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Jupiter Kronides ; much less a half- developed something 
emerging out of Chaos, nor even a Zoroastrian duality, but 
God over all blessed for ever, having the essential attributes 
of self-existence, unity, eternity, omnipresence, truth. 
We commence our search, hopeless though it be, in the 
land where Gentile memory first brought a tradition of the crea- 
tion of Heaven and Earth, the fall of Man, the curse upon the 
ground, and the drowning of mankind for sin. The first of 
the creation tablets, containing the account originally written 
in Chaldea, then translated in Assyria ; and at last found 
and translated into English by the late lamented George 
Smith, contains, as he calls it, ee a description of the void, or 
Chaos, and pai’t of the generation of the gods.” 
1. When above, were not raised the heavens : 
2. and below, on the earth a plant had not grown up ; 
3. the abyss also had not broken up their boundaries ; 
4. the chaos (water) , the Tiamat (sea), was the producing mother of the 
whole of them ; 
5. those waters at the beginning were ordained, but 
6. a tree had not grown, a flower had not unfolded ; 
7. when the gods had not sprung up any one of them, 
8. a plant had not grown,, and order did not exist, 
9. were made also the great gods, 
10. the gods Lahma and Lahamu they caused to come , 
11. and they grew. 
1 2. The gods Sar and Kisar were made, 
13. a course of days and a long time passed. ( GJvaldmm Genesis, p. 62.) 
Three other tablets contain a legendary account of creation 
in general, and on the fifth is that of the heavenly bodies in 
particular. The legend seems to say that the great gods were 
born out of their producing mother, the sea, and that they 
then agreed to some scheme for concurrent action and division 
of labour. Then, on the fifth tablet, where one of the gods 
— Mr. Smith supposes it may be Anu — took the matter in 
hand : — 
1. It was delightful, all that was fixed by the great gods. 
2. Stars, their appearance (in figures) of animals he arranged, 
3. To fix the year through the observation of their constellations, 
4. Twelve months (or signs) of stars in three rows he arranged, 
5. From the day when the year commences unto the close. 
6. He marked the positions of the wandering stars (planets) to shine in 
their courses, 
7. that they might not do injury, and might not trouble any one. 
8. The positions of the gods Bel and Hea he fixed with him. 
9. And he opened the great gates in the darkness shrouded, 
