The creation of the moon, however, is placed first in accordance with the general views of the Babylonians, who, as was natural in a people of astronomers, honoured the moon above the sun, even making the sun-god the son of the moon-god.
The details of the creation of the planets and stars, which would have been very important to us, are unfortunately lost, no further fragment of this tablet having been recovered.
The colophon at the close of the tablet gives us, however, part of the first line of the sixth tablet, but not enough to determine its subject. It is probable that this dealt with the creation of creatures of the water and fowls of the air, and that these were the creation of Bel, the companion deity to Anu.
The next tablet, the seventh in the series, is probably represented by a curious fragment, which was found by Mr. Smith in one of the trenches at Kouyunjik.
This fragment is like some of the others, the upper portion of a tablet much broken, and only valuable from its generally clear meaning. The translation is as follows:
1. At that time the gods in their assembly created .....
2. They made suitable the strong monsters .....
3. They caused to come living creatures .....
4. cattle of the field, beasts of the field, and creeping things of the field .....
5. They fixed for the living creatures .....
6. ..... cattle and creeping things of the city they fixed .....
7. ..... the assembly of the creeping things, the whole which were created .....
8. ..... which in the assembly of my family ...
9. ..... and the god Nin-si-ku (the lord of noble face) joined the two together .....
10. ..... to the assembly of the creeping things I gave life .....
11. ..... the seed of Lakhamu I destroyed .....
This tablet corresponds with the sixth day of Creation in Genesis (i. 24-25): “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
“And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”
The Assyrian tablet commences with a statement of the satisfaction a former creation, apparently that of the monsters or whales, had given; here referring to Genesis i. 23. It then goes on to relate the creation of living animals on land, three kinds being distinguished, exactly agreeing with the Genesis account, and then we have in the ninth line a curious reference to the god Nin-si-ku (one of the names of Hea). One of Hea’s titles was “the lord of mankind,” and Sir Henry Rawlinson has endeavoured to show that Eridu, the city of Hea, was identical with the Biblical Garden of Eden. We may here notice a tablet which refers to the creation of man. In this tablet, K 63, the creation of the human race is given to Hea, and all the references in other inscriptions make this his work. As in Genesis, so in these cuneiform tablets the Creator is made to speak and to address the objects which he calls into existence.