Historically, there are apparently the following sources for the "meat" vowel:In accents with the distinction, the vowel /ɪə/ is usually represented by the spellings ea and eCe, as in neat and complete, and the vowel /ɛɪ/ is usually represented by the spellings ei and ey, as in receive and key, and the vowel /iː/ is usually represented by the spellings ee, ie and iCe as in feet, thief and suite, as well as plain e in the monosyllabic words be, he, me, she, the (when stressed), we and ye.
a) originally long low-mid vowels: team, cream
b) ME open syllable lengthening: eat, meat
c) apparently the historical diphthong /ɛɪ/ in words like receive, key (?) (Wikipedia isn't clear on which way dialects with only 2 lexical sets, MEET and MEAT, merge this vowel.)
Does anybody know which lexical set vowels like the first in "create" would fall into? That is, a lengthened "e" in Latinate words, possibly before another vowel. I don't think any dialects have a general distinction between "e","ae" and "oe" in Latinate words, so I'd assume the same pronunciation patterns apply to the digraphs. Since the vowel here seems to be lengthened, not originally long, I would suppose it to be in the "meat" set. But then again, perhaps such learned words tend to be influenced by the pronunciation used in dialects with the merger.