ENUMA ELISH, the name given to the myth that contains the theological thoughts of Babylon in the first millennium, is so called from its opening words, "When above." The style and content of the poem indicate that it is indeed the authentic product of the new religious thinking that placed the god Marduk at the head of the pantheon. Manuscripts of this myth have been found at many different sites in Assyria and Babylon, covering a period from approximately 1000 to 300 BCE, so the date of composition is established with some certainty in the final period of Mesopotamian civilization.

In contrast to Sumerian mythology, which attributes the beginnings of the creation of the cosmos to two essential elements, heaven and earth, from which the gods and the human race both sprang, the Enuma elish myth places the origins of the cosmos before heaven and earth in a...