The statement is sometimes made that there is no reason to assume a Sumerian original for the Semitic-Babylonian Version, as recorded on “the Seven Tablets of Creation";(1) and this remark, though true of that version as a whole, needs some qualification.  The composite nature of the poem has long been recognized, and an analysis of the text has shown that no less than five principal strands have been combined for its formation.  These consist of (i) The Birth of the Gods; (ii) The Legend of Ea and Apsu; (iii) The principal Dragon Myth; (iv) The actual account of Creation; and (v) the Hymn to Marduk under his fifty titles.(2) The Assyrian commentaries to the Hymn, from which considerable portions of its text are restored, quote throughout a Sumerian original, and explain it word for word by the phrases of the Semitic Version;(3) so that for one out of the Seven Tablets a Semitic origin is at once disproved.  Moreover, the majority of the fifty titles, even in the forms in which they have reached us in the Semitic text, are demonstrably Sumerian, and since many of them celebrate details of their owner’s creative work, a Sumerian original for other parts of the version is implied.  Enlil and Ea are both represented as bestowing their own names upon Marduk,(4) and we may assume that many of the fifty titles were originally borne by Enlil as a Sumerian Creator.(5) Thus some portions of the actual account of Creation were probably derived from a Sumerian original in which “Father Enlil” figured as the hero.

     (1) Cf., e.g., Jastrow, Journ. of the Amer.  Or.  Soc., Vol. 
     XXXVI (1916), p. 279.

     (2) See The Seven Tablets of Creation, Vol.  I, pp. lxvi
     ff.; and cf.  Skinner, Genesis, pp. 43 ff.

     (3) Cf. Sev.  Tabl., Vol.  I, pp. 157 ff.

     (4) Cf.  Tabl.  VII, ll. 116 ff.

     (5) The number fifty was suggested by an ideogram employed
     for Enlil’s name.

For what then were the Semitic Babylonians themselves responsible?  It seems to me that, in the “Seven Tablets”, we may credit them with considerable ingenuity in the combination of existing myths, but not with their invention.  The whole poem in its present form is a glorification of Marduk, the god of Babylon, who is to be given pre-eminent rank among the gods to correspond with the political position recently attained by his city.  It would have been quite out of keeping with the national thought to make a break in the tradition, and such a course would not have served the purpose of the Babylonian priesthood, which was to obtain recognition of their claims by the older cult-centres in the country.  Hence they chose and combined the more important existing myths, only making such alterations as would fit them to their new hero.  Babylon herself had won her position by her own exertions; and it would be a natural idea to give Marduk his opportunity of becoming Creator