Atlantis Online
March 29, 2024, 12:10:41 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Update About Cuba Underwater Megalithic Research
http://www.timstouse.com/EarthHistory/Atlantis/bimini.htm
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

ENUMA ELISH - Babylonian Creation Myth

Pages: 1 2 [3] 4   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: ENUMA ELISH - Babylonian Creation Myth  (Read 4391 times)
0 Members and 20 Guests are viewing this topic.
Bianca
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 41646



« Reply #30 on: November 19, 2007, 09:50:00 am »








The above forty-nine tablets and fragments, inscribed with portions of the text of the Creation Series, belong to two distinct periods. The older class of tablets were made for the library of Ashur-bani-pal at Nineveh, and they are beautifully written in the Assyrian character upon tablets of fine clay. 1 The


p. CXII

Neo-Babylonian tablets, on the other hand, are, as a rule, less carefully written; they vary considerably in size and shape, and were made at different periods for private individuals, either for their own use, 1 or that they might be deposited in the temples as votive offerings. 2 Some of these Babylonian copies



p. CXIII

are fine specimens of their class, e.g. Nos. 3, 13, 21, 29, and 42, 1and the characters and words upon them are carefully written and spaced; others, however, consist of small, carelessly made tablets, on to which the poem is crowded. 2On all the tablets, whether Assyrian or Babylonian, which possess colophons, the number of the Tablet in the Series is carefully given. 3 The extracts from the text, which were written out by students upon "practice-tablets," no doubt in order to give them practice in writing and at the same time to enable them to learn the text by heart, are naturally rather rough productions. 4 One characteristic which applies to all the tablets,





p. CXIV

whether Assyrian or Neo-Babylonian, is that the text is never written in columns, but each line of the poem is written across the tablet from edge to edge. 1 As a result, the tablets are long and narrow in shape, and are handled far more conveniently than broader tablets inscribed with two or more columns of writing on each side.

The forms of the text of the poem, which were in use in the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, are identical, and it is incorrect to speak of an Assyrian and a Babylonian "recension." At the time of Ashur-bani-pal the text had already been definitely fixed, and, with the exception of one or two phrases, the words of each line remained unchanged from that time forward. It is true that on the Babylonian tablets the words are, as a rule, written more syllabically, but this is a general characteristic of Babylonian copies of historical and literary texts. Moreover, upon several of the more carefully written tablets, the metre is indicated by the division of the


p. CXV

halves of each verse, 1 an arrangement which is not met with on any of the Assyrian tablets. But both the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian copies represent the same "recension" of the text, and, as has already been indicated, 2 are probably the descendants of a common Babylonian original. The following table will serve to show the number of Assyrian and Neo- Babylonian copies of each of the Seven Tablets under which the forty-nine separate fragments of the text may be arranged:--
Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy