Below are excerpts and pictures taken from William Hayes Ward's essay published in Scribners monthly (Issue 1, May 1875) under the title "The Elder Myths." Head of Ishtar, the Assyrian Venus ...Thus wrote the King Vul-nirari less than two hundred years after the death of Moses: "May the god Assur hear the prayer of the succeeding prince, who repairs the damage of his place when it becomes old and decayed, and restores to its place my tablet written with my name. But whoever shall efface the writing of my name and write his name upon it; whoever shall cover over this my tablet, or hurl it into the water, or burn it in the fire, or bury it in the ground, or shall hide it where it cannot be seen, to him, the foreigner, stranger, enemy and evil one, I appoint these curses: May Assur, the mighty god, dwelling in the temple of Sadimatatil may Anu, Bel, Hea, and Ziru; may the great gods, the angels of heaven and the spirits of earth, firmly seize him in their might; may they quickly curse him with an evil curse; may they wipe his name, his seed, his strength, his family out of the land; may they sweep his country, and destroy his people and his landmarks; may Vul, the god of the air, with his storms of evil, stir up a flood, an evil wind, a ruinous earthquake, desctruction, scarcity and famine in his land; the rain may he send in a deluge; to mounds and ruins may Vul tirn his country and consume it." ... A stone with a similar inscription warning all successors against its removal or destruction, has its objurgation enforced by the symbols engraved on one side of the gods and avenging spirits who would punish its profanation. But the Maecenases of Mesopotamia did not confine their literary ambition to the preservation of their historical records. Their mythology and their astrology were compiled in extensive treatises written and burned in clay tablets, each leaf carefully numbered and provided with titles and catch-words, and arranged for easy reference under the direction of the librarian. We are concerned just now only with their tales of the gods.

One of these is, unfortunately, too much mutilated for correct translation; but, as described by Mr. Smith, it tells a part of the story of creation. When the gods in their assembly made the universe there was confusion, the Biblical formlessness and void, and the gods sent out the spirit of life, corresponding to that "Spirit of God" which, we are told by Moses, "moved upon the face of the waters." Then the gods created the beasts of the field and the creeping things of the field, and put in them the breath of life. Next came the creation of the creeping things and domestic animals of the city. The imperfection of this story is greatly to be regretted. Another tablet records the occasion of the creation of the heavenly bodies, bu here the parallelism with the Scriptural account is very slight. In the beginning, we are told, the seven evil gods, spirits who had been in rebellion, bearing the forms of serpents and leopards and other beasts, stirred up fearful commotion in heaven, the abode of the god Anu. They mingled cloud and darkness and storm, darting like lightning through the sky, and finding no opponent in the realms of Anu. Then Bel, ruler of the earth and god of the middle region, was displeased, and took counsel with Hea (or Nisroch), the god of wisdom, and they placed the sky the sun, the moon, and the planet Venus (Shamas, Sin, and Ishtar), to bring order out of the confusion of the heavens. But Shamas, the sun and the planet Ishtar were not true to their trust. Only Sin, the moon, remained firm, while the other luminaries were won over by the seven evil spirits. The moon god (a chief male divinity in the Assyrian Pantheon) was greatly troubled, as was Bel, at the failure of his attempt to reform the heavens. Again Bel sought the advice of the wise Hea, who called in the aid of his son Merodach. “Bel to his attendant, the god Nusku, said: ‘The needs of my child Sin, who in heaven is    greatly troubled, Repeat to the god Hea in the Ocean.’ Nusku the command of his lord obeyed, To Hea in the Ocean he descended and went. To the prince, the noble sage, the lord, the god    unfailing, Nusku the message of his lord at once repeated. Hea in the ocean the message heard; His lips spake, and with wisdom was his mouth    filled. Hea called his son, god~ Merodach, and this    word he spoke: ‘Go, Merodach, my son, Go to the shining Sin, who in heaven is greatly    troubled, His troublers expel from heaven.;" The remainder of this fragment is lost, but it doubtless contained the story of the victory of the dauntless Merodach, son of Hea, over the seven evil spirits. We must wait the discovery of the missing fragments before we can learn whether the deities who abetted them were punished like the gods in the parallel Greek myth, by being thrown “sheer o’er the crystal battlements,” or swung dangling out of heaven by a golden chain. As it is, the resemblance is sufficiently striking to allow us to add this as another proof of the large infusion of Semitic elements with the pure Aryan mythology of Greece.