Berossus by Polyhistor

The following is an extract on Berossus by Polyhistor.
While polyhistor is a term which refers to a person who has a vast base of knowledge in this case it refers to a person named Lucius Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor who lived in c. 100 BC. Lucius Cornelius was a Roman philosopher, geographer, and historian, amongst other things. He was born in Miletus. According to wikipedia Alexander Polyhistor was born a Greek and became a scholar. He earned the title polyhistor due to his productivity in recording historical events.
The Mithridatic War came along and Alexander was captured and became a Roman slave. He was later sold to Cornelius Lentulus who wanted him as a tutor. From here he earned his freedom and returned to a freedman life as a Roman citizen. He died in a house fire and most of his writings have been lost.
This fragment is called Extract from Berossus by Alexander Polyhistor.

There was a time when all was darkness and water, and from the midst thereof issued spontaneously monstrous animals and the most peculiar figures: men with two wings, and others with four, with two faces or two heads, one of a man, and the other of a woman, on one body, and with the two sexes together; men with goat's legs and goat's horns, or with horses's hoofs; others with the hinder parts of a horse and the foreparts of a man, like the hyppocentaurs. There were, besides, human headed bulls, dogs with four bodies and fishes' tails, horses with dog's heads, animals with the head and body of a horse and the tail of a fish, other quadrupeds in which all sorts of animal shapes were confused together, fishes, reptiles, serpents, and every kind of marvelous monster presenting the greatest variety in their shapes, representations of which may be seen in the paintings of the temple of Belos. A women named Omoroca ( Um-Uruk, " the mother of Uruk"), presided over this creation; in the
Chaldean language she bears the name of Thavatth ( Tiamat ), signifying in Greek " the sea," and she is also identified with the moon.

Things being in this condition, Belos (Bel-Marduk) came upon the scene and cut the women in half; of the lower part of her body he made the earth, and of the upper half he made the heavens, and all the creatures that were in her disappeared. This is a figurative way of explaining the production of the Universe and of the animated beings from humid matter. Belos then cut off his own head, and the other gods having kneaded the blood flowing from it with the earth, formed men, who by that means were gifted with understanding, and made participants of divine thought.

[Thus it was that] Belos, interpreted by the Greeks as signifying Zeus, having divided the darkness, separated the heavens and the earth, and ordered the world : and all the animated beings who were not able to handle the action of light perished. Belos seeing that the earth was a desert, though fertile, commanded one of the Gods to cut off his head, and kneading the blood which flowed with earth, he produced men, as well as those animals who are able to live in contact with the air. - Then Belos also formed the stars, the sun, the moon, and the five planets. - ( Ap. Syncell., p. 29; Euseb., Chronic Armen. [ I., 2, 4], p. 10, ed, Mai ; Fragment 1 of my edition. )

Modern map

old map showing mesopotamia and babylonia

The Chaldean were settled near Sumer and were considered to be highly skilled magician or sorcerers. They ruled Babylon for a time after settling the area starting in c. 650 BC.

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This extract is found in a book by Francois Lenormant called The beginnings of History which is public domain and written in the 1880's.

Lenormant was a french Parisian archeologist and assyriologist who followed in his fathers footsteps and who was an Egyptologist.

Another book worthy of thought by Lenormant goes into Chaldean Magic and the ancient history of the east.