shed her skull.
He cut through the channels of her blood,
And he made the north wind to bear it away into secret places.

Afterwards

He divided the flesh of the _Ku-pu_ and devised a cunning plan.

Mr. L.W. King, from whose scholarly _Seven Tablets of Creation_ these
lines are quoted, notes that "Ku-pu" is a word of uncertain meaning.
Jensen suggests "trunk, body". Apparently Merodach obtained special
knowledge after dividing, and perhaps eating, the "Ku-pu". His
"cunning plan" is set forth in detail: he cut up the dragon's body:

He split her up like a flat fish into two halves.

He formed the heavens with one half and the earth with the other, and
then set the universe in order. His power and wisdom as the Demiurge
were derived from the fierce and powerful Great Mother, Tiamat.

In other dragon stories the heroes devise their plans after eating the
dragon's heart. According to Philostratus,[1] Apollonius of Tyana was
worthy of being remembered for two things--his bravery in travelling
among fierce robber tribes, not then subject to Rome, and his wisdom
in learning the language of birds and other animals as the Arabs do.
This accomplishment the Arabs acquired, Philostratus explains, by
eating the hearts of dragons. The "animals" who utter magic words are,
of course, the Fates. Siegfried of the _Nibelungenlied_, after slaying
the Regin dragon, makes himself invulnerable by bathing in its blood.
He obtains wisdom by eating the heart: as soon as he tastes it he can
understand the language of birds, and the birds reveal to him that
Mimer is waiting to slay him. Sigurd similarly makes his plans after
eating the heart of the Fafner dragon. In Scottish legend
Finn-mac-Coul obtains the power to divine secrets by partaking of a
small portion of the seventh salmon associated with the "well dragon",
and Michael Scott and other folk heroes become great physicians after
tasting the juices of the middle part of the body of the white snake.
The hero of an Egyptian folk tale slays a "deathless snake" by cutting
it in two parts and putting sand between the parts. He then obtains
from the box, of which it is the guardian, the book of spells; when he
reads a page of the spells he knows what the birds of the sky, the
fish of the deep, and the beasts of the hill say; the book gives him
power to enchant "the heaven and the earth, the abyss, the mountains
and the sea".[2]

Magic and religion were never separated in B