While on the subject of the influence of Babylon it will be convenient to notice here that this influence is not confined to legal matters, but can be traced in certain legendary elements in the Old Testament. The ideal of the Priests' Code would not tolerate heathen mythology that could be detected as such, to appear in its work, and yet there are definite traces of such mythology to be found in "P"s account of the creation in Gen. i. The discovery of the libraries of Assurbanipal has brought to light records of a mythological cosmogony which, while utterly different in conception and spirit from Genesis, is sufficiently similar to suggest some degree of connection. This Babylonian Epic of creation deals not so much with the remarkably scientific idea of a gradual creation of our earth out of chaotic materials, but with a conflict of gods and monsters which is supposed to have taken place before the creation. In the opening verses of the Bible there is a reference to the partition of the deep, which is here called by the non-Hebrew name _Tehom_, into two parts: the waters above and the waters under the firmament. Now in the Babylonian story the actual creation of the earth is preceded by a mighty struggle between _Marduk_, the sun-god (the Merodach of the Bible) and a great dragon symbolical of the primeval waters, which bears the name _Tiamat_, the Babylonian form of _Tehom_. The influence of this myth is the more certainly to be traced in Genesis, because it appears elsewhere in the Old Testament under the form of a legend of a conflict between Jehovah and Rahab, a mighty dragon; and this legend is generally in some way connected with creation (Job ix. 13; xxvi. 12; Isa. li. 9; Ps. lxxxix. 10). There is also a Babylonian story of the flood which keeps even closer to the Bible narrative, and it may be seen from the Babylonian version that this is more probably another form of the dragon myth than a common memory of a tremendous deluge. A Babylonian seal cylinder in the British Museum bears the picture of a man and woman standing one on each side of a sacred tree, from which they are picking fruit, while a serpent coils around the tree; but no written explanation of this very suggestive picture has been discovered. These mythical stories have come down from primitive Semitic times, but we cannot fail to notice that while their ancestry is undoubtedly common, there is a tremendous difference between the stage reached under the inspiration of the Hebrew genius and the crude Polytheism of the Babylonian stories. Their connection in some way is unmistakable, but still more certain is their different ethical and religious level. The fact of the borrowing does not deny the inspiration; it rather reveals how powerful that inspiration was.