The Seven Tablets of Creation: The Enuma Elish

The Seven Tablets of Creation: The Enuma Elish centers on a poem etched on a series of clay tablets and tablet fragments that contain ancient Babylonian religious myths about the creation of the world. Though it is impossible to assign an accurate date to the writing of the myths, which are assumed to be around 4,000 years old, this particular compilation of the tablets and the accompanying commentary were first published in 1902. The British scholar Leonard William King compiled and translated this version. While King’s contribution within this volume is a non-fiction, linguistic examination of the Babylonian creation myths, the heart of the book is the Babylonian poem, one of the oldest religious sagas in existence. This study guide will summarize and analyze both the Enuma Elish poetry and the background material included by King.

Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation poem itself, and King’s book, the Seven Tablets of Creation, are both in the common domain, meaning that multiple versions are available. To best follow the study guide, readers will want to use the Kindle version. Other versions, both print and digital, occasionally omit page numbers and do not clearly delineate between the sections of the book.

Plot Summary

Leonard William King begins The Seven Tablets of Creation with an involved Preface that details previous work on translating the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth poem, which he refers to as the Creation Series. At the time he was writing, the compilation and translation of the Enuma Elish were of great scholastic interest. He relates that, unlike prior researchers, he is the recipient of additional portions of the cuneiform tablets upon which the poem is written, all of which are in the possession of the British Museum. These factors, King says, along with the insights and work of predecessors and colleagues, put him in the proper position to make a new and thorough compilation and translation of the Creation Series.

From the Preface, King moves to an introduction to the Enuma Elish that, with footnotes, comprises more than half of the 225-page book. He gives an extremely detailed account of the history of the research done in attempts to accurately recover the text of the tablets, first committed to clay tablets in the seventh century BCE. King explains the work of previous scholars and the factors that limited their work.

Giving an introduction to the gods and events recorded on the tablets, King discusses the religion and culture of the epoch from which the Enuma Elish emerged. He gives particular attention to the god Marduk, who becomes the rescuer of the Babylonian pantheon, then the chief of the gods. King leads readers through the tablets, one by one, describing and explaining what the reader will experience when reading the poem. He shares his research and reasoning in a plethora of footnotes.

The center of the book is devoted to a transliteration of the actual poem: seven tablets telling the story of the very beginnings of the gods. The Enuma Elish proceeds through the birth of many gods, conflict that erupts when the gods who valued chaos set out to destroy the gods who brought order, the arising of a champion who defeats the forces of chaos, and the subsequent creation and ordering of the heavens, earth, and humanity. Because there are many other recorded variations of the creation story, King follows the Enuma Elish with five additional Babylonian mythological accounts involving characters with whom readers have already become acquainted.

The final portion of the book is an afterword in which King sets about discussing the impact of ancient Near Eastern mythology and the impact of the Hebrew Bible. Throughout the book, King continually strives to demonstrate the similarities and conflicts between the Creation Series and the Judaic scriptures. In the afterword, he sums up his conclusions about the relationship between the Babylonian and Hebrew texts.