Nergal, Ishtar, the
warrior-goddess, and Nebo; then a whole army of lesser deities who
ranged themselves around Anu as around a supreme master.

Discord arose. The first great battle of the gods was between Tiamat and
Merodach. In this fearful conflict Tiamat was destroyed. Splitting her
body into halves, the conqueror hung up one on high, and this became the
heavens; the other he spread out under his feet to form the earth, and
made the universe as men have known it. Merodach regulated the movements
of the sun and divided the year into twelve months.

The heavens having been put in order, he set about peopling the earth.
Many such fables concerning the cosmogony were current among the races
of the lower Euphrates, who seem to have belonged to three different
types. The most important were the Semites, who spoke a dialect akin to
Armenian, Hebrew and Phoenician. Side by side with these the monuments
give evidence of a race of ill-defined character, whom we provisionally
call Sumerians, who came, it is said, from some northern country, and
brought with them a curious system of writing which, adopted by ten
different nations, has preserved for us all that we know in regard to
the majority of the empires which rose and fell in Western Asia before
the Persian conquest. The cities of these Semites and Sumerians were
divided into two groups, one in the south, near the sea, the other more
to the north, where the Euphrates and the Tigris are separated by a
narrow strip of land. The southern group consisted of seven, Eridu lying
nearest the coast. Uru was the most important. Lagash was to the north
of Eridu. The northern group consisted of Nipur, "the incomparable,"
Borsip, Babylon (gate of the god and residence of life, the only
metropolis of the Euphrates region of which posterity never lost
reminiscence), Kishu, Kuta, Agade, and, lastly, the two Sipparas, that
of Shamash, and that of Annuit.

The earliest Chaldaean civilisation was confined almost to the banks of
the lower Euphrates; except at the northern boundary it did not reach
the Tigris and did not cross the river. Separated from the rest of the
world, on the east by the vast marshes bordering on the river, on the
north by the Mesopotamian table-land, on the west by the Arabian desert,
it was able to develop its civilisation as Egypt had done, in an
isolated area, and to follow out its destiny in peace.

According to Ferossasi the first king was Aloros of Babylon. He