likewise, Marduk is assigned the most important role--an evidence that
it was produced under similar influences as the larger epic. So far as
preserved, the second version differs from the first in its brevity and
in the prominence given to such themes as the development of animal life
and the growth of civilization. It fills out to a certain degree the
gaps in the first version, due to the fragmentary condition of the fifth
tablet and the loss of the sixth. The brevity of the second version is
due in part to the fact that it is introduced into an incantation text,
and, what is more, incidentally introduced.

It begins as does the larger epic with the statement regarding the
period when the present phenomena of the universe were not yet in
existence, but it specifies the period in a manner which gives a
somewhat more definite character to the conception of this ancient time.

The bright house of the gods was not yet built on the bright place,
No reed grew and no tree was formed,
No brick was laid nor any brick edifice[777] reared,
No house erected, no city built,
No city reared, no conglomeration[778] formed.
Nippur was not reared, E-Kur[779] not erected.
Erech was not reared, E-Anna[780] not erected.
The deep[781] not formed, Eridu[782] not reared.
The bright house, the house of the gods not yet constructed as a
dwelling.
The world[783] was all a sea.

Again it will be observed that neither popular nor scholastic
speculation can picture the beginning of things in any other way than as
an absence of things characteristic of the _order_ of the universe.

The bright[784] house of the gods corresponds to Eshara and the canopy
of heaven in the first version. The gods are again identified with the
stars, and it is in the heavens--the bright place--that the gods
dwell.[785] The reference to the absence of vegetation agrees closely
with the corresponding passage in the larger creation epic. The
limitations of the cosmological speculations of the Babylonians find a
striking illustration in the manner in which the beginnings of human
culture are placed on a level with the beginnings of heavenly and
terrestrial phenomena. Nippur, Erech, and Eridu, which are thus shown to
be the oldest religious centers of the Euphrates Valley, were
indissolubly associated in the minds of the people with the beginning of
order in the universe. Such was the antiquity of those cities as seats
of the great gods, Bel, Is