appears in most ancient mythologies.  The Hebrews indeed used the conception as a metaphor or parable,(3) and it also underlies their earlier picture of man’s creation.  I have not touched on the grosser Egyptian conceptions concerning the origin of the universe, which we may probably connect with African ideas; but those I have referred to will serve to demonstrate the complete absence of any feature that presents a detailed resemblance of the Hebrew tradition.

     (1) For the wide diffusion, in the myths of remote peoples,
     of a vague theory that would trace all created things to a
     watery origin, see Farnell, Greece and Babylon, p. 180.

     (2) Gen. ii. 7 (J).

     (3) Cf., e.g., Isaiah xxix. 16, xlv. 9; and Jeremiah xviii.
     2f.

When we turn to Babylonia, we find there also evidence of conflicting ideas, the product of different and to some extent competing religious centres.  But in contrast to the rather confused condition of Egyptian mythology, the Semitic Creation myth of the city of Babylon, thanks to the latter’s continued political ascendancy, succeeded in winning a dominant place in the national literature.  This is the version in which so many points of resemblance to the first chapter of Genesis have long been recognized, especially in the succession of creative acts and their relative order.  In the Semitic-Babylonian Version the creation of the world is represented as the result of conflict, the emergence of order out of chaos, a result that is only attained by the personal triumph of the Creator.  But this underlying dualism does not appear in the more primitive Sumerian Version we have now recovered.  It will be remembered that in the second lecture I gave some account of the myth, which occurs in an epitomized form as an introduction to the Sumerian Version of the Deluge, the two narratives being recorded in the same document and connected with one another by a description of the Antediluvian cities.  We there saw that Creation is ascribed to the three greatest gods of the Sumerian pantheon, Anu, Enlil, and Enki, assisted by the goddess Ninkharsagga.

It is significant that in the Sumerian version no less than four deities are represented as taking part in the Creation.  For in this we may see some indication of the period to which its composition must be assigned.  Their association in the text suggests that the claims of local gods had already begun to compete with one another as a result of political combination between the cities of their cults.  To the same general period we must also assign the compilation of the Sumerian Dynastic record, for that presupposes the existence of a supreme ruler among the Sumerian city-states.  This form of political constitution must undoubtedly have been the result of a long process of development, and the fact that its existence should be regarded as dating from the Creation of the world indicates a comparatively developed stage of the tradition.  But behind the combination of cities and their gods we may conjecturally trace anterior stages of development, when each local deity and his human representative seemed to their own adherents the sole objects for worship and allegiance.  And even after the demands of other centres had been conceded, no deity ever quite gave up his local claims.