Often, humans go along in life asking themselves two questions: where did I come from and where will I go? Most have religious beliefs that they believe will happen. For Christians the beginning of life on earth starts out with the story of Genesis. For Babylonians and people in the Mesopotamian region the beginning of life on earth is the Enûma Eliš. Genesis begins with God creating the world. The first words of the story "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light." (Genesis 1:1). The Enûma Eliš was recognized as being related to the Jewish Genesis creation account from its first publication (Smith 1876), and it was an important step in the recognition of the roots found in the Bible and in other ancient cities. The Enûma Eliš is a Babylonian or Mesopotamian myth of creation recounting the struggle between cosmic order and chaos. The stories of Genesis and Enûma Eliš have a lot in common, even though they were written at different times. Scholars knew they were on to something and it led to some predictable questions in both academic and popular circles. Maybe Genesis isn’t history at all, they thought, but just another story like Enûma Eliš. In fact, maybe Genesis is just a later Hebrew version of this older Babylonian story. These stories run/ran generations of people for years and have several similarities, but they also have many differences. The many points of similarity between the two traditions are conclusive proof that one story was derived from the other. Scholars have nicknamed Enûma Eliš the “Babylonian Genesis.” The reason is that both stories share quite a few similarities that were immediately apparent. In both stories, matter exists when creation begins. Similar to Enûma Eliš, Gene