The opening lines of the Enuma Elish's first tablet, in L. W. King's translation, describe a state of existence before the world as later generations of Mesopotamians knew it. When above the heaven had not been named, the text begins, and earth beneath did not yet bear a name, only the primeval waters existed, Apsu, the sweet waters, and Tiamat, the salt waters, mingled together as a single undivided mass with no gods yet brought into being. The lines proceed to name the first gods who emerged from this mingling, generation following generation, establishing the pattern the rest of the tablet develops, in which younger and more numerous gods increasingly disturb the primeval stillness that Apsu and Tiamat represent. As an opening, the passage sets the poem's basic logic, that order and multiplicity, including the gods themselves, arise out of an undifferentiated watery beginning rather than existing from the start, a structure that gives the whole work its name, when above, taken from these very first words of the tablet as King rendered them, a naming convention shared with several other Mesopotamian compositions that are likewise known by their own opening phrase rather than by any separately assigned title.