be seen in the fact that Anu, Enlil, and Ea
(i.e. Enki), who are here created together, are the three great gods of
the Sumerian Version of Creation; it is they who create mankind with the
help of the goddess Ninkharsagga, and in the fuller version of that myth
we should naturally expect to find some account of their own origin. The
reference in Damascius to Marduk ({Belos}) as the son of Ea and Damkina
({Dauke}) is also of interest in this connexion, as it exhibits a
goddess in close connexion with one of the three great gods, much as
we find Ninkharsagga associated with them in the Sumerian Version.(1)
Before leaving the names, it may be added that, of the primaeval
deities, Anshar and Kishar are obviously Sumerian in form.

(1) Damkina was the later wife of Ea or Enki; and
Ninkharsagga is associated with Enki, as his consort, in
another Sumerian myth.

It may be noted that the character of Apsu and Tiamat in this portion of
the poem(1) is quite at variance with their later actions. Their revolt
at the ordered "way" of the gods was a necessary preliminary to the
incorporation of the Dragon myths, in which Ea and Marduk are the
heroes. Here they appear as entirely beneficent gods of the primaeval
water, undisturbed by storms, in whose quiet depths the equally
beneficent deities Lakhmu and Lakhamu, Anshar and Kishar, were
generated.(2) This interpretation, by the way, suggests a more
satisfactory restoration for the close of the ninth line of the poem
than any that has yet been proposed. That line is usually taken to imply
that the gods were created "in the midst of (heaven)", but I think the
following rendering, in connexion with ll. 1-5, gives better sense:

When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not bear a name,
And the primaeval Apsu who begat them,(3)
And Mummu, and Tiamat who bore them(3) all,--
Their waters were mingled together,
. . .
. . .
. . .
Then were created the gods in the midst of (their waters),(4)
Lakhmu and Lakhamu were called into being . . .

(1) Tabl. I, ll. 1-21.

(2) We may perhaps see a survival of Tiamat's original
character in her control of the Tablets of Fate. The poem
does not represent her as seizing them in any successful
fight; they appear to be already hers to bestow on Kingu,
though in the later mythology they are "not his by right"
(cf. Tabl. I, ll.