Babylonian Creation Myths General Editor Jerrold S. Cooper, Johns Hopkins University Editorial Board Walter Farber, University of Chicago Jack Sasson, Vanderbilt University Piotr Michalowski, University of Michigan Piotr Steinkeller, Harvard University Simo Parpola, University of Helsinki Marten Stol, Free University of Amsterdam Karen Radner, University College, London Irene Winter, Harvard University 1. The Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur, by Piotr Michalowski 2. Schlaf, Kindchen, Schlaf! Mesopotamische Baby-Beschwörungen und -Rituale, by Walter Farber 3. Adoption in Old Babylonian Nippur and the Archive of Mannum-mešu-liṣṣur, by Elizabeth C. Stone and David I. Owen 4. Third-Millennium Legal and Administrative Texts in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad, by Piotr Steinkeller and J. N. Postgate 5. House Most High: The Temples of Ancient Mesopotamia, by A. R. George 6. Textes culinaires Mésopotamiens / Mesopotamian Culinary Texts, by Jean Bottéro 7. Legends of the Kings of Akkade: The Texts, by Joan Goodnick Westenholz 8. Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, by Wayne Horowitz 9. The Writing on the Wall: Studies in the Architectural Context of Late Assyrian Palace Reliefs, by John M. Russell 10. Adapa and the South Wind: Language Has the Power of Life and Death, by Shlomo Izre’el 11. Time at Emar: The Cultic Calendar and the Rituals from the Diviner’s Archive, by Daniel E. Fleming 12. Letters to the King of Mari: A New Translation, with Historical Introduction, Notes, and Commentary, by Wolfgang Heimpel 13. Babylonian Oracle Questions, by W. G. Lambert 14. Royal Statuary of Early Dynastic Mesopotamia , by Gianni Marchesi and Nicolò Marchetti 15. The Correspondence of the Kings of Ur: An Epistolary History of an Ancient Mesopotamian Kingdom, by Piotr Michalowski 16. Babylonian Creation Myths, by W. G. Lambert 17. Lamaštu: An Edition of the Canonical Series of Lamaštu Incantations and Rituals and Related Texts from the Second and First Millennia b.c., by Walter Farber 18. The Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur, by Nili Samet 19. The babilili-Ritual from Hattusa (CTH 718), by Gary M. Beckman Babylonian Creation Myths W. G. Lambert Winona Lake, Indiana EisEnbrauns 2013 © Copyright 2013 Eisenbrauns All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. www.eisenbrauns.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Enuma elish. English. Babylonian creation myths / W. G. Lambert. pages cm. — (Mesopotamian civilizations ; 16) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-57506-247-1 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Creation. 2. Cosmology, Babylonian. 3. Akkadian language—Texts. I. Lambert, W. G. (Wilfred G.) II. Enuma elish. III. Title. PJ3771.E5.E3 2013 892′.1—dc23 2013020960 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sci- ences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. ♾™ Contents Editor’s Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Part I Enūma Eliš: The Babylonian Epic of Creation Introduction: The Text of Enūma Eliš . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Sources 3 Evidence of Recensions 4 Quotations, Allusions, and References in Other Texts 6 Spelling and Variants 9 Syntax and Metre 17 The “Hymno-Epic Dialect” 34 Tablet I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Tablet II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Tablet III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Tablet IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Tablet V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Tablet VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Tablet VII . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 The Commentaries on Enūma Eliš and the Triple-Column God-List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Part II Enūma Eliš and Marduk Marduk’s Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 The Meanings of the Fifty Names 160 The Organization of the Universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 The Splitting of Heaven and Earth 169 The Organization of the Heavens 172 v vi Contents The Thirty-Six Stars 180 The Phases of the Moon 186 The Duties of the Sun 192 The Organization of the Earth 192 The Organization of the Pantheon 193 The Organization of the Heavenly Bodies 196 Babylon as the First City 200 The Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 Ninurta’s Victories 202 Mythological Conflicts in Expository Texts 207 Groups of Defeated Gods 209 Apsû 217 Mummu 218 Qingu 221 The Monsters 224 Marduk’s Dragon 232 Tiāmat 236 “Lord of the Sea” 240 The Rise of Marduk in the Sumero-Babylonian Pantheon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 Marduk and Babylon in the Third Millennium 249 The First Dynasty of Babylon: Marduk and Asalluḫi 251 Marduk’s Position in the Old Babylonian Pantheon after Hammurabi 255 Marduk’s Position in the Late Babylonian Pantheon 263 The Middle Babylonian Evidence 265 The Second Dynasty of Isin 271 Marduk’s Exaltation in the Reign of Nebuchadnezzar I 273 Other Evidence of Marduk’s Status in the Pantheon 274 The Rise of Nabû 275 Part III Further Babylonian Creation Tales Enmešarra’s Defeat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 The Town of Zarpānītum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 The Toil of Babylon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 Uraš and Marduk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 The Murder of Anšar? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 Damkina’s Bond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 The Defeat of Enutila, Enmešarra, and Qingu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 Enki and Ninmaḫ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 Contents vii The Exaltation of Nabû . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346 A Unilingual / Bilingual Account of Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350 The Slaying of Labbu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 The Founding of Eridu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366 The First Brick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 Another Dragon-Slaying Episode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384 The Theogony of Dunnu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 The River Incantation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396 Mythological Introductions on Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 Part IV Other Material Related to Enūma Eliš The Theogonies of Enlil and Anu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 The Theogony 405 The Theogony of Enlil 405 The Theogony of Anu 417 Namma, Ningirimma, and Ninimma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 Part V Summary The Composition of Enūma Eliš . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 Notes on the Texts Notes on Enūma Eliš . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 Tablet I 469 Tablet II 472 Tablet III 472 Tablet IV 474 Tablet V 477 Tablet VI 478 Tablet VII 482 Notes on the Other Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493 Enmešarra’s Defeat 493 The Town of Zarpānītum 495 The Toil of Babylon 495 Uraš and Marduk 496 The Murder of Anšar? 496 viii Contents Damkina’s Bond 497 The Defeat of Enutila, Enmešarra, and Qingu 497 Enki and Ninmaḫ 498 The Exaltation of Nabû 509 A Unilingual/Bilingual Account of Creation 510 The Slaying of Labbu 512 The Founding of Eridu 512 Another Dragon-Slaying Episode 513 The Theogony of Dunnu 513 Cuneiform Texts List of Cuneiform Tablets in the Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528 Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535 Indexes Select Subjects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607 Sumerian and Akkadian Words Discussed in the Notes on Other Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620 Ancient Texts and Modern Authors and Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621 Lines of Enūma Eliš Discussed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 637 Editor’s Preface W. G. Lambert delivered the text of this volume to Eisenbrauns in August, 2010, more than a year before his death on November 9, 2011. At the time, Lambert stated that “all that is needed is that the plates be inked.” Babylonian Creation Myths is the culmination of Lambert’s intimate in- volvement with Enūma Eliš and related (in the broadest sense) materials over the course of the last half-century. During a final conversation at his hospital bedside, Alasdair Livingstone and Irving Finkel reassured Lambert that his former students would see to it that this volume would be published with Lambert’s name on the cover. Indeed, without the selfless involvement of Lambert’s students, this volume would hardly have been possible. The manuscript Lambert transmitted to Eisenbrauns consisted of a series of digital files prepared by Thomas Balke, now of Heidelberg University. Lambert had been encouraged by his successor in Birmingham, Alasdair Livingstone, to apply for funding to have his manuscript put in digital form, and Balke’s work with Lambert was supported by a two-year grant (August 2008–2010) from the Leverhulme Trust. Without Balke’s efforts, this volume may never have come into being. The tablet copies, however, remained in Birmingham. Soon after Lambert’s death, Jim Eisenbraun sent me copies of the digital files, and we determined that the manuscript was sufficiently complete that we should make every effort to bring it to publica- tion. Eisenbraun contacted Livingstone regarding the tablet copies. These were being electronically inked by Mr. Henry Buglass of the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, University of Birming- ham, with Livingstone’s supervision. The inked files were dispatched to Eisenbrauns by Livingstone in late November. In the meantime, two former Lambert students, Andrew George and Wayne Horowitz, agreed to take on the time-consuming tasks of reading proofs (George) and preparing in- dexes (Horowitz). Seeing through to publication a volume of such complexity absent the guidance of the author would have been hardly feasible without the active participation of two scholars who had studied these very texts with the master. Before his two-year term ended, Balke had prepared three large files, each consecutively pagi- nated. With input from Balke regarding the overall organization of the intended volume, I prepared a preliminary table of contents, which I passed on to George for revisions. George, who is Lambert’s academic executor, was able to find some small missing sections of the manuscript among Lambert’s papers, and these were keyboarded by George’s wife, Junko Taniguchi. Taniguchi also numbered and indexed the many hundreds of cuneiform copies left by Lambert, so that any copies missing from the batch that had been processed in Birmingham could be retrieved. Taniguchi took on as well the painstaking task of inking the not inconsiderable number of copies needed for the volume that were only in pencil. ix