It will be unnecessary here to go in detail through the points of resemblance that are admitted to exist between the Hebrew account of Creation in the first chapter of Genesis and that preserved in the “Seven Tablets".(1) It will suffice to emphasize two of them, which gain in significance through our newly acquired knowledge of early Sumerian beliefs.  It must be admitted that, on first reading the poem, one is struck more by the differences than by the parallels; but that is due to the polytheistic basis of the poem, which attracts attention when compared with the severe and dignified monotheism of the Hebrew writer.  And if allowance be made for the change in theological standpoint, the material points of resemblance are seen to be very marked.  The outline or general course of events is the same.  In both we have an abyss of waters at the beginning denoted by almost the same Semitic word, the Hebrew tehom, translated “the deep” in Gen. i. 2, being the equivalent of the Semitic-Babylonian Tiamat, the monster of storm and flood who presents so striking a contrast to the Sumerian primaeval water.(2) The second act of Creation in the Hebrew narrative is that of a “firmament”, which divided the waters under it from those above.(3) But this, as we have seen, has no parallel in the early Sumerian conception until it was combined with the Dragon combat in the form in which we find it in the Babylonian poem.  There the body of Tiamat is divided by Marduk, and from one half of her he constructs a covering or dome for heaven, that is to say a “firmament”, to keep her upper waters in place.  These will suffice as text passages, since they serve to point out quite clearly the Semitic source to which all the other detailed points of Hebrew resemblance may be traced.

     (1) See Seven Tablets, Vol.  I, pp. lxxxi ff., and Skinner,
     Genesis, pp. 45 ff.

(2) The invariable use of the Hebrew word tehom without the article, except in two passages in the plural, proves that it is a proper name (cf.  Skinner, op. cit., p. 17); and its correspondence with Tiamat makes the resemblance of the versions far more significant than if their parallelism were confined solely to ideas.

     (3) Gen. i. 6-8.

In the case of the Deluge traditions, so conclusive a demonstration is not possible, since we have no similar criterion to apply.  And on one point, as we saw, the Hebrew Versions preserve an original Sumerian strand of the narrative that was not woven into the Gilgamesh Epic, where there is no parallel to the piety of Noah.  But from the detailed description that was given in the second lecture, it will have been noted that the Sumerian account is on the whole far simpler and more primitive than the other versions.  It is only in the Babylonian Epic, for example, that the later Hebrew writer finds material from which to construct the ark, while the sweet savour of Ut-napishtim’s