ENUMA ELISH - Babylonian Creation Myth

p. XXVII

his work "The Chaldean Account of Genesis" 1 he gave translations of the fragments of the poem which had been identified, and the copies which he had made of the principal fragments were published. 2 After Smith's death the interest in the texts which he had published did not cease, and scholars continued to produce renderings and studies of the legends. 3

p. XXVIII

In 1883 Dr. Wallis Budge gave an account of a fine Babylonian duplicate of what proved to be the Fourth Tablet of the Creation Series; this document restored considerable portions of the narrative of the fight between Marduk and the dragon Tiamat, and added considerably to our knowledge of the story of Creation and of the order in which the events related in the story took place. 1 In the Hibbert Lectures for 1887 Professor Sayce translated the new fragment of the text, 2 and in the following year published a complete translation 3 of all fragments of the Creation Legends which had up to that time been identified. In 1890 Professor Jensen, in his studies on the Babylonian cosmogony, included a translation of the legends together with a transliteration and a number of valuable philological notes and discussion. 4 In 1895

p. XXIX

Professor Zimmern published a translation of the legends, similar in plan to Sayce's earlier edition; in it he took advantage of some recently identified fragments and duplicates, and put forward a number of new renderings of difficult passages. 1 In 1896 a third German translation of the legends made its appearance; it was published by Professor Delitzsch and included transliterations and descriptions of the various tablets and fragments inscribed with portions of the text. 2 Finally, in 1900 Professor Jensen published a second edition of his rendering of the legends in his Mythen und Epen; 3 this work was the best which could be prepared with the material then available. 4

p. XXX

In the most recent translations of the Creation Series, those of Delitzsch and Jensen, use was made in all of twenty-one separate tablets and fragments which had been identified as inscribed with portions of the text of the poem. 1 In the present work thirty-four