ON ACCOUNTS OP THE CREATION. 251 



we are told in Genesis the lights were fixed for the measurement of time and 

 the seasons, so, in the Tablets, we are told that the moon and stars were fixed 

 for the same purpose. The first chapter of Genesis embodies a careful 

 rhume of the laws of nature; but it does not attempt to do what some 

 people have tried, — it does not try to make it a sort of scientific treatise. 

 There is no need for anything of the sort. Genesis does not profess 

 to teach geology or natural history. It shows how, step by step, the various 

 phenomena of nature were created by the hand of the Almighty ; but 

 it does not attempt to arrange them according to geological strata ; and 

 any endeavour to prove that it does is simply a stretch of language, and an 

 ill-judged eflbrt to infuse into the simple and accurate account there given a 

 meaning it is not intended to convey. That, at any rate, is the position 

 I have always taken with regard to the fii'st chapter of Genesis. Another 

 remarkable point in regard to these Creation Tablets which may be brought 

 out by one who has studied them, is found in the 1st Tablet : — " The 

 Great Gods w§re then made." This does not convey the full sense of the 

 word used there, ibbanu, " were made." The expression thus used is the 

 reflexive form of the verb, and gives the idea of self-creation, — the Great 

 Gods made themselves. There is another line, — "When none of the 

 Gods had come forth." The expression used is, " Had caused them(selves) 

 to come forth," — again in the reflexive sense, as if there were the idea of 

 God in creation conveyed by the language of the Tablets. Those who have 

 studied the Tablets as presented in Schrader's book, which, I think, gives the 

 best translations, will see, especially if he has a fair knowledge of Hebrew, the 

 great care with which those Tablets were drawn up, evidently as though they 

 were intended to be 'canonical documents. Every word seems to have been 

 carefully weighed, almost as if the documents had been drawn up like a 

 credo, their whole style showing the same care as would have been exercised 

 had it been meant that they should be used as standard documents of religion. 

 The documents — certainly in the form in which we have them — were 

 written in the time of Assur-bani-pal, but there is a little fact, as coming 

 from a little Tablet, which goes strikingly to prove that they were much older 

 than that period. Among the Tablets that were brought over, I think with 

 the last collection sent by Mr. Rassam, was a small fragment, which is a 

 duplicate of one of the Creation Tablets, bearing upon it the date of the 

 reign of Nabonidus. That Tablet is the same, word for word, as the Assyrian 

 Tablet, though it is not copied from the Assyrian account, but is taken from 

 one in the library of the Temple of Nebo. We know that the majority 

 of the Tablets in the Assyrian libraries were copied from the Babylonian 

 Tablets. We know that those libraries were not destroyed, as was imagined 

 at one time, by the Assyrians ; but that the Tablets were preserved, and 

 that duplicates of the Tablets in the Assyrian library at Nineveh are also to 

 be found in the library at Babylon. Another Tablet, which was discovered 

 about two years ago, is one belonging to the Creation series. It contains an 

 account of the war between Mardnk and the Demon of Darkness. ^ s I 



