The earliest depiction of the creation of the universe has been found on a 4,300-year-old silver goblet discovered in the West Bank.

The vessel shows “before and after” scenes with a human-chimera figure confronted by a monstrous snake, before the snake is subdued and the Sun takes its place in the sky, held aloft by two deities.

Archaeologists say the images are an allegory for order triumphing over chaos at the beginning of time. The Sun is shown moving across the heavens in a celestial “boat of light”.

It is the oldest known depiction of the formation of the cosmos and predates the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish – which was recorded on stone tablets – by more than 1,000 years.

“The goblet does not tell of a violent struggle between gods, but of a peaceful process of cosmic ordering,ˮ said Daniel Sarlo, co-author of the paper about the discovery for the Luwian Studies Foundation, a non-profit research group based in Switzerland.

“It shows how the Sun is born, banishes chaos and renews the world.”

Order over chaos

The artefact, which is 3.1in (7.9cm) high, is known as the Ain Samiya goblet, and was found in the 1970s near Kafr Malik in the West Bank.

It dates from 2650 to 1950BC and until now, experts thought it was linked to the Enuma Elish, which recounts the struggle between the younger gods and the monster of primordial chaos.

However, experts had questioned why it shows no battle scene at the beginning of the universe, and have argued that it bears closer relation to cuneiform texts of a similar age that describe how the gods separated the heavens from the Earth.

According to the team, the first scene on the goblet shows chaos, with humans, plants and animals all fused together and ruled by a huge snake, while the small Sun lies powerless on the ground, with no portrayal of night and day.

In the second scene, the gods have separated themselves from the animals and now hold the sun up on celestial boat in the sky, with the serpent defeated.

The experts said this celestial boat imagery was similar to that found 7,000 years earlier at Gobekli Tepe, a neolithic archaeological site, and the Yazilikaya rock sanctuary in Turkey.

It is also found in artefacts from the New Kingdom, ancient Egypt’s golden age, representing the divine mechanism that transports the Sun and Moon across the heavens and may show that early creation myths drew from a single source.

It also shares similarities with the creation story in Genesis, in which God separated the light from the darkness.

Eberhard Zangger, a senior author of the study, said: “The boat has a practical purpose: it’s a vehicle that transports celestial bodies across the sky, and this was considered the explanation why the Sun and the Moon are moving.

“This boat of light makes sure that the celestial forces and rhythm work the way they do, so that there is day and night and the annual seasons and the moon phases.

“The goblet gives us this very detailed picture of what people in 2300 BC had in mind about what the cosmos looked like before the creation.”

The research was published in the Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society “Ex Oriente Luxˮ.