He had saved the gods from ruin, but this was the least part of his task; he had still to sweep out of space the huge carcase which encumbered it, and to separate its ill-assorted elements, and arrange them afresh for the benefit of the conquerors.  He returned to Tiamat whom he had bound in chains.  He placed his foot upon her, with his unerring knife he cut into the upper part of her; then he cut the blood-vessels, and caused the blood to be carried by the north wind to the hidden places.  And the gods saw his face, they rejoiced, they gave themselves up to gladness, and sent him a present, a tribute of peace; then he recovered his calm, he contemplated the corpse, raised it and wrought marvels.

[Illustration:  010.jpg A kufa laden with stones, and manned by A crew of four men.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief at Koyunjik. 
     Behind the kufa may be seen a fisherman seated astride on
     an inflated skin with his fish-basket attached to his neck.

He split it in two as one does a fish for drying; then he hung up one of the halves on high, which became the heavens; the other half he spread out under his feet to form the earth, and made the universe such as men have since known it.  As in Egypt, the world was a kind of enclosed chamber balanced on the bosom of the eternal waters.* The earth, which forms the lower part of it, or floor, is something like an overturned boat in appearance, and hollow underneath, not like one of the narrow skiffs in use among other races, but a kufa, or kind of semicircular boat such as the tribes of the Lower Euphrates have made use of from earliest antiquity down to our own times.

* The description of the Egyptian world will be found in vol. i. p. 21 of the present work.  So far the only systematic attempt to reconstruct the Chaldaean world, since Lenormant, has been made by Jensen, who, after examining all the elements which went to compose it, one after another, sums up in a few pages, and reproduces in a plate, the principal results of his inquiry.  It will be seen at a glance how much I have taken from his work, and in what respects the drawing here reproduced differs from his.

[Illustration:  012.jpg the world as conceived by the Chaldaeans]

The earth rises gradually from the extremities to the centre, like a great mountain, of which the snow-region, where the Euphrates finds its source, approximately marks the summit.  It was at first supposed to be divided into seven zones, placed one on the top of the other along its sides, like the stories of a temple; later on it was divided into four “houses,” each of which, like the “houses” of Egypt, corresponded with one of the four cardinal points, and was under the rule of particular gods.  Near the foot of the mountain, the edges of the so-called