Enūma Eliš has merited numerous scholarly editions, translations to modern tongues, commentaries and studies; and the complete text is readily available for reading enjoyment. For recent English translations, see Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh and Others (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), pp. 228-277; and Benjamin Foster, Before the Muses 1 (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1996), pp. 351-402. The translation printed in “The Creation Story from Enūma Eliš” comes from Stephanie Dalley’s work.
Those bold readers who wish to consult the original Akkadian should see Wilfred G. Lambert and Simon B. Parker, Enūma Eliš: The Babylonian Epic of Creation, the Cuneiform Text (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1966). In this edition Tablet 2 is presented in partially preserved form. But see now F.N.H. Al-Rawi and A.R. George, “Tablets from the Sippar Library II—Tablet II of the Babylonian Creation Epic,” Iraq 52 (1990), pp. 149-157. For additions and variants to Tablet 6 see the Neo-Assyrian manuscript from Me-Turnat (Tell-Hadad) published by F.N.H. Al-Rawi and J.A. Black, “A New Manuscript of Enūma Eliš Tablet VI,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 46 (1994), pp. 131-139. The fifth tablet, published by B. Landsberger and J.V. Kinnier-Wilson in Journal of Near Eastern Studies 20 (1961), pp. 154-179, remains the only one with significant damage, which is unfortunate because the missing parts describe the creation of the world. The authoritative edition of Enūma Eliš, promised by Wilfred G. Lambert nearly 40 years ago, is still eagerly awaited.
