together formed the earth as opposed to the sky or heaven. The texts say that the first two gods to be created were LAKHMU and LAKHAMU. Their attributes cannot at present be described, but they seem to represent two forms of primitive matter. They appear to have had no existence in popular religion, and it has been thought that they may be described as theological conceptions containing the notions of matter and some of its attributes. [Illustration: Terra-cotta figure of a Babylonian Demon. [No. 22,458.]] After countless aeons had passed the gods ANSHAR and KISHAR came into being; the former represents the "hosts of heaven," and the latter the "hosts of earth." After another long and indefinite period the independent gods of the Babylonian pantheon came into being, e.g., ANU, EA, who is here called NUDIMMUD, and others. [Illustration: Bronze figure of a Babylonian Demon. [No. 93,078.]] As soon as the gods appeared in the universe "order" came into being. When APSU, the personification of confusion and disorder of every kind, saw this "order," he took counsel with his female associate TIAMAT with the object of finding some means of destroying the "way" (_al-ka-at_) or "order" of the gods. Fortunately the Babylonians and Assyrians have supplied us with representations of Tiamat, and these show us what form ancient tradition assigned to her. She is depicted as a ferocious monster with wings and scales and terrible claws, and her body is sometimes that of a huge serpent, and sometimes that of an animal. In the popular imagination she represented all that was physically terrifying, and foul, and abominable; she was nevertheless the mother of everything, [1] and was the possessor of the DUP SHIMATI or "TABLET OF DESTINIES". No description of this Tablet or its contents is available, but from its name we may assume that it was a sort of Babylonian Book of Fate.[2] Theologically, Tiamat represented to the Babylonians the same state in the development of the universe as did _tohu wa-bhohu_ (Genesis i. 2), i.e., formlessness and voidness, of primeval matter, to the Hebrews She is depicted both on bas-reliefs and on cylinder seals in a form which associates her with LABARTU, [3] a female devil that prowled about the desert at night suckling wild animals but killing men. And it is tolerably certain that she was the type, and symbol, and head of the