"The serpent of the third chapter of Genesis is not at all its own creation, exclusive to the biblical story. The concept of the principle of evil and pain, represented in the figure of a monstrous reptile, which lurks against the Divinity and against the well-being of all created works of the visible cosmos, but even more against the human race, is obvious and fundamental in the Babylonian religion. We recall in the aforementioned creation poem Marduk's struggle against Tiamat and the other powers of darkness, in the form of dragons and similar wriggling monstrous reptiles; to linger in the multiform plastic and literary expressions that the dragon, the monstrous reptile, the principle of evil, in short, assumes in the ideal Babylonian world, seems superfluous to us."