Maugham's novel, An Appointment in Samarra (1933), is based on an ancient Babylonian myth: Death is both the narrator and a central character.

This is the outline of the Babylonian myth of creation, and the underlying Sumerian elements can easily be detected.

There the primeval state of the universe is a watery chaos, as it is in the Egyptian and Babylonian myths.

We have already seen that in both the Egyptian and the Babylonian myths the activity of creation consists in a process of begetting.

Golems draw their history from conflicting tales, one Hebrew in origin, the other resting in Babylonian myth.

The Babylonian myth of Etana has also been seen as connected.

The representation of order and chaos was informed by the Babylonian myth that the universe was born in the conflict between both.

In Babylonian myth - as later in the Bible - there was no creation out of nothing, an idea that was alien to the ancient world.

The author parallels this to a Babylonian myth in which, human beings were created out of beads.

In later Babylonian myth Kur is possibly an Anunnaki, brother of Ereshkigal, Enki, and Enlil.