In chorus they greet and bless him, "Marduk be king." They present him with additional weapons, and encourage him for the contest. Upon hearing of his success the gods vie with one another in conferring honors upon Marduk. They bestow all manner of glorious epithets upon him; and, to cap the climax, the old Bel, known as 'father Bel,' steps forward and transfers to him his name, _bel matati_,[142] 'lord of lands.' To bestow the name was equivalent to transferring Bel's powers to Marduk; and so Marduk is henceforth known as _Bel_. But Ea must be introduced into the episode. It is not sufficient that Bel, the original subduer of Tiamat, should pay homage to Marduk; Ea also greets his son, and bestows his name upon him,[143]--that is, transfers his powers to his son. There is a special reason for this. The overthrow of Tiamat is followed by the creation of man. This function properly belongs to Bel, both as the god of earth and as the subduer of Tiamat. According to one--and probably the oldest--version of this part of the Babylonian cosmogony which was embodied in the work of Berosus[144], it is Bel who creates mankind. The substitution of Marduk for Bel necessitated the transference of the role of creator to Marduk likewise, and yet the latter could not take this upon himself without the consent of his father Ea, who had become the god of humanity _par excellence_. Ea could interpose no objection against Bel being replaced by Marduk in vanquishing the monster, but when it came to drawing the conclusion and replacing Bel by Marduk also in the creation of man, the case was different. If Bel was to be replaced, Ea had a prior claim. Marduk could only take the new functions upon himself after receiving the powers of Ea. That is the force of Ea's saying that Marduk's name also shall be Ea just as his. This transference of the name of Ea to Marduk is in itself an indication that there must have existed a second version in Babylonia--probably of later origin than the other--of the creation of man, according to which Ea, and not Bel, was the creator. We shall have occasion to see, in a future chapter, that there were at least two different versions current in Babylonia of the creation of the gods and of the universe. The opening chapters in Genesis form an interesting parallel to show the manner in which two different versions of one and the same subject may be combined. There is, therefore, nothing improbable in the supposition that a later version, reflecting a period when Bel had sunk into comparative insignificance, made Ea the creator of mankind instead of Bel, and that still later a solution of the apparent inconsistency involved in transferring only part of Bel's powers to Marduk was found by securing Ea's consent to the acknowledgment of Marduk not merely as creator of mankind but of the heavenly vault as well. Jensen[145] has brought other evidence to show that Ea was once regarded as the creator of mankind.