124-(94) CHALDEA1ST CREATION ACCOUNT. 



* * * his father Anu ■ * * * 



the god * * thee and over all which thy hand has 

 made. 



* * * thee, having over the earth which thy hand 

 has made. 



* * * * having, Assur which thou hast called its 

 name. 



Whatever this tablet may mean, it certainly has no 

 counter-part in the story in Genesis. 



Mr. Smith, and others, style this series " the legend of 

 the creation in days." The name is not all appropriate, 

 for there is no allusion to days in that sense, nor to the 

 word at all, save in the first tablet, where speaking of 

 the birth of the gods, the myth says, ' ' The gods Sar and 

 Kisar were made next. The days were long (many ?) a long 

 time passed, and then Anu, Bel and Hea, were born of 

 Kar and Kisar." 



Besides the above, there are two other creation ac- 

 counts. One on the tablet of Cutha, the other recorded 

 by Berosus. They are both too monstrous for any one to 

 regard them as the source of the story in the Bible. 



We are told that in the tablets we have ' L an exact 

 parallelism for the six days of creation. " "The paral- 

 lelism is complete '; not a single feature is omitted !" 



This is most extravagant. Only four tablets have been 

 found and in these the little parallelism that exists, is of 

 the most trivial character. 



. In the first, there is no parallelism, every feature of 

 the Genesis account is lacking. In the second, which is 

 said to correspond to the third period in Genesis, all that 

 is said is this : " When thou didst form the foundation 

 of rock, the foundation of the ground thou didst call. ' ' 

 (Thou didst form the foundation of the caverns of rock, 

 &c.) JSTot one word is here of all that makes the work of 

 the third period ; nothing as to the waters having been 

 gathered into one place, nor of the dry land appearing, 

 nor of grasses, herbs and fruit trees. Surety there is no 

 parallelism here. The third of the four tablets known 

 — the fifth probably of the series — is a strange medley 

 of physical falsehoods. It tells of gates in the sides of 

 the earth, of a god that builds a stair-case to the upper 

 regions, of his arranging the stars in constellations, of 

 the phases of the moon from new to old, but not a word 



