"The great n poem, or series of legends, which narrates the , was termed by the Assyrians and s , “When in the height,” from the two opening words of the text. The poem consisted of some nine hundred and ninety-four lines, and was divided into seven sections, each of which was inscribed upon a separate . ... The poem embodies the beliefs of the Babylonians and Assyrians concerning the origin of the universe; it describes the coming forth of the gods from chaos, and tells the story of how the forces of disorder, represented by the primeval water-gods and , were overthrown by and respectively, and how Marduk, after completing the triumph of the gods over chaos, proceeded to create the world and man. The poem is known to us from portions of several Assyrian and late-Babylonian copies of the work, and from extracts from it written out upon the so-called “practice-tablets,” or students’ exercises, by pupils of the Babylonian scribes. The Assyrian copies of the work are from the great library which was founded at by , king of Assyria from 668 to about 626; the Babylonian copies and extracts were inscribed during the period of the kings of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods; and one copy of the Seventh Tablet may probably be assigned to as late a date as the . All the tablets and fragments, which have hitherto been identified as inscribed with portions of the text of the poem, are preserved in the . From the time of the first discovery of fragments considerable attention has been directed towards them, for not only are the legends themselves the principal source of our knowledge of the , but passages in them bear a striking resemblance to the cognate narratives in the Book of Genesis concerning the creation of the world."