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Category: van der Toorn

September 11, 2015

Kvanvig: On the Correspondences Between Antediluvian Myths

“Here he works along two lines: on the one hand, he demonstrates how the succession in the chain of written composition in the first millennium is dominated by Ea—apkallus—ummanus; on the other hand, he shows how the written lore of the ummanus was collected and systematized as a secret revelation belonging to this alleged chain of transmission.

Apkallu type 3, illustration 36, Stephanie Dalley, IDD. Professor Dalley cites this illustration, number 36, for the apkallu standing at the flanks of a deity. In the first case, it is far from certain that the figure on the left of the central deity is an apkallu at all, as it lacks all indicators of divinity and most crucially, wings. This figure does raise what appears to be a mullilu cone in its right hand, and it does hold the usual banduddu bucket in his left hand, though it must be admitted that depictions of cones with leaves still attached are irregular. Unfortunately Professor Dalley does not identify the deity in the center of the illustration, though I am encouraged that she does consider it to be a deity, rather than an apkallu of high rank, which I will provisionally attempt to do. I have discussed elsewhere in captions to these illustrations the possibility that the deity at the center of this composition, which appears to adorn a necklace or breastplate, is the god Anu, who is allegedly never depicted in Mesopotamian iconography. The circular device at the apex of his crown, which is appropriately horned, is apparent in only one other example, a bronze face protector or frontal helmet. In that example, the circular device or disc is so worn that the lower portion of its mount mimics the inverted crescent of the Moon god Sin. The context is inappropriate for Sin, however, and it is more likely that the disc mount is simply worn from great age, with the circular portion along the top gone. In any case, a bird-headed type 3 Nisroc apkallu is on the right, with banduddu bucket in the left hand and an indistinct item in his raised right hand. It appears to be a mullilu cone, but with leaves or sprouting, as noted. As mentioned, the figure on the left side of the deity lacks wings, though it mimics the blessing gesture, cone and banduddu bucket of the right-side apkallu. The left side figure may not be an apkallu at all. Perhaps it is a priest. Or a human umu-apkallu. It lacks all symbols of divinity or semi-divinity. The central figure remains problematic for me, wearing a crown which reminds me of a depiction of the god Anu. The problem is that Assyriologists aver that no representations of Anu exist. Also significant for me, this figure, whether it is a deity or an apkallu, wears a large ring around the torso. My suspicion is that this ring would be decorated with rosettes, were sufficient detail available. This figure also holds a ring in his left hand, an item typically reserved for deities, while raising his right hand in the classical gesture of greeting.

Click to zoom. Apkallu type 3, illustration 36, Stephanie Dalley, IDD.
Professor Dalley cites this illustration, number 36, for the apkallu standing at the flanks of a deity. In the first case, it is far from certain that the figure on the left of the central deity is an apkallu at all, as it lacks all indicators of divinity and most crucially, wings. This figure does raise what appears to be a mullilu cone in its right hand, and it does hold the usual banduddu bucket in his left hand, though it must be admitted that depictions of cones with leaves still attached are irregular.
Unfortunately Professor Dalley does not identify the deity in the center of the illustration, though I am encouraged that she does consider it to be a deity, rather than an apkallu of high rank, which I will provisionally attempt to support.
I have discussed elsewhere in captions to these illustrations the possibility that the deity at the center of this composition, which appears to adorn a necklace or breastplate, is the god Anu, who is allegedly never depicted in Mesopotamian iconography.
The circular device at the apex of his crown, which is appropriately horned, is apparent in only one other example, a bronze face protector or frontal helmet, which is posted lower on this page.
In that example, the circular device or disc is so worn that the lower portion of its mount mimics the inverted crescent of the Moon god Sin.
The context is inappropriate for Sin, however, and it is more likely that the disc mount is simply worn from great age, with the circular portion along the top gone.
In any case, a bird-headed type 3 Nisroc apkallu is on the right, with banduddu bucket in the left hand and an indistinct item in his raised right hand. It appears to be a mullilu cone, but with leaves or sprouting, as noted.
As mentioned, the figure on the left side of the deity lacks wings, though it mimics the blessing gesture, cone and banduddu bucket of the right-side apkallu. The left side figure may not be an apkallu at all. Perhaps it is a priest. Or a human umu-apkallu. It lacks all symbols of divinity or semi-divinity.
The central figure remains problematic for me, wearing a crown which reminds me of a depiction of the god Anu. The problem is that Assyriologists aver that no representations of Anu exist.
Also significant for me, this figure, whether it is a deity or an apkallu, wears a large ring around the torso. My suspicion is that this ring would be decorated with rosettes, were sufficient detail available.
This figure also holds a ring in his left hand, an item typically reserved for deities, called a chaplet by Anthony Green and Jeremy Black, while raising his right hand in the classical gesture of greeting.

He admits that there are other voices, even in the first millennium, but this is the dominant tendency. One may object to Lenzi’s work, that he goes too far in his effort to systemize the material.

If influential ummanus first in Assyria and then in Late Babylonia saw it as a priority both to bring together their lore under specific rubrics, and to establish a theology of revelation and transmission, going back to one god, Ea, they had quite a task, given the vast variety in the material they inherited from the millennium before.

We think the most important aspect of Lenzi’s impressive detailed examination of the sources is that he manages to show that there was a strong tendency toward systematization. There was an attempt to bring together the lore of the different scholarly professions into series given distinctive labels: these compositions belong to the lore of this profession–bārûtu, āšipūtu, kalûtu, asûtu, tupšarrūtu.

There was also the clear tendency to claim compositions belonging to the lore of these professions as secrets revealed by the gods in antediluvian time and restricted to the ummanus in present time.

(Cf. also Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture, Cambridge, 2004, pp. 181-5.)

This design is perplexing. I am uncertain whether it depicts a human apkallū, an ummanu, or, as earlier analysts determined, the god Anu. The problem is that Assyriologists assert that Anu is never represented in illustrations or bas reliefs. The iconography is correct for an apkallū. The horned headdress is indicative of divinity, the plants held in both hands are not unprecedented, though they are not common. I believe that they are poppy bulbs. The rosette design in the large ring appears elsewhere in Neo-Assyrian symbolism, though its significance is undetermined. The large ring around the torso appears in the illustration above, as well. The wings on the figure are typical of an apkallu. The fact that the figure stands on a bull, however, suggests that this is a depiction of a deity, rather than a human apkallū. Further, the disc atop the headdress is problematic. In no other example does a human apkallū appear with a disc surmounting a horned headdress. The device at the top of the figure in the illustration above resembles this ring. Indeed, it is unclear whether the disc is just worn, or whether the lower part of the disc portrays the inverted horns of the Moon, indicative of the Moon god Sin. Or, it could just be a damaged ring, similar to the device above. This is one of the most dramatic examples of Neo-Assyrian art, but my scholarship is too meager to explicate it. http://transfixussednonmortuus.tumblr.com/image/32382020729

This design is perplexing. I am uncertain whether it depicts a human apkallū, an ummanu, or, as earlier analysts determined, the god Anu. The problem is that Assyriologists assert that Anu is never represented in illustrations or bas reliefs.
The iconography is correct for an apkallū. The horned headdress is indicative of divinity, the plants held in both hands are not unprecedented, though they are not common. I believe that they are poppy bulbs.
The rosette design in the large ring appears elsewhere in Neo-Assyrian symbolism, though its significance is undetermined. The large ring around the torso appears in the illustration above, as well.
The wings on the figure are typical of an apkallu, and indicative of divinity or semi-divinity.
The fact that the figure stands on a bull, however, suggests that this is a depiction of a deity, rather than a human apkallū. I would like to say that the bull is sacred to Anu, but Assyriologists insist that Anu is never depicted in Mesopotamian art. 
Further, the disc atop the headdress is problematic. In no other example does a human apkallū appear with a disc surmounting a horned headdress. The device at the top of the figure in the illustration above resembles this ring.
Indeed, it is unclear whether the disc is just worn, or whether the lower part of the disc portrays the inverted horns of the Moon, the “recumbent crescent,” as Black and Green describe it, indicative of the Moon god Sin. Or, it could just be a damaged ring, similar to the device above.
This is one of the most dramatic examples of Neo-Assyrian art, but my scholarship is too meager to explicate it.
http://transfixussednonmortuus.tumblr.com/image/32382020729

At the crucial point in this chain, we find the apkallus, above all Uanadapa, who were those who brought the divine knowledge to the humans.

The analyses carried out by van der Toorn and Lenzi are fully in accord with our own observations. There is a clear division between the first group of seven apkallus and subsequent sages and scholars in all three lists: Bīt Mēseri, Berossos, and the Uruk tablet.

They express this differently, but the tendency is clear. Bīt Mēseri lists seven apkallus “born in the river” and then four apkallus “of human descent.” Berossos lists seven apkallus before the flood and then one great scholar in the tenth generation after. The Uruk tablet lists seven apkallus before the flood, one afterwards, and continues with ummanus.

The antediluvian apkallus are closely connected to the divine realm, above all to the god Ea. “To be born in the river” means to be engendered in the abode of Ea. Oannes in Berosses (sic) goes to and fro the sea, the abode of Ea. But not only Ea is involved.

In our reading of the relationship between the Adapa Myth and Bīt Mēseri we found that the first apkallu, U-an, “the light of heaven” (An), was an echo of the fate of Adapa in the myth, fragment D, where Adapa is adopted sage by Anu.

This name of the first sage is reflected both in the Catalogue, in Berossos and on the Uruk tablet.”

Helge Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading, Brill, 2011, pp. 153-4.

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September 10, 2015

Kvanvig: Divine Origin of Antediluvian Texts

“Enuma Elish was written to promote Marduk as the head of the pantheon, reflecting the position of Babylon at the end of the second millennium. This was a new invention in Mesopotamian theology. To promote this new theology the author added a postscript in which he claims a divine origin for his work:

“This is the revelation which an Ancient, to whom it was told,

wrote down and established for posterity to hear.”

(Enuma Elish VII, 157-8. Translation according to van der Toorn, Scribal Culture, p. 212.)

The word translated “revelation,” taklimtu, literally means “demonstration.” The term preserves a memory of the time when revelation was thought of as a visual experience. In this case, however, the gods told the text to an Ancient, meaning that they had dictated it.

This is one of the few representations of a Mesopotamian pantheon that I have seen, allegedly adapted from a rock relief at Malatia (Anti-Taurus range).<br /> From Professor Morris Jastrow's Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria, G.P. Putnam's &amp; Sons, 1911.<br /> https://archive.org/details/aspectsofreligio00jast<br /> http://wisdomlib.org/mesopotamian/book/myths-and-legends-of-babylonia-and-assyria/d/doc7167.html<br /> Another version of this pantheon observes that Aššur is at the head of the procession, standing on two animals, including a snake-dragon or muššuššu. The rod and ring of sovereignty are in his right hand. I am not sure what he holds in his left hand.<br /> Ištar (of Nineveh) is depicted seated on a throne, carried as usual by a lion, her sacred animal. She carries what Black and Green term a "chaplet," a ring of temporal authority. The objects on the rear of her throne evoke her common depiction with maces and weaponry, appropriate for a goddess of love and war. Her throne is supported by indistinct figures of the Mesopotamian pandemonium. Winged scorpion-men, perhaps.<br /> The third figure from right to left is said to be Sin, the Moon-god, mounted upon a winged bull. Like Aššur, he holds an object which could be the horn from a bull in his left hand, and the rod and ring of temporal sovereignty in his right.<br /> The fourth figure from the right is believed to be Enlil or Marduk, like Aššur standing on a Muššuššu dragon. While this figure's left hand is empty, raised in the gesture of greeting, he holds the rod and ring in his right hand.<br /> The next figure is said to be Shamash, (or Šamaš), the sun god, mounted on a horse. He holds the rod and ring in his right hand, and greets with his left hand.<br /> Adad is second from the left, with lighting bolts in his hands. Adad stands on a pair of winged bulls.<br /> The final figure is believed to be a depiction of Ištar on a lion, either Ištar of Arbela or Ištar of Babylon.<br /> See Place, Ninive et VAssyrie, Pl. 45, from which it would appear that the design was repeated three times on the monument.<br /> See also Luschan, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli , p. 23 seq.<br /> For another procession of gods (on an alabaster slab found at Nimroud) see Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, i., Pl. 65.<br /> http://www.wisdomlib.org/mesopotamian/book/aspects-of-religious-belief-and-practice-in-babylonia-and-assyria/d/doc7258.html<br /> Finally, Jeremy Black and Anthony Green observe, "The best preserved of four similar panels of rock reliefs at Maltai, carved on the cliff face on the southern side of the Dehok valley, by the road leading from Assyria to the Upper Zab valley. (This reads as though Black &amp; Green had actually visited the site).<br /> Black and Green note that an Assyrian king, "probably Sennacherib (704-681 BCE)," flanks the seven depicted deities.<br /> The version in Black and Green is reversed, with the procession facing to the left. From left to right, Black and Green identify Aššur on Muššuššu, followed by "his consort Mullisu enthroned on a lion," Enlil or Sin on a lion-dragon, Nabu on a snake-dragon, Šamaš on a horse, Adad with lightening bolts, and Ištar on a lion.<br /> Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, 1992, p. 40.<br /> https://books.google.co.th/books?id=pr8-i1iFnIQC&amp;redir_esc=y<br /> Anthony Green updated these comments in 1994 in Michwesen. B. "The best preserved of four similar panels of rock reliefs at Maltai, carved on the cliff face on the southern side of the Dehok valley, by the road from Assyria to the upper Zab valley. The Assyrian king, probably Sennacherib, flanks a procession of seven deities upon their animals. After F. Thureau-Dangin, Les Sculptures Rupestres de Maltai, RA 21 (1924), p. 187. For the beasts, cf. U. Seidl, RIA III s.v. "Gottersymbole und -attribute."<br /> Anthony Green, Mischwesen. B, 1994, p. 263.<br /> https://www.academia.edu/2378476/Mischwesen_B._A.Green_

This is one of the few representations of a Mesopotamian pantheon that I have seen, allegedly adapted from a rock relief at Malatia (Anti-Taurus range).
From Professor Morris Jastrow’s Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria, G.P. Putnam’s & Sons, 1911.
https://archive.org/details/aspectsofreligio00jast
http://wisdomlib.org/mesopotamian/book/myths-and-legends-of-babylonia-and-assyria/d/doc7167.html
Another version of this pantheon observes that Aššur is at the head of the procession, standing on two animals, including a snake-dragon or muššuššu. The rod and ring of sovereignty are in his right hand. I am not sure what he holds in his left hand.
Ištar (of Nineveh) is depicted seated on a throne, carried as usual by a lion, her sacred animal. She carries what Black and Green term a “chaplet,” a ring of temporal authority. The objects on the rear of her throne evoke her common depiction with maces and weaponry, appropriate for a goddess of love and war. Her throne is supported by indistinct figures of the Mesopotamian pandemonium. Winged scorpion-men, perhaps.
The third figure from right to left is said to be Sin, the Moon-god, mounted upon a winged bull. Like Aššur, he holds an object which could be the horn from a bull in his left hand, and the rod and ring of temporal sovereignty in his right.
The fourth figure from the right is believed to be Enlil or Marduk, like Aššur standing on a Muššuššu dragon. While this figure’s left hand is empty, raised in the gesture of greeting, he holds the rod and ring in his right hand.
The next figure is said to be Shamash, (or Šamaš), the sun god, mounted on a horse. He holds the rod and ring in his right hand, and greets with his left hand.
Adad is second from the left, with lighting bolts in his hands. Adad stands on a pair of winged bulls.
The final figure is believed to be a depiction of Ištar on a lion, either Ištar of Arbela or Ištar of Babylon.
See Place, Ninive et VAssyrie, Pl. 45, from which it would appear that the design was repeated three times on the monument.
See also Luschan, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli , p. 23 seq.
For another procession of gods (on an alabaster slab found at Nimroud) see Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, i., Pl. 65.
http://www.wisdomlib.org/mesopotamian/book/aspects-of-religious-belief-and-practice-in-babylonia-and-assyria/d/doc7258.html
Finally, Jeremy Black and Anthony Green observe, “The best preserved of four similar panels of rock reliefs at Maltai, carved on the cliff face on the southern side of the Dehok valley, by the road leading from Assyria to the Upper Zab valley. (This reads as though Black & Green had actually visited the site).
Black and Green note that an Assyrian king, “probably Sennacherib (704-681 BCE),” flanks the seven depicted deities.
The version in Black and Green is reversed, with the procession facing to the left. From left to right, Black and Green identify Aššur on Muššuššu, followed by “his consort Mullisu enthroned on a lion,” Enlil or Sin on a lion-dragon, Nabu on a snake-dragon, Šamaš on a horse, Adad with lightening bolts, and Ištar on a lion.
Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, 1992, p. 40.
https://books.google.co.th/books?id=pr8-i1iFnIQC&redir_esc=y
Anthony Green updated these comments in 1994 in Michwesen. B. “The best preserved of four similar panels of rock reliefs at Maltai, carved on the cliff face on the southern side of the Dehok valley, by the road from Assyria to the upper Zab valley. The Assyrian king, probably Sennacherib, flanks a procession of seven deities upon their animals. After F. Thureau-Dangin, Les Sculptures Rupestres de Maltai, RA 21 (1924), p. 187. For the beasts, cf. U. Seidl, RIA III s.v. “Gottersymbole und -attribute.”
Anthony Green, Mischwesen. B, 1994, p. 263.
https://www.academia.edu/2378476/Mischwesen_B._A.Green_

The Ancient put it down into writing and established it for future generations. This is very similar to what Kabti-ilāni-Marduk says about the revelation of the Poem of Erra, as van der Toorn also notes.

We can observe a similar feature in Gilgamesh. In the Old Babylonian version of the epic, wisdom is human knowledge acquired through life experience. In the Standard Babylonian version from the end of the second millennium this wisdom has become divine.

The editor added a prologue in which he pictures Gilgamesh as a man who has obtained hidden wisdom, inaccessible to others:

“he [learnt] the totality of wisdom about everything.

He saw the secret and uncovered the hidden,

he brought back a message from the antediluvian age.”

(Gilgamesh I, 6-8. Translation according to George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic I, 539.)

The same theme reoccurs at the end of the composition, in tablet XI, where Gilgamesh meets Uta-napišti, the hero of the flood, who has become like the gods. Uta-napišti reveals secrets to Gilgamesh, referred to as “a hidden matter” and “a secret of the gods” (XI, 9-10, repeated in 281-2).

Van der Toorn sees the classification of writings as “revelations” and “secrets” in relation to the development from an oral to a scribal culture. Oral and written transmission existed together in the long time span of Mesopotamian culture, but at a certain time there came a change, i.e. at the end of the second millennium.

The written tradition became more important in the formation of new generations of scholars.

“From that moment on, students began to acquire their knowledge by copying texts rather than listening to a teacher; the master copy took the place of the master.”

(Van der Toorn, Scribal Culture, 218.)

The authority was transposed from the master to the text, and the text needed an authority that also included the master. Thus the construct was made about a written revelation from Ea to the apkallus and further in an unbroken chain down to the actual scholars.

They were the legitimate heirs of this written tradition; it was once revealed and therefore a secret belonging to their guild.

“To legitimize the written tradition, the Mesopotamian scholars qualified it as divine revelation; to preserve their privileged position as brokers of revealed knowledge, they declared it to be secret knowledge.”

(Ibid., 220.)

Even though we know that cause-effect constructions in the reconstruction of history cannot be one-dimensional, we find van der Toorn’s arguments here quite convincing. They are implied in Lenzi’s analysis as well, even though he follows more closely what took place within the written tradition in the first millennium itself.

Lenzi’s approach is to give evidence from the sources to what he labels “the mythology of scribal tradition.”

Helge Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading, Brill, 2011, pp. 151-2.

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September 9, 2015

Kvanvig: Initiation is a Restriction of Marduk

“We think van der Toorn is right in taking this as a comment to the tendency present in the Catalogue. This is still no absolute chronology, since apkallus are listed as authors in III, 7; IV, 11; and VI, 11.

Nevertheless, the commentary seems to underscore three stages in the transmission of highly recognized written knowledge: it starts in the divine realm with the god of wisdom Ea; at the intersection point between the divine and the human stands Uanadapa; and as the third link in this chain stands (we must presuppose) an ummanu, “scholar.”

Tablet of Uruk. The ritual of daily sacrifices in the temple of the god Anu in Uruk. Seleucid period, 3rd-2nd Centuries BCE, Hellenistic, from Uruk. Baked clay, 22,3 x 10,4 cm Louvre, AO 6451.

Tablet of Uruk. The ritual of daily sacrifices in the temple of the god Anu in Uruk.
Seleucid period, 3rd-2nd Centuries BCE, Hellenistic, from Uruk.
Baked clay, 22,3 x 10,4 cm
Louvre, AO 6451.

A. Lenzi has called attention to a colophon to a medical text which reveals a similar kind of transmission:

“Salves (and) bandages: tested (and) checked, which are ready at hand, composed by the ancient apkallus from before the flood, which in Šuruppak in the second year of Enlil-bani, king of Isin, Enlil-muballit, apkallu of Nippur, bequeathed. A non-expert may show an expert. An expert may not show a non-expert. A restriction of Marduk.”

(Medical Text, AMT 105, 1, 21-5. Lenzi, Secrecy and the Gods, p. 117.)

The models of transmission in the commentary of the Catalogue and in this colophon are not exactly the same, but the tendency is. In this text, an expert, possibly an āšipu, has in his hands a tablet of high dignity: it belongs to the secrets of the gods (cf. below).

AM-102 ; No. #1 (K4023) British Museum of London 

Tablet K.4023 COL. I [Starting on Line 38] . . . Root of caper which (is) on a grave, root of thorn (acacia) which (is) on a grave, right horn of an ox, left horn of a kid, seed of tamarisk, seed of laurel, Cannabis, seven drugs for a bandage against the Hand of a Ghost thou shalt bind on his temples. FOOTNOTES: [1] - The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 54, No. 1/4 (Oct., 1937), pp. 12-40; Assyrian Prescriptions for the Head By R. Campbell Thompson 

 http://antiquecannabisbook.com/chap2B/Assyria/K4023.htm

AM-102 ; No. #1 (K4023)
British Museum of London 

Tablet K.4023
COL. I
[Starting on Line 38] . . .
Root of caper which (is) on a grave, root of thorn (acacia) which (is) on a grave, right horn of an ox, left horn of a kid, seed of tamarisk, seed of laurel, Cannabis, seven drugs for a bandage against the Hand of a Ghost thou shalt bind on his temples.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] – The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 54, No. 1/4 (Oct., 1937), pp. 12-40; Assyrian Prescriptions for the Head By R. Campbell Thompson 


http://antiquecannabisbook.com/chap2B/Assyria/K4023.htm

Therefore, if somebody not belonging to the initiated by accident should have such a tablet, he may show it to the expert, but the expert should never show it to an uninitiated person. The content of the tablet was secret; it went back to the ancient apkallus from before the flood.

Afterwards a distinguished sage, an apkallu in Nippur, inherited it, and from this line of transmission it arrived to the scholar writing this colophon. The division between the apkallus before the flood and the postdiluvian apkallu in Nippur may here be similar to the division of the first group of apkallus of divine descent and the next group of four apkallus of human descent in Bīt Mēseri.

As we have seen, the Late Babylonian Uruk tablet also had a division between a group of seven “before the flood” and a group of ten afterwards, but here the first seven were apkallus, and the next group (with one or two exceptions) were ummanus.

What we observe here is confirmed by two independent contributions with different scope that we already have called attention to, K. van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, and A. Lenzi, Secrecy and the Gods.

They are both concerned with the transition from oral transmission of divine messages to written revelations, and they both use Mesopotamian sources from the first millennium as an analogy to what took place in Israel in the formation of the Hebrew Bible.

(van der Toorn, Scribal Culture, pp. 205-21; Lenzi, Secrecy and the Gods, pp. 67-122.)

Enuma Elish means “when above”, the two first words of the epic. This Babylonian creation story was discovered among the 26,000 clay tablets found by Austen Henry Layard in the 1840's at the ruins of Nineveh. Enuma Elish was made known to the public in 1875 by the Assyriologist George Adam Smith (1840-76) of the British Museum, who was also the discoverer of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. He made several of his findings on excavations in Nineveh. http://www.creationmyths.org/enumaelish-babylonian-creation/enumaelish-babylonian-creation-3.htm

Enuma Elish means “when above”, the two first words of the epic.
This Babylonian creation story was discovered among the 26,000 clay tablets found by Austen Henry Layard in the 1840’s at the ruins of Nineveh.
Enuma Elish was made known to the public in 1875 by the Assyriologist George Adam Smith (1840-76) of the British Museum, who was also the discoverer of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. He made several of his findings on excavations in Nineveh.
http://www.creationmyths.org/enumaelish-babylonian-creation/enumaelish-babylonian-creation-3.htm

Van der Toorn is concerned about the broad tendency in Mesopotamian scholarly series from the end of the second millennium to classify these as nisirti šamê u erseti, “a secret of heaven and earth.” This expression, occurring in colophons and elsewhere, does two things to the written scholarly lore: on the one hand, it claims that this goes back to a divine revelation; on the other hand, it restricts this revelation to a defined group of scholars.

This tendency goes along with the tendency to date the written wisdom back to primeval time, or to the time before the flood. This also concerns the most well-known compositions from the end of the second millennium, Enuma Elish and the standard version of Gilgamesh.”

Helge Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading, Brill, 2011, pp. 149-51.

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