Tablet Three of the Enuma Elish Sumerian Epic Of Creation, 1500 BC, recovered from the underground Ashurbanipal Library of Nineveh in northern Iraq in the late 19th century. The most well known of seven cuneiform tablets which relate the mythic War in the Heavens which wreaked havoc upon the earth. Giving accounts parallel to the biblical stories, they were first published in 1876 as the "The Chaldean Genesis."

The complete Enuma Elish story is written across seven tablets, each between 115 and 170 lines long. Unmistakable biblical parallels occur in the texts, in some cases verbatim accounts. Today, both Judaism and the Christian fraternity recognize the  tablets as a major source of early Biblical texts, pre-dating the original Hebrew Bible.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

During his 7th century BC reign, the famous Ashurai king Ashurbanipal sent emissaries far afield in search of ancient texts and recovered many invaluable records, including the oldest stories of Adam and Eve and the Flood. He copied many from cuneiform originals three thousand years older and sealed them within a vast underground library he specially constructed for the purpose. In the late 19th century archeologists Sir Henry Layard and Hormuzd Rassam found this unique time capsule intact and recovered a huge cache of 50,000 tablets. Although many still have yet to be translated, the Creation Tablets remain the pride of the collection.

In ancient Babylon, the highlight of the New Year celebrations was the public reading of the Enuma Elish creation epic, the mythic story of the war amongst the celestial gods, a disastrous event which brought humanity to its knees and forever haunted their tradition. The complete Enuma Elish is written on seven tablets, the last and 7th stone exalting the handiwork and greatness of God's work. Thus the comparison with the Seven Days of Creation found in the Bible, as if it borrowed its theme from the Babylonians and they in turn from the Sumerians.

This tablet relates the episode in which the ruling deity Anu summons the gods to celebrate the Sun God's reappointment as champion of the sky, following his defeat of the celestial dragon-monster Tiamat.

Disturbed by the younger star gods, Tiamat rose from the underworld to brightly dominate the heavens. Apsu her husband decides to destroy the misbehaving star gods before they upset the natural balance of things. However before he can act, he is killed by them.The dragoness Tiamat becomes enraged and gathers an army of elemental monsters and demons, setting them upon the world in revenge and causing a terrible cataclysm. At first, the gods are unable to deal with Tiamat's invasion of the heavens. Eventually, the sun god Marduk is forced to fight Tiamat to regain his rightful place in the sky. The gods sanction this and Marduk gathers his weapons and procedes to act out the archetypal battle between the sun god and the celestial dragon-serpent found throughout so many cultures.
Tiamat's army of elemental forces is defeated, she is slain and returned to the dark Underworld of the stars. A resurrected Sun God restores the Tablets of Destiny, regenerates the heavens and earth and from the blood of a defeated giant, humans are regenerated to serve the gods.

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