inds, the rules for the founding of cities, and the construction of
temples, the principles of law and of surveying; he showed them how to
sow and reap; he gave them all that contributes to the comforts of life.
Since that time nothing excellent has been invented. At sunset this
monster Oannes plunged back into the sea, and remained all night beneath
the waves, for he was amphibious. He wrote a book on the origin of
things and of civilization, which he gave to men." These are a few of
the fables which were current among the races of the Lower Euphrates
with regard to the first beginnings of the universe. That they possessed
many other legends of which we now know nothing is certain, but either
they have perished for ever, or the works in which they were recorded
still await discovery, it may be under the ruins of a palace or in the
cupboards of some museum.

* The arrangement of the heavens by Merodach is described at the end
of the fourth and beginning of the fifth tablets. The text, originally
somewhat obscure, is so mutilated in places that it is not always
possible to make out the sense with certainty.

** The creation of the animals and then of man is related on the seventh
tablet, and on a tablet the place of which, in the series, is still
undetermined. I have been obliged to translate the text rather freely,
so as to make the meaning clear to the modern reader.

[Illustration: 017.jpg A GOD-FISH]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from
Nimrud.

They do not seem to have conceived the possibility of an absolute
creation, by means of which the gods, or one of them, should have
evolved out of nothing all that exists: the creation was for them merely
the setting in motion of pre-existing elements, and the creator only an
organizer of the various materials floating in chaos. Popular fancy
in different towns varied the names of the creators and the methods
employed by them; as centuries passed on, a pile of vague, confused, and
contradictory traditions were amassed, no one of which was held to be
quite satisfactory, though all found partisans to support them. Just as
in Egypt, the theologians of local priesthoods endeavoured to classify
them and bring them into a kind of harmony: many they rejected and
others they recast in order to better reconcile their statements: they
arranged them in systems, from which they undertook to unravel, under
inspiration from on high, the true history of t