The Babylonians constructed myths
which have in large measure come down to us, through the Jews, as part
of our own religious lore. There was first of all the myth of the
creation. In the beginning was Chaos. "In the time when nothing which was
called heaven existed above, and when nothing below had yet received
the name of earth, Apsu, the Ocean, who first was their father and
Tiamat, Chaos, who gave birth to them all, mingled their waters in one."
Things slowly began to grow and take form; but suddenly the monster-goddess Tiamat set out to destroy all the other gods, and to make herself Chaos-supreme. A mighty revolution ensued in which all order was destroyed.
Then another god, Marduk, slew Tiamat with her own medicine by casting a hurricane of wind into her mouth as she opened it to swallow him; then he thrust his lance into Tiamat's wind-swollen paunch,
and the goddess of Chaos blew up. Marduk, "recovering his calm," says the
legend, split the dead Tiamat into two longitudinal halves, 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.
This is as much as we yet know about creation. Perhaps the ancient poet meant to suggest that the only creation of which we can know anything is the replacement of chaos with order, for in the end
this is the essence of art and civilization. We should remember, however,
that the defeat of Chaos is only a myth.
