The Creation

Before the ocean and the earth appeared, before the skies had overspread them all. The face of Nature in a vast expanse was naught but Chaos uniformly waste.

It was a rude and undeveloped mass, that nothing made except a ponderous weight.

All the discordant elements were confused and were there congested in a shapeless heap.

As yet, the sun afforded earth no light. Nor did the moon renew her crescent horns.

The earth was not suspended in the air exactly balanced by her heavy weight.

Not far along the margin of the shores had Amphitrite stretched her lengthened arms, for all the land was mixed with sea and air.

The land was soft, the sea unfit to sail, the atmosphere opaque, to naught was given a proper form, in everything was strife.

All was mingled in a seething mass—with hot the cold parts strove, and wet with dry and soft with hard, and weight with empty void.

But God, or kindly Nature, ended strife.

He cut the land from skies, the sea from land, the heavens ethereal from material air.

When were all evolved from that dark mass he bound the fractious parts in tranquil peace.

The fiery element of convex heaven leaped from the mass devoid of dragging weight, and chose the summit arch to which the air as next in quality was next in place.

The earth more dense attracted grosser parts and moved by gravity sank underneath.

Last of all, the wide surrounding waves in deeper channels rolled around the globe.

This God —which one is yet unknown— had carved asunder that discordant mass.

He had thus reduced it to its elements, that every part should equally combine.

When time began, He rounded out the earth and moulded it to form a mighty globe.

Then poured He forth the deeps and gave command that they should billow in the rapid winds, that they should compass every shore of earth.

he also added fountains, pools and lakes, and bound with shelving banks the slanting streams, which partly are absorbed and partly join the boundless ocean.

Thus received amid the wide expanse of uncontrolled waves, they beat the shores instead of crooked banks.

At His command:

• the boundless plains extend
• the valleys are depressed
• the woods are clothed in green
• the stony mountains rise

As the heavens are intersected on the right by two broad zones, by two that cut the left, and by a fifth consumed with ardent heat, with such a number did the careful God mark off the compassed weight, and thus the earth received as many climes.

Such heat consumes the middle zone that none may dwell therein;

Two extremes are covered with deep snow;

Two are placed between the hot and cold, which mixed together give a temperate clime.

Over all the atmosphere suspends with weight proportioned to the fiery sky, exactly as the weight of earth compares with weight of water.

He ordered mist to gather in the air and spread the clouds.

He fixed the thunders that disturb our souls, and brought the lightning on destructive winds that also waft the cold.

Nor did the great Artificer permit these mighty winds to blow unbounded in the pathless skies, but each discordant brother fixed in space, although His power can scarce restrain their rage to rend the universe.

At His command to far Aurora, Eurus took his way, to Nabath, Persia, and that mountain range first gilded by the dawn.

Zephyr’s flight was towards the evening star and peaceful shores, warm with the setting sun.

Boreas invaded Scythia and the northern snows;

Auster wafted to the distant south where clouds and rain encompass his abode.

Over these He fixed the liquid sky, devoid of weight and free from earthly dross.

Scarcely had He separated these and fixed their certain bounds, when all the stars, which long were pressed and hidden in the mass, began to gleam out from the plains of heaven, and traversed, with the Gods, bright ether fields:

Lest some part might be bereft of life the gleaming waves were filled with twinkling fish; the earth was covered with wild animals;

The agitated air was filled with birds.

But a creature of a higher mind, more apt for lofty thought, and fit to rule the rest, was still missing.

Then Man was born from Enki [Prometheus], the Creator of a better world, creating him either from:

• seed Divine or
• fresh Earth recently drawn from the aether

He first mingled it with water of new streams; so that his new creation, upright man, was made in image of commanding Gods.

While all other animals look downwards at the ground, Enki gave man a lofty face and was commanded to look up at the sky and with an upright face may view the stars.

And so it was that shapeless clay took the form of man till then unknown to earth.