Tablets from the Sippar Library: II. Tablet II of the Babylonian Creation Epic

Abstract

As work continues on the Neo-Babylonian library recently discovered within the precincts of the temple of Shamash at Sippar, it is becoming clearer that much of its contents is already well known to us. Only a very small number of completely new texts have been identified so far, and our reaction to the material retrieved is at present much as that of a previous generation of scholars to the Sultantepe tablets. We are confirmed in our belief that the major products of the Babylonian literary tradition are, in varying states of preservation, already to hand. A corollary of this belief is that future discoveries of Neo-Babylonian libraries should be expected to yield more literature not so much by furnishing new literary texts as by filling the lacunæ in texts of the established corpus. It goes without saying that since many known texts are still in a very poor state of preservation this is an exciting prospect.The importance of the Sippar library, then, will principally lie in its capacity to restore known but damaged texts to a more satisfactory state of completion. This capacity is already well demonstrated by the inauguration of this series of texts from the Sippar library with a surprising new source for the composition previously known as the Weidner Chronicle. The present article continues this pattern, though with less unforeseen results, by publishing a manuscript of Tablet II of the Babylonian Creation Epic. The tablet came from niche 5 C of the library—that is the third niche from the ground in the fifth row from the left. Enūma eliš II has remained until now the least well preserved of the Seven Tablets of Creation, the middle part being very badly damaged. Four sections of disconnected text were separated, as it seemed, by three gaps of uncertain length. The line-count of the Tablet was itself unknown.

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