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The schools of theology, seizing hold of this popular tradition, add again to Lakhmu a female mate and convert the tradition into a symbol of the first step in the evolution of order out of the original chaos. Lakhmu and Lakhamu are made to stand for an entire class of beings that are the offspring of Apsu and Tiâmat.

+722+. In Babylonia the earliest pair of deities, Lakhmu and Lakhamu, vague forms, were succeeded by a second pair, Anshar and Kishar, somewhat less vague, and these in their turn yielded to the more definite group represented by Ea, Bel, and Marduk deities who became the embodiments of the highest Babylonian culture; in Assyria Ashur and Ishtar occupied a similar position.

But their waters were gathered together in a mass. No field was marked off, no marsh was seen. When none of the gods was as yet produced, No name mentioned, no fate determined, Then were created the gods in their totality. Lakhmu and Lakhamu, were created. Days went by ... Anshar and Kishar were created. At this point the fragment breaks off.

It has nothing to do with Omoroka. The word used is Lakhami, the plural of Lakhamu. This scene, the description of the monsters and the installation of Kingu, occurs four times in the 'Epic. See p. 424. Delitzsch, Babylonische Weltschöpfungsepos, p. 25. Cory, ib. p. 92. "The chamber of fates" where Marduk sits on New Year's Day and decides the fate of mankind for the ensuing year.

The etymology of Anshar is as obscure as that of most of the ancient gods of Babylonia, as of Sin, Marduk, Ishtar, and many more. But before leaving the subject, it will be proper to call attention to the rôle that a god Anshar plays in the Babylonian-Assyrian cosmological system. Anshar and Kishar are the second pair of deities to be created, the first pair being Lakhmu and Lakhamu.

Lakhmu and Lakhamu represent the 'monster' world where creatures are produced in strange confusion, whereas Anshar and Kishar indicate a division of the universe into two distinct and sharply defined parts. The splitting of 'chaos' is the first step towards its final disappearance.

The priority, again, of Lakhmu and Lakhamu, as well as of Anshar and Kishar, is expressed by making them 'ancestors' of Anu, Bel and Ea.

Then follows the successive generation of two pairs of deities, Lakhmu and Lakhamu, and Anshar and Kishar, long ages separating the two generations from each other and from the birth of the great gods which subsequently takes place. Quaestiones de primis principiis, cap. 125; ed. Kopp, p. 384.

In the time when the gods were not created, Lakhmu and Lakhamu were the first to appear and waxed great for ages." Then came Anu, the sunlit sky by day, the starlit firmament by night; Inlil-Bel, the king of the earth; Ea, the sovereign of the waters and the personification of wisdom.

Their revolt at the ordered "way" of the gods was a necessary preliminary to the incorporation of the Dragon myths, in which Ea and Marduk are the heroes. Here they appear as entirely beneficent gods of the primaeval water, undisturbed by storms, in whose quiet depths the equally beneficent deities Lakhmu and Lakhamu, Anshar and Kishar, were generated.