Babylon's creation story is not a peaceful canvas. A young storm god armed with hurricanes rides into battle against a world-sized sea dragon, smashes her skull with a mace, and builds the sky and earth from her corpse. This episode explores the Enuma Elish, the seven-tablet Babylonian epic that is at once a cosmological blueprint, a piece of political propaganda, and a dark mirror to the Book of Genesis.

We trace its rediscovery by Austen Henry Layard in the library of Ashurbanipal in 1849 and George Smith's 1876 translation, then walk through Apsu's noise complaint, Ea's coup, Tiamat's monster army, and Marduk's demand for absolute kingship before he fights. We look at the epic's likely origin under Nebuchadnezzar I, its annual recitation at the Akitu festival, and Conrad Hyers's argument that Genesis was written in Babylonian exile as a  ...