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CLT3378: Ancient Mythology: East and West

Summer C 2017

Lecture 3: Enuma Elish

Historical Background

Our myth for today’s lecture — which is a combination of a creation , succession , and

combat myth — is found in a Babylonian poem called Enuma Elish (pro nounced “eh -NOO -ma

eh -LIS H”). As we will see, Babylon was an important city -state in the area known

as Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is an ancient Greek word that literally means “the land between

the rivers,” specifically the Tigris and Euphrates riv ers, although the term is used more generally

to describe the large open plain formed by these two rivers that stretches from the Persian gulf

northward all the way to t he mountains of modern Turkey. Both rivers are subject to extensive,

frequent, and some time s erratic flooding. The resulting alluvial plain, however, is extremely

fertile. Human occupation and farming in Mesopotamia goes back to about 10,000 BCE, but it

was not until the inhabitants started to channel the flooding waters of the Tigris and Eu phrates

into artificial irrigation canals that the earliest human civilizations in the world first appeared

here. Mesopotamia has thus been called by scholars “the cradle of civilization.” The earliest

Mesopotamian civilization was that of the Sumerians (pronounced “shoo -ME -ri-ans” , although

you’ll also hear it pronounced “soo -ME -ri-ans” ), a people who lived in the southern part of

Mesopotamia (Sumer = “SHOO -mer” , although you’ll also hear it pronounced “SOO -mer” ) and

spoke a language unrelated to any other known language (whether ancient or modern).

Map of Mesopotamia. Note the region of Sumer in the southern part of Mesopotamia.

Around 3000 BCE the Sumerians began to live in city -states controll ing large territories

of land. Although these city -state s were independent, they spoke the same language and shared a

common religious and cultural background. Nonetheless, the Sumerian city -states continually fought with one another, and because Mesopotamia has few natural boundaries, they were

subject to cons tant raids and attacks from nomadic peoples from every direction. Eventually the

Sumerian city -states were conquered by a people from the northern part of Mesopotamia,

the Akkadians, in around 2400. The Akkadians were a Semitic people, meaning that they sp oke a

Semitic language related to ancient and modern Hebrew and Arabic. The Sumerians managed to

overthrow the Akkadians in about 2100, but their resurgence was short -lived, and by about

1900, Sumer and Akkad had been conquered by another Semitic people, t he Amorites, wh o

spoke a dialect of Akkadian. Since the Amorites established Babylon as their capital city, they

are generally called the Babylonians, and the territory which they controlled,

including Sumer and Akkad, is called Babylonia. Most famous of t he Babylonians was king

Hammurapi, who around 1750 issued a code of laws that still survives on an inscribed

pillar. When an invading army of Hittites (a people from modern day Turkey to whom we will

return in Lecture 4) sacked the city of Babylon in aroun d 1600, the reign of the Babylonians (or

at least this “dynasty” of Baby lonian rulers) came to an end. The Hittites left Babylon after

sacking it, however, which opened the door for a people called the Kassites to take control

of Babylonia. Eventually, the Assyrians, who came from northern Mesopotamia, became the

dominant po wer in the region around 1200. The Babylonians reestablished their rule in Babylon

in around 1000, however, and from around 1000 -600 they either lived in an uneasy alliance with

the migh ty Assyrians or vied (usually unsuccessfully) with the Assyrians for control of

Mesopotamia.

Map of Mesopotamia. Note Assyria to north and Babylonia to south. The borders of the modern country

of Iraq are indicated by the dotted line.

This brief surv ey illustrates how tumultuous and unstable life was in Mesopotamia in

ancient times, but continuity was also an important feature. Invading peoples often did not

impose their own cultures on the peoples they conquered, but instead adopted elements of the

culture of the peoples whom they conquered. Thus, when the Akkadians conquered the

Sumerians, they (the Akkadians) took over as their own aspects of Sumerian culture, including

its form of government, many religious practices, and much of their mythological traditions, simply giving Sumerian gods Akkadian names. (What do we call this “mixing together ” of

different cultures’ mythic beliefs ? See Lecture 2.) The Amorites (or Babylonians) did the sam e

thing, as did the Assyrians. (The Romans did the same later w hen they encountered and

overcame the Greeks.) Each new people did introduce some changes; they might assign an older

god the name of one of their own, but sometimes they kept the older name, and even when they

changed the names of gods they often simply r etained the characteristics of the older god under

the new name. Consequently, the culture of Mesopotamia’s original inhabitants, the Sumerians,

lived on long after the Sumerians themselves had faded from the picture, and their literature was

translated an d their myths and religious practices adapted into the religious and mythical

traditions of other peoples.

Our knowledge of Mesopotamian myth and literature is due largely to the work of

archaeologists, although a good deal of information is also provide d by the books of the Hebrew

Bible. Since the nineteenth century, German, French, British, and American archaeologists have

worked in Mesopotamia at sites like Nippur, Ur, and Nineveh, to uncover the remains of the

cities, temples, and other physical fea tures of Mesopotamian culture. Even more is learned from

the written texts left by Mesopotamian peoples. The Sumerians invented the art of

writ ing sometime around 3000 BCE. They originally wrote on clay tablets in a type of writing

that we call cuneiform (La tin for “wedge -shaped”), which consists of wedge -shaped characters

each of which stands for a particular word or sound. (Go to the following website to see your

name written in cuneiform!: http://www. penn.museum/cgi/cuneiform.cgi ). Over time different

Mesopotamian peoples used writing to record all types of documents, ranging from business

contracts and judicial decisions to religious and mythical texts. More important for our purposes,

different peop les also preserved and copied older literary works that feature myths, s o that some

of the Mesopotamian myths we have go back to very ancient times. It is important to note,

however, that for the Mesopotamians we do not possess a single sacred book, like t he Jewish or

Christian Bible or the Muslim Koran ; instead, we reconstruct our picture of Mesopotamian myth

and religion from scattered texts that relate myths, prayers, and stories that may have been

written at different times and in different places.

This is a clay tablet written in the Akkadian language using the cuneiform script. The Enuma Elish as a

whole fits on seven clay tablets; hence the numbers I -VII on the top at the pages

in Dalley’s translation. This particular tablet of the Enuma Elish was found a t the Assyrian city

of Nineveh.

Mesopotamian religion

The different peoples who inhabited Mesopotamia were polytheistic. (On polytheism, see

Lecture 2.) Mesopotamians had gods who were associated with virtually every area of the natural

world, fr om the sky and heavens above to the seas and the waters they believed to have flowed

beneath the earth. In addition, individual city -states had their own patron (or protector) gods.

Official state worship revolved around temples called ziggurats, step ped p yramids made from

bricks. These temples were found in most cities and were administered by priests who held both

religious and political power. Temples controlled vast amounts of land to supply the needs of the

gods and their human servants the priests, wh ile the inhabitants also turned over part of their

produce in the form of a temple tax to supp ort the temple administration. The gods themselves

were depicted by statues made of wood that were sheathed and clothed with precious metals and

garments. Meals w ere prepared for these statues on a daily basis, and consisted of everything

from cakes to s heep, goats, fish, and cattle. The ziggurat was considered the home of the god or

goddess, while he/she was staying in a particular city; the interior of a temple, therefore,

belonged to a god and was not a place of worship for humans like a modern day church, mosque,

or synagogue. Moreover, in honor of the gods a city would celebrate special festivals at different

times of the year.

Note that the ziggurat or st epped pyramid to the left of this reconstruction is the Temple of Marduk.

Enuma Elish and the Babylonian New Year Festival

One such festival was the Babylonian New Year Festival (known as the Akitu ) celebrated

every year in April. This festiva l was in honor of Marduk, the patron god of the city

of Babylon. Like most Mesopotamian deities, Marduk began as a nature god, specifically a god

of the rainstorm (thus Marduk is a storm god) , but over time he became less tied to nature and more to “politi cal” power, as the king of th e gods in the Babylonian view. The poem

entitled Enuma Elish tells of M arduk’s rise to power as king. From a later Mesopotamian text w e

know that Enuma Elish was recited (or perhaps performed) on the fourth day of the multi -day

New Year Festival. In many ways the figure of Marduk in the Enuma Elish was identified with

the current Babylonian king. During the festival, the Babylonian king had his right to rule

ritually renewed by the gods. He also received oaths of loyalty from go vernment officials,

military officers, and the governors of his realm. How is what happens to the Babylonian king

during the New Year Festival similar to what happens to Marduk at the end of the Enuma Elish ?

Enuma Elish as a poem

Enuma Elish is named after its first few words (“When on high” or, as

Stephanie Dalley translates, “When skies above”). This was the standard way that

Mesopotamians (and other Ancient Near Eastern peoples) referred to works of literature, not by

separate titles, but j ust by the first words of a work. Scholars sometimes refer to

the Enuma Elish as the Babylonian Creation Epic: the work is Babylonian in origin, it deals with

the creation of the world, and it is a poem that corresponds more or less to the genre of literat ure

we wou ld call “epic.” That the Enuma Elish is a poem is very important to keep in mind. (Many

of the myths we will be reading in th is course are found in poems.) Remember that

the Enuma Elish was either recited or performed (or even acted out) at the B abylonian New Year

Festival. Its being in the form of poetry made it much easier to remember and to recite, perform,

or sing.

Yes, songs are poems. In English, poems (and songs) often have lines that end with

rhyming words. Mesopotamian poetry, as far a s we know, did not rhyme, but it was composed,

as was all ancient poetry, in a type of poetic meter, the measu re or rhythm of a poetic line. It is

this rhythm that makes poetry easier to remember than prose (anything not written in poetic

meter). Try memor izing a newspaper article (written in prose); it is nearly impossible to do. Try

memorizing the lyrics of any song on your iP hone , however, and you will see that it is infinitely

easier to memorize poetry than it is to memorize prose. Myths were most often cast in poetry by

early cultures because they could be remembered so easily that way. By the way, in all human

societies poetry predates prose as a way of preserving information . Tha t might seem

counterintuitive. Isn’t poetry more “advanced” or “sophisti cat ed” than prose, you might ask? No,

poetry comes first in human culture, precisely (but not exclusively) because it could be sung and

could thereby easily preserve information for future generations of people. The invention of

writing, which comes later, provides only a supplementary way of preserving information,

whether it is poetry or prose that is written down.

Enuma Elish as creation , combat, and succession myth

Enuma Elish really contains three types of myth, although these three types are closely

related. First, it contains a creation myth, telling of the creation of the world or universe. Second,

it contains a combat myth, telling of the combat between one god and an often monstrous other

god or monster. Third, it contains a successio n myth, telling of the transference of rule over the

gods and the universe from one god or group of gods to another. Enuma Elish tells of the

transference of power from the earliest generation of gods, Apsu and Tiamat, ultimately to the

generation of the g ods ruled over by Marduk. In order to become king of the gods, in

fact, Marduk must battle Tiamat directly (i.e., the combat myth) . Tiamat, as we will se e shortly, represents the sea. In the version that we have it, Enuma Elish dates to around 1000 BCE,

although the myths it describes proba bly go back centuries earlier. Originally, the battle

between Marduk and Tiamat may have been similar to West Asiatic myths (e.g., from Canaan)

that told of the cosmic battle between the thundercloud and the sea. As Mard uk became more

politicized and more associated with Babylonian nationalism, however, his battle

with Tiamat came to be seen by Babylonians as an analogue to the intermittent conflicts between

the Babylonians and the peoples of the Sealand, an area south of Babylon along the Persian

Gulf. It must be remembered, moreover, that the “sea” in Ancient Near Eastern (whether

Mesopotamian, Canaanite, or Hebrew) thought in general repr esented “chaos” or “disorder.” The

sea, after all, is awesome in its untamed vastne ss and can certainly be treacherous to sailors. It is

the responsibility of the king of the gods, in this case Marduk, to vanquish the disordered and

chaotic sea (in this case Tiamat) and thereby to bring order to the universe.

Enuma Elish : The mai n events

What follows is a summary of the main events of the Enuma Elish ; not every event, nor

every character, in the poem is included, but just the ones that I consider the most important. The

poem opens with water . The first thing in existe nce, says the author of Enuma Elish , is water.

This water is what we called in Lecture 2 the Primordial Waters. In Enuma Elish , two bodies of

water make up the primordial waters: Apsu, the fresh water, and Tiamat, the salt water. (Note

that no god is said to create Apsu and Tiamat, the primoridal waters. Apsu and Tiamat just are ;

they exist at the very beginning of creation.) Apsu is at the same time a (male) god, and Tiamat a

(female) goddess. We can therefore call Apsu and Tiamat binatural : they are both gods and

physical spaces. (On binaturalism, see Lecture 2.) Apsu and Tiamat “commingle” their waters

(so apparently have sex) and produce other gods. Here we have the creation myth proper

beginning, with Apsu and Tiamat procreating. As noted above, most M esopotamian deities

began as nature gods, but the Mesopotamians over time came to think of their gods in

anthropomorphic terms. (On anthropomorphism, see Lecture 2.) So gods, like people, can have

sex with each other to produce offspring, even if the gods procreating in this case are bodies of

water! Among the several gods engendered by Apsu and Tiamat are the male gods

Lahmu , Lahamu, Anshar , and Kishar. Anshar then becomes the father of the god Anu. Anu is an

important god in Mesopotamian mythology: he is the sky. So is Anu, like Apsu and Tiamat, also

binatural? Anu will later have a son named Ea (another very important god; more on him in a

moment); Ea’s son will be none other than Marduk. (Note that Marduk is a storm god; he

controls storms, winds, rain , thunder, and lightning. He is NOT binatural, that is, he is NOT a

storm itself, just a god who controls storms.)

So Apsu and Tiamat have produced a lot of gods, who have also given birth to divine

offspring of their own. In time, all these go ds begin to make a big racket, and Apsu is e xtremely

annoyed by the noise. To end the noise, Apsu plans to kill all these gods, his own offspring

and descenda nts. Note here that Mesopotamian gods are not necessarily immortal (literally

“undying”); they can be killed. (Immortality, as we shall see, is a defining feature

of Greek gods.) Apsu tries to enlist Tiamat’s aid, but she angrily refuses to kill her own

children. Ea then finds out about Apsu’s plot and kills him. How exactly does Ea defeat and kill

Apsu , and how do Ea’s actions here help characterize him as a trickster ?

Ea is the Akkadian name of the Sumerian Enki; Ea/Enki is also known

as Nudimmud (see for example Dalley page 233). Ea is a trickster god and is the god of

cleverness and wisdom; he i s thus an appropriate god to figure out Apsu’s plot. Ea is also the god

of fresh water; he is a beneficial god that contributes to the irrigation and fertility of the land of

the Mesopotamians. When Ea kills Apsu, he actually makes t he body of Apsu into hi s home.

Thus, Ea lives inside of Apsu, or to put it another way, inside the apsu , which was the

underground reservoir of fresh water that Mesopotamians believed was the source of all the

earth’s fresh water. (The Mesopotamians often conceived of a triparti te earth : the top layer was

the surface of the earth; underneath that was the apsu ; and underneath that was the underworld,

where the souls of the dead went.) Ea was the patron god of the city of Eridu in

southern Mesopotamia; his te mple in Eridu was calle d Apsu. (So where would Ea stay whenever

he visited Eridu? )

Modern impression of a Sumerian cylinder seal. Note the Sumerian god Enki (Akkadian Ea)

within the apsu /Apsu. What do the wavy lines bordering the doorway of the Apsu indicate here?

Mode rn impression of a Sumerian cylinder seal. What do the wavy lines emanating from the

shoulders of Enki (to the right) indicate , and what do they tell us about Enki as a god ?

According to Enuma Elish , Ea and a godddess named Da mkina produce Marduk inside apsu .

Marduk is described as having four eyes and four ears and as breathing fire from his lips. (Why

do you think the author of Enuma Elish describes Marduk thusly? ) The sky god Anu creates the

winds and gives them to Marduk . What is the familial relati onship between Anu and Marduk?

These winds churn up the waters of Tiamat so that she and the rest of the gods around her

cannot rest. Angered by this disturbance, as well as by the murder of Apsu, Tiamat creat es an

army of eleven monsters. She makes the god Qingu the leader of this army. Ea (the god of

cleverness, again) discovers Tiamat’s plot and goes to Anshar. What is the f amilial relationship

between Anshar and Ea ? Anshar sends first Ea, then Anu to battle Tiamat; both go, but

eventually t urn back in fear of Tiamat. Ea pleads with Marduk to go to Anshar. Marduk does and

promises Ansh ar that he will defeat Tiamat. (The third time is the charm. Note the magic number

three here that appears in so many stories throughout the world : Ea, then Anu , then Marduk.)

Before Marduk sets out to fight Tiamat, the gods swear oaths of loyalty to Marduk and

declare him king of the gods. Marduk arms himself for battle wi th his bow and with the

winds. When Marduk advances against Tiamat, h e sends t he winds against her. She swallows the

winds, but they blow her u p like a balloon. Marduk shoots an arrow and burst s Tiamat, thereby

killing her. He then defeats a nd kills her army of monsters. Marduk then splits Tiamat’s

dead body in half like a “dried fi sh,” using one half to make the earth and t he other half to make

the sky. (The Mesopotamians often conceived of a tripartite sky : the god Anu was the uppermost

sky; under Anu was a middle sky; and under the middle sky was the lowermost sky, made out of

hal f of Tiamat . See above for the corresponding idea of a tripartite earth. )

Before the assembled gods who are celebrating Marduk’s victory, Marduk announces that

he wants to create human beings to do the work of the gods so that the gods can be at

leisure . Ea suggests that he use the captive Qingu, Tiama t’s general, for this purpose. Marduk (or

is it Ea? The text is ambiguous. ) thereupon kills Qingu and from his blood creates humans. (Why

might the author of Enuma Elish want to be ambiguous here as to whet her it was Marduk or Ea

that killed Qingu and so was respon sible for creating human beings? ) For Marduk, the gods then

create Babylon, and especially Marduk’s temple in that city. The Enuma Elish ends with a long

list of Marduk’s various titles and epithet s as king of the gods.

The repetition of Tiamat’s monsters

In reading the Enuma Elish , two things may have stood out for you. One thing may have

been the fragmentary nature of the text. Texts using the c uneiform script were usually written on

clay tablets; over the millenia these clay tablets have often become broken, and parts of the texts

transcribed on the tablets have been irrevocably lost. In her translation, Dalley tries to indicate

the fragmentary nature of the text by introducing gaps in the text, usually indicated by a blank

space between two brackets (e.g., [ ]). Another thing that may have struck you is the

frequent repetition of lines, even whole passages, in the Enuma Elish .

Perhaps the most striking repetition in Enuma Elish is the lengthy passage concerning the

creation of Tiamat’s monsters. This passage is repeated, essentially word for word, no les s than

four times in the poem. First, Tiamat herself lists and describes the mo nsters she is going to create. Ea later repeats the passage to Anshar. Anshar in turn repeats it to his vizier, Kakka,

whom Ans har sends to Lahmu and Lahamu. Lastly, Kakka repeats the passage to

Lahmu and Lahamu.

(You may have noticed that nowhere in this lectur e have I mentioned the name of the

author of Enuma Elish . That is because with the Enuma Elish , as with most Mesopotamian

literature, we do not know the actual author of the poem we possess. The author ’s name has been

lost in time. I therefore refer to the author of the Enuma Elish just as the “author.”)

The author of the Enuma Elish accomplishes several literary effects through the repetition

of the passage about Tiamat’s monsters. Remember that the Enuma Elish is a poem. You could

think of the passage about Tiamat’s monsters as the chorus to a song. What effect, then, would

the repetition of this “chorus” have had on the audience of the Enuma Elish ? Of what would the

audience have been reminded each time they heard the passage ? What would the r epetition of the

Tiamat’s monsters passage have said to the audience about Tiamat (and her frightening

monsters)? What would the repetition of the Tiamat’s monsters passage have said to the audience

about Marduk?