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The Secret Source of Babylonian Cosmology.
The origin of the Babylonian and Akkadian cosmology did not differ in this respect from other races in the same stage of development.
In whatever direction we look when examining the cosmologies of barbarian or semi-civilized peoples, we find a total inability to get behind and beyond the idea that the matter of creation lay already to the hand of the creative agency, and that in order to shape a world it had but to draw the material therefore from the teeming deep or the slain body of a hostile monster.
The cosmology of Babylon is therefore on a par with those of Scandinavia, China, and many North American Indian tribes, nor does it reach so high an imaginative level as those of ancient Egypt, India, or the Maya of Central America, in some of which, the vocal command of a god is sufficient to bring about the creation of the earth and the waters surrounding it.
The making of the sun, the moon, and the other heavenly bodies is, as will be more fully shown later, of great importance in Babylonian myth. The stars appear to have been attached to the firmament of heaven as to a cloth.
Across this the sun passed daily, his function being to inspect the movements of the other heavenly bodies. The moon, likewise, had her fixed course, and certain stars were also supposed to move across the picture of the night with greater or less regularity. The Secret heavens were guarded at either end by a great gateway, and through one of these the sun passed after rising from the ocean, whilst in setting he quit the heavens by the opposite portal.
The terrestrial world was imagined as a great hollow structure resting on the ( deep.’ Indeed, it would seem to have been regarded as an island floating on an abyss of waters. This conception of the world of earth was by no means peculiar to the Babylonians, but was shared by them with many of the nations of antiquity.
As emanating from the blood of Merodach/Marduk himself, man was looked upon as directly of heavenly origin. An older tradition existed to the effect that the Anunnaki Merodach/Marduk had been assisted in the creation of mankind by the goddess Aruru, who figures in the Gilgamesh epic as the creator of Eabani out of a piece of clay.
We also find an ancient belief that humanity owed its origin to the god Ea/Enki, but when Merodach displaced this god politically, he would, of course, ‘ take over ’ his entire record and creative deeds as well as his powers and sovereign-ties.
At Nippur Bel was looked up to as the originator of man. But these beliefs probably obtained in remoter times, and would finally be quenched by the advance to full and unquestioned power of the great god Merodach/Marduk.
Some mythologists see in the story of Jonah a hidden allusion to the circumstances of Babylonian cosmology…there appears to be a “Secret Source” behind IT all.
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