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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?