The stories and myths given in the foregoing pages have, probably, very different values; some are genuine traditions—some compiled to account for natural phenomena, and some pure romances. At the head of their history and traditions the Babylonians placed an account of the creation of the world; and, although different forms of this story were current, in certain features they all agreed. Beside the account of the present animals, they related the creation of legions of monster forms which disappeared before the human epoch, and they accounted for the great problem of humanity—the presence of evil in the world—by making out that it proceeded from the original chaos, the spirit of confusion and darkness, which was the origin of all things, and which was even older than the gods. The principal story of the Creation, given in Chapter V., substantially agrees, as far as it is preserved, with the Biblical account. According to it, there was a chaos of watery matter before the Creation, and from this all things were generated. We have then a considerable blank, the contents of which we can only conjecture, and after this we come to the creation of the heavenly orbs. The fifth tablet in the series relates how God created the constellations of the stars, the signs of the zodiac, the planets and other stars, the moon and the sun. After another blank we have a fragment which relates to the creation of wild and domestic animals; it is curious here that the original taming of domestic animals was even then so far back in the history of the race that all knowledge of it was lost, and the “animals of the city,” or domestic animals, were considered different creations from the “animals of the desert,” or “field,” or wild animals. We next come to the war between the dragon and powers of evil, or chaos, on one side and the gods on the other. The gods have weapons forged for them, and Merodach undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit, ends of course in the triumph of the principle of good, and the overthrow of primeval anarchy. In Chapter V. another account of the Creation is given which differs materially from the first. The principal feature in the second account is the description of the eagle-headed men with their family of leaders—this legend clearly showing the origin of the eagle-headed figures represented on the Assyrian sculptures. It is probable that some of these Babylonian legends contained detailed descriptions of the Garden of Eden, which seems to have been the district of Eridu in the south of Babylonia, as Sir Henry Rawlinson believes.