In the Enûma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, Tiamat bears the first generation of deities after mingling her waters with those of Apsu, her consort. The gods continue to reproduce, forming a noisy new mass of divine children. Apsu, driven to violence by the noise they make, seeks to destroy them and is killed. Enraged, Tiamat also wars upon those of her own and Apsu's children who killed her consort, bringing forth a series of monsters as weapons. She also takes a new consort, Qingu, and bestows on him the Tablet of Destinies, which represents legitimate divine rulership.[2][3] She is ultimately defeated and slain by Enki's son, the storm-god Marduk, but not before she conjures forth monsters whose bodies she fills with "poison instead of blood." Marduk dismembers her, and then constructs and structures elements of the cosmos from Tiamat’s body.
Some sources have dubiously identified her with images of a sea serpent or dragon.[4]
Etymology
Thorkild Jacobsen and Walter Burkert both argue for a connection with the Akkadian word for sea, tâmtu (𒀀𒀊𒁀), following an early form, ti'amtum.[5][6] Burkert continues by making a linguistic connection to Tethys. The later form Θαλάττη, thaláttē, which appears in the Hellenistic Babylonian writer Berossus' first volume of universal history, is clearly related to Greek Θάλαττα, thálatta, an Eastern variant of Θάλασσα, thalassa, 'sea'. It is thought that the proper name ti'amat, which is the vocative or construct form, was dropped in secondary translations of the original texts, because some Akkadian copyists of Enuma Elish substituted the ordinary word tāmtu ('sea') for Tiamat, the two names having become essentially the same due to association.[5]Tiamat also has been claimed to be cognate with the Northwest Semitic word tehom (תְּהוֹם; 'the deeps, abyss'), in the Book of Genesis 1:2.[7]
The Babylonian epicEnuma Elish is named for its incipit: "When on high [or: When above]," the heavens did not yet exist nor the earth below, Abzu the subterranean ocean was there, "the first, the begetter", and Tiamat, the overground sea, "she who bore them all"; they were "mixing their waters". It is thought that female deities are older than male ones in Mesopotamia, and Tiamat may have begun as part of the cult of Nammu, a female principle of a watery creative force, with equally strong connections to the underworld, which predates the appearance of Ea-Enki.[8]
Harriet Crawford finds this "mixing of the waters" to be a natural feature of the middle Persian Gulf, where fresh waters from the Arabian aquifer mix and mingle with the salt waters of the sea.[9] This characteristic is especially true of the region of Bahrain, whose name in Arabic means "two seas", and which is thought to be the site of Dilmun, the original site of the Sumerian creation beliefs.[10] The difference in density of salt and fresh water drives a perceptible separation.
Appearance and nature
In the Enuma Elish, Tiamat’s physical description includes a tail, a thigh, "lower parts" (which shake together), a belly, an udder, ribs, a neck, a head, a skull, eyes, nostrils, a mouth, and lips. She has insides (possibly "entrails"), a heart, arteries, and blood.
Tiamat was once regarded as a sea serpent or dragon, although Assyriologist Alexander Heidel has previously recognized that a "dragon form can not be imputed to Tiamat with certainty." She is still often referred to as a monster, though this identification has been credibly challenged.[11] In Enuma Elish, Tiamat is clearly portrayed as a mother of monsters but, before this, she is just as clearly portrayed as a mother to all the gods.
Mythology
With Tiamat, Abzu (or Apsû) fathered the elder deities Lahmu and Lahamu (masc. the 'hairy'), a title given to the gatekeepers at Enki's Abzu/E'engurra-temple in Eridu. Lahmu and Lahamu, in turn, were the parents of the 'ends' of the heavens (Anshar, from an-šar, 'heaven-totality/end') and the earth (Kishar); Anshar and Kishar were considered to meet at the horizon, becoming, thereby, the parents of Anu (Heaven) and Ki (Earth).
Tiamat was the "shining" personification of the sea who roared and smote in the chaos of original creation. She and Abzu filled the cosmic abyss with the primeval waters. She is "Ummu-Hubur who formed all things."
In the myth recorded on cuneiform tablets, the deity Enki (later Ea) believed correctly that Abzu was planning to murder the younger deities as a consequence of his aggravation with the noisy tumult they created. This premonition led Enki to capture Abzu and hold him prisoner beneath Abzu’s own temple, the E-Abzu ('temple of Abzu'). This angered Kingu, their son, who reported the event to Tiamat, whereupon she fashioned eleven monsters to battle the deities in order to avenge Abzu's death. These were her own offspring: Bašmu ('Venomous Snake'), Ušumgallu ('Great Dragon'), Mušmaḫḫū ('Exalted Serpent'), Mušḫuššu ('Furious Snake'), Laḫmu (the 'Hairy One'), Ugallu (the 'Big Weather-Beast'), Uridimmu ('Mad Lion'), Girtablullû ('Scorpion-Man'), Umū dabrūtu ('Violent Storms'), Kulullû ('Fish-Man'), and Kusarikku ('Bull-Man').
Tiamat was in possession of the Tablet of Destinies, and in the primordial battle, she gave the relic to Kingu, the deity she had chosen as her lover and the leader of her host, and who was also one of her children. The terrified deities were rescued by Anu, who secured their promise to revere him as "king of the gods." He fought Tiamat with the arrows of the winds, a net, a club, and an invincible spear. Anu was later replaced first by Enlil, and (in the late version that has survived after the First Dynasty of Babylon) then subsequently by Marduk, the son of Ea.
And the lord stood upon Tiamat's hinder parts, And with his merciless club he smashed her skull. He cut through the channels of her blood, And he made the North wind bear it away into secret places.
Slicing Tiamat in half, Marduk made from her ribs the vault of heaven and earth. Her weeping eyes became the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates, her tail became the Milky Way.[12] With the approval of the elder deities, he took the Tablet of Destinies from Kingu, and installed himself as the head of the Babylonian pantheon. Kingu was captured and later was slain: his red blood mixed with the red clay of the Earth would make the body of humankind, created to act as the servant of the younger Igigi deities.
The principal theme of the epic is the rightful elevation of Marduk to command over all the deities. “It has long been realized that the Marduk epic, for all its local coloring and probable elaboration by the Babylonian theologians, reflects in substance older Sumerian material,” American Assyriologist E. A. Speiser remarked in 1942,[13] adding, “The exact Sumerian prototype, however, has not turned up so far.” However, this surmise that the Babylonian version of the story is based upon a modified version of an older epic, in which Enlil, not Marduk, was the god who slew Tiamat,[14] has been more recently dismissed as "distinctly improbable."[15]
Iconography
One example of an icon that was more so a motif of Tiamat was within the Temple of Bêl, located in Palmyra. The motif depicts Nabu and Marduk defeating Tiamat. In this picture, Tiamat is shown as a woman's body with legs which are made of snakes.[16]
Interpretations
It was once thought that the myth of Tiamat was one of the earliest recorded versions of a Chaoskampf, a mythological motif that generally involves the battle between a culture hero and a chthonic or aquatic monster, serpent, or dragon.[4]Chaoskampf motifs in other mythologies perhaps linked to the Tiamat myth include: the Hittite Illuyanka myth; the Greek lore of Apollo's killing of the Python as a necessary action to take over the Delphic Oracle;[17] and to Genesis in the Hebrew Bible.[18]
A number of writers have put forth ideas about Tiamat: Robert Graves,[19] for example, considered Tiamat's death by Marduk as evidence for his hypothesis of an ancient shift in power from a matriarchal society to a patriarchy. The theory suggested that Tiamat and other ancient monster figures were depictions of former supreme deities of peaceful, woman-centered religions. Their defeat at the hands of a male hero corresponded to the overthrow of these matristic religions and societies by male-dominated ones.
Sea of Suf–a primordial sea in the World of Darkness in Mandaean cosmology
Related Research Articles
Enki is the Sumerian god of water, knowledge (gestú), crafts (gašam), and creation (nudimmud), and one of the Anunnaki. He was later known as Ea or Ae in Akkadian (Assyrian-Babylonian) religion, and is identified by some scholars with Ia in Canaanite religion. The name was rendered Aos in Greek sources.
Marduk is a god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of Babylon who eventually rose to power in the 1st millennium BC. In Babylon, Marduk was worshipped in the temple Esagila. His symbol is the spade and he is associated with the Mušḫuššu.
Nammu was a Mesopotamian goddess regarded as a creator deity in the local theology of Eridu. It is assumed that she was associated with water. She is also well attested in connection with incantations and apotropaic magic. She was regarded as the mother of Enki, and in a single inscription she appears as the wife of Anu, but it is assumed that she usually was not believed to have a spouse. From the Old Babylonian period onwards, she was considered to be the mother of An (Heaven) and Ki (Earth), as well as a representation of the primeval sea/ocean, an association that may have come from influence from the goddess Tiamat.
In the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish, Kishar is the daughter of Abzu and Lahmu, the first children of Tiamat and Abzu. She is the female principle, sister and wife of Anshar, the male principle, and the mother of Anu. Kishar may represent the earth as a counterpart to Anshar, the sky, and can be seen as an earth mother goddess. Her name also means "Whole Earth".
Dilmun, or Telmun, was an ancient East Semitic-speaking civilization in Eastern Arabia mentioned from the 3rd millennium BC onwards. Based on contextual evidence, it was located in the Persian Gulf, on a trade route between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley civilisation, close to the sea and to artesian springs. Dilmun encompassed Bahrain, Kuwait, and eastern Saudi Arabia.
Enūma Eliš, meaning "When on High", is a Babylonian creation myth from the late 2nd millennium BCE and the only complete surviving account of ancient near eastern cosmology. It was recovered by English archaeologist Austen Henry Layard in 1849 in the ruined Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. A form of the myth was first published by English Assyriologist George Smith in 1876; active research and further excavations led to near completion of the texts and improved translation.
Anzû, also known as dZû and Imdugud, is a monster in several Mesopotamian religions. He was conceived by the pure waters of the Abzu and the wide Earth, or as son of Siris. Anzû was depicted as a massive bird who can breathe fire and water, although Anzû is alternately depicted as a lion-headed eagle.
Qingu, also spelled Kingu, was a god in Babylonian mythology, and the son of the gods Abzu and Tiamat. After the murder of his father, Apsu, he served as the consort of his mother, Tiamat, who wanted to establish him as ruler and leader of all gods before she was killed by Marduk. Tiamat gave Qingu the Tablet of Destinies, which he wore as a breastplate and which gave him great power. She placed him as the general of her army. However, like Tiamat, Qingu was eventually killed by Marduk. Marduk used Qingu's blood to create the first human beings, while Tiamat's body created the earth and the skies.
Anshar was a Mesopotamian god regarded as a primordial king of the gods. He was not actively worshiped. He was regarded as the father of Anu. In the first millennium BCE his name came to be used as a logographic representation of the head god in the Assyrian state pantheon, Ashur. He is attested in a number of god lists, such as An = Anum, and in literary compositions, including the Enūma Eliš.
Laḫmu is a class of apotropaic creatures from Mesopotamian mythology. While the name has its origin in a Semitic language, Lahmu was present in Sumerian sources in pre-Sargonic times already.
Ancient Semitic religion encompasses the polytheistic religions of the Semitic peoples from the ancient Near East and Northeast Africa. Since the term Semitic represents a rough category when referring to cultures, as opposed to languages, the definitive bounds of the term "ancient Semitic religion" are only approximate but exclude the religions of "non-Semitic" speakers of the region such as Egyptians, Elamites, Hittites, Hurrians, Mitanni, Urartians, Luwians, Minoans, Greeks, Phrygians, Lydians, Persians, Medes, Philistines and Parthians.
Babylonian religion is the religious practice of Babylonia. Babylonia's mythology was largely influenced by its Sumerian counterparts and was written on clay tablets inscribed with the cuneiform script derived from Sumerian cuneiform. The myths were usually either written in Sumerian or Akkadian. Some Babylonian texts were translations into Akkadian from Sumerian of earlier texts, but the names of some deities were changed.
Lahamu was a minor figure in some variants of Mesopotamian cosmology, the feminine counterpart of Lahmu.
In Mesopotamian mythology, the Tablet of Destinies was envisaged as a clay tablet inscribed with cuneiform writing, also impressed with cylinder seals, which, as a permanent legal document, conferred upon the god Enlil his supreme authority as ruler of the universe. It is a major literary motif in ancient Sumerian myths including Ninurta and the Turtle, and in Akkadian myths including Enuma Elish.
Sirsir, also known as Ninsirsir, was a Mesopotamian god. He was associated with sailors. It has been proposed that he corresponds to the so-called "boat god" motif known from cylinder seals, but this theory is not universally accepted.
Hubur is a Sumerian term meaning "river", "watercourse" or "netherworld." It is usually the "river of the netherworld".
Sumerian religion was the religion practiced by the people of Sumer, the first literate civilization found in recorded history and based in ancient Mesopotamia, and what is modern day Iraq. The Sumerians widely regarded their divinities as responsible for all matters pertaining to the natural and social orders of their society.
The Abzu or Apsu, also called engur, is the name for fresh water from underground aquifers which was given a religious fertilising quality in ancient near eastern cosmology, including Sumerian and Akkadian mythology. It was believed that all lakes, springs, rivers, fountains, rain and even the Flood, as described in Atrahasis, originated from the Abzu. In Mesopotamian cosmogony, it is referred to as the freshwater primordial ocean below and above the earth; indeed our planet itself is regarded as a goddess Ninhursag that was conceived from the mating of male Abzu with female saltwater ocean Tiamat. Thus our divine Mother Earth - on her surface equipped with a bubble of breathable air - is surrounded by Abzu, and her interior harbours the realm of the dead (Irkalla).
Mesopotamian mythology refers to the myths, religious texts, and other literature that comes from the region of ancient Mesopotamia which is a historical region of Western Asia, situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system that occupies the area of present-day Iraq. In particular the societies of Sumer, Akkad, and Assyria, all of which existed shortly after 3000 BCE and were mostly gone by 400 CE. These works were primarily preserved on stone or clay tablets and were written in cuneiform by scribes. Several lengthy pieces have survived erosion and time, some of which are considered the oldest stories in the world, and have given historians insight into Mesopotamian ideology and cosmology.
Cosmology in the ancient Near East (ANE) refers to the plurality of cosmological beliefs in the Ancient Near East, covering the period from the 4th millennium BC to the formation of the Macedonian Empire by Alexander the Great in the second half of the 1st millennium BC. These beliefs include the Mesopotamian cosmologies from Babylonia, Sumer, and Akkad; the Levantine or West Semitic cosmologies from Ugarit and ancient Israel and Judah (the biblical cosmology); the Egyptian cosmology from Ancient Egypt; and the Anatolian cosmologies from the Hittites. This system of cosmology went on to have a profound influence on views in early Greek cosmology, later Jewish cosmology, patristic cosmology, and Islamic cosmology (including Quranic cosmology). Until the modern era, variations of ancient near eastern cosmology survived with Hellenistic cosmology as the main competing system.
References
↑ "Tiamat (goddess)". Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses. Penn State University. Retrieved 2023-06-30.
↑ Sonik, Karen (2012). "The Tablet of Destinies and the Transmission of Power in Enūma eliš". Organization, Representation, and Symbols of Power in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the 54th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Würzburg, 20–25 July 2008. pp.387–395. doi:10.5325/j.ctv1bxgx80.34. JSTOR10.5325/j.ctv1bxgx80.34.
↑ Burkert, Walter (1992). The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influences on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp.92f. ISBN0-674-64363-1.
↑ Yahuda, A. (1933). The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian. Oxford.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
↑ Steinkeller, Piotr (1999). "On Rulers, Priests and Sacred Marriage: Tracing the Evolution of Early Sumerian Kingship". In Wanatabe, K. (ed.). Priests and Officials in the Ancient Near East. Heidelberg: Winter. pp.103–38. ISBN3-8253-0533-3.
↑ Speiser, E. A. (June 1942). "An Intrusive Hurro-Hittite Myth". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 62 (2): 100. doi:10.2307/594461. JSTOR594461.
↑ Expressed, for example, in James, E. O. (1963). The Worship of the Skygod: A Comparative Study in Semitic and Indo-European Religion. Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion. London: Athlone Press, University of London. pp.24, 27ff.
↑ As by Lambert, W. G. (1964). "E. O. James: The worship of the Skygod: a comparative study in Semitic and Indo-European religion. (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion, vi.) viii, 175 pp. London: University of London, the Athlone Press, 1963. 25s". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (book review). 27 (1). Cambridge University Press: 157–158. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00100345.
↑ Gunkel, Hermann (1895). Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit. Eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung über Gen 1 und Ap Joh 12. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Jacobsen, Thorkild (1968). "The Battle between Marduk and Tiamat". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 88 (1): 104–108. doi:10.2307/597902. JSTOR597902.
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