The Chaldean account of Genesis : $b Containing the description of the creation, the fall of man, the deluge, the tower of Babel, the times of the patriarchsSmith, George
Religion
The Chaldean account of Genesis : $b Containing the description of the creation, the fall of man, the deluge, the tower of Babel, the times of the patriarchs
The details of the creation of the planets and stars, which would have
been very important to us, are unfortunately lost, no further fragment
of this tablet having been recovered.
The colophon at the close of the tablet gives us, however, part of
the first line of the sixth tablet, but not enough to determine its
subject. It is probable that this dealt with the creation of creatures
of the water and fowls of the air, and that these were the creation of
Bel, the companion deity to Anu.
The next tablet, the seventh in the series, is probably represented
by a curious fragment, which was found by Mr. Smith in one of the
trenches at Kouyunjik.
This fragment is like some of the others, the upper portion of a tablet
much broken, and only valuable from its generally clear meaning. The
translation is as follows:
1. At that time the gods in their assembly created .....
2. They made suitable the strong monsters .....
3. They caused to come living creatures .....
4. cattle of the field, beasts of the field, and creeping things of the
field .....
5. They fixed for the living creatures .....
6. ..... cattle and creeping things of the city they fixed .....
7. ..... the assembly of the creeping things, the whole which were
created .....
8. ..... which in the assembly of my family ...
9. ..... and the god Nin-si-ku (the lord of noble face) joined the two
together .....
10. ..... to the assembly of the creeping things I gave life .....
11. ..... the seed of Lakhamu I destroyed .....
This tablet corresponds with the sixth day of Creation in Genesis (i.
24-25): “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature
after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth
after his kind: and it was so.
“And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after
their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind:
and God saw that it was good.”
The Assyrian tablet commences with a statement of the satisfaction a
former creation, apparently that of the monsters or whales, had given;
here referring to Genesis i. 23. It then goes on to relate the creation
of living animals on land, three kinds being distinguished, exactly
agreeing with the Genesis account, and then we have in the ninth line a
curious reference to the god Nin-si-ku (one of the names of Hea). One
of Hea’s titles was “the lord of mankind,” and Sir Henry Rawlinson has
endeavoured to show that Eridu, the city of Hea, was identical with the
Biblical Garden of Eden. We may here notice a tablet which refers to
the creation of man. In this tablet, K 63, the creation of the human
race is given to Hea, and all the references in other inscriptions
make this his work. As in Genesis, so in these cuneiform tablets the
Creator is made to speak and to address the objects which he calls into
existence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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