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In a general way, what holds good of Marduk's papakhu applies to every sacred chamber in a temple, and no doubt views were once current of the papakhu of Bel at Nippur and of the 'holy of holies' in E-Babbara and elsewhere that formed in some measure, a parallel to what the Marduk priests told of their favorite sanctuary.
In the second lecture we noted how the very words of the principal Sumerian Creator were put into Marduk's mouth; but the rest of the Semitic god's speech finds no equivalent in the Sumerian Version and was evidently inserted in order to reconcile the narrative with its later ingredients. This will best be seen by printing the two passages in parallel columns:
That the service of the gods may be established and that their shrines may be built." I, pp. 86 ff. We shall see later, from the remainder of Marduk's speech, that the Semitic Version has been elaborated at this point in order to reconcile it with other ingredients in its narrative, which were entirely absent from the simpler Sumerian tradition.
God of favorable wind, lord of response and of mercy, Creator of abundance and fullness, granter of blessings, Who increases the things that were small, Whose favorable wind we experienced in sore distress. Thus let them speak and glorify and be obedient to him. The gods recall with gratitude Marduk's service in vanquishing Tiâmat.
"That couldn't happen on Marduk!" a young nobleman declared. "It could if Zaspar Makann's party wins control of the Assembly at the next election," somebody else said. "Oh, then Marduk's safe! The sun'll go nova first," one of the junior Royal Navy officers said. After that, they began talking about women, a subject any spaceman will drop any other subject to discuss.
The passage is obscure; the text possibly defective. If the reading E-Sagila is original. It is here used as the name of Ea's temple in Eridu, but it is of course possible that E-Sagila has been deliberately introduced to enhance the glory of Marduk's temple in Babylon. Ea. Gen. i. 9. The group of celestial beings. I.e., Marduk. Read a-ma-mi.
On his stele which is preserved at Constantinople, Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian empire, who himself suffered defeat at the hands of Cyrus, King of Persia, ascribed the fall of Nineveh to the anger of Marduk and the other gods of Babylon because of the destruction of their city and the spoliation of their temples by Sennacherib in 689 B.C. We see the irony of fate in the fact that Cyrus also ascribed the defeat and deposition of Nabonidus and the fall of Babylon to Marduk's intervention, whose anger he alleges was aroused by the attempt of Nabonidus to concentrate the worship of the local city-gods in Babylon.
The third tablet is taken up with the preliminaries for the great contest, and is interesting chiefly because of the insight it affords us into Babylonian methods of literary composition. Anshar sends Gaga to the hostile camp with the formal announcement of Marduk's readiness to take up the cause of the gods.
Accordingly a compromise was effected, as in the case of Marduk and Ea. Aruru is associated with Marduk. She creates mankind with Marduk, and it would seem to be a consequence of this association that the name of Marduk's real consort, Sarpanitum, is playfully but with intent interpreted by the Babylonian pedants as 'seed-producing.
Jensen and Zimmern read upshugina, but see Delitzsch, Babylonische Weltschöpfungsepos, p. 135. See above, p. 238. In the first tablet, in the second in connection with the mission of Anu, and twice in the third in connection with Marduk's visit. Tiâmat's presence. Called Nudimmud.
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