Misplaced Pages

#12987

59-548: 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

118-404: 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. 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

177-539: A classification based on some common motifs that reappear in stories the world over. The classification identifies five basic types: Marta Weigle further developed and refined this typology to highlight nine themes, adding elements such as deus faber , a creation crafted by a deity, creation from the work of two creators working together or against each other, creation from sacrifice and creation from division/conjugation, accretion/conjunction, or secretion. An alternative system based on six recurring narrative themes

236-613: A common origin in the eastern Asiatic coastal region, spreading as peoples migrated west into Siberia and east to the North American continent. However, there are examples of this mytheme found well outside of this boreal distribution pattern, for example the West African Yoruba creation myth of Ọbatala and Oduduwa . Characteristic of many Native American myths, earth-diver creation stories begin as beings and potential forms linger asleep or suspended in

295-773: 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

354-503: A female sky deity falls from the heavens, and certain animals, the beaver , the otter , the duck , and the muskrat dive in the waters to fetch mud to construct an island. In a similar story from the Seneca , people lived in a sky realm. One day, the chief's daughter was afflicted with a mysterious illness, and the only cure recommended for her (revealed in a dream) was to lie beside a tree and to have it be dug up. The people do so, but

413-564: A hole opening to the underworld to stories about their subsequent migrations and eventual settlement in their current homelands. The earth-diver is a common character in various traditional creation myths. In these stories a supreme being usually sends an animal (most often a type of bird, but also crustaceans, insects, and fish in some narratives) into the primal waters to find bits of sand or mud with which to build habitable land. Some scholars interpret these myths psychologically while others interpret them cosmogonically . In both cases emphasis

472-408: A man complains that the tree was their livelihood, and kicks the girl through the hole. She ends up falling from the sky to a world of only water, but is rescued by waterfowl . A turtle offers to bear her on its shell, but asked where would be a definitive dwelling place for her. They decide to create land, and the toad dives into the depths of the primal sea to get pieces of soil. The toad puts it on

531-439: A rational explanation of deity." While creation myths are not literal explications , they do serve to define an orientation of humanity in the world in terms of a birth story. They provide the basis of a worldview that reaffirms and guides how people relate to the natural world , to any assumed spiritual world , and to each other . A creation myth acts as a cornerstone for distinguishing primary reality from relative reality,

590-463: A sense of their place in the world and the regard that they must have for humans and nature. Historian David Christian has summarised issues common to multiple creation myths: How did everything begin? This is the first question faced by any creation myth and ... answering it remains tricky. ... Each beginning seems to presuppose an earlier beginning. ... Instead of meeting a single starting point, we encounter an infinity of them, each of which poses

649-435: A separation or splitting of a primeval entity, the world parent or parents. One form describes the primeval state as an eternal union of two parents, and the creation takes place when the two are pulled apart. The two parents are commonly identified as Sky (usually male) and Earth (usually female), who were so tightly bound to each other in the primeval state that no offspring could emerge. These myths often depict creation as

SECTION 10

#1732793020013

708-461: 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. 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

767-671: A singular Lahmu sometimes appears among the ancestors of Anu alongside a feminine counterpart ( Lahamu ), following the primordial pair Duri and Dari (eternity) and other such figures and preceding Alala and Belili. Assyriolgist Frans Wiggermann, who specializes in the study of origins and development of Mesopotamian apotropaic creatures and demons, assumes that this tradition had its origin in Upper Mesopotamia . Lahmu and Lahamu aren't necessarily siblings in this context. Long lists of divine ancestors of Enlil or Anu from some god lists were at least sometimes meant to indicate that

826-483: A staged ascent or metamorphosis from nascent forms through a series of subterranean worlds to arrive at their current place and form. Often the passage from one world or stage to the next is impelled by inner forces, a process of germination or gestation from earlier, embryonic forms. The genre is most commonly found in Native American cultures where the myths frequently link the final emergence of people from

885-530: A woman's body with legs which are made of snakes. 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. Chaoskampf motifs in other mythologies perhaps linked to the Tiamat myth include: the Hittite Illuyanka myth;

944-618: 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. Laḫmu is depicted as a bearded man wearing a red garment ( tillû ) Some texts mention a spade as the attribute of Lahmu. The artistic representations are sometimes called "naked heroes" in literature. Lahmu were associated with water. They were generally believed to be servants of Enki /Ea (and later on of his son Marduk as well), and were described as

1003-586: Is a type of cosmogony , a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it. While in popular usage the term myth often refers to false or fanciful stories, members of cultures often ascribe varying degrees of truth to their creation myths. In the society in which it is told, a creation myth is usually regarded as conveying profound truths  – metaphorically , symbolically , historically , or literally . They are commonly, although not always, considered cosmogonical myths – that is, they describe

1062-592: Is designated as " Titanus Tiamat " in Godzilla: King of the Monsters . Tiamat fully appears as an aquatic serpentine dragon in the Godzilla vs Kong prequel graphic novel Godzilla Dominion before making her live action debut in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire . She served as a minor antagonist in both, conflicting with Godzilla over territory. Creation myth A creation myth or cosmogonic myth

1121-496: Is likened to the act of giving birth. The role of midwife is usually played by a female deity, like the spider woman of several mythologies of Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Male characters rarely figure into these stories, and scholars often consider them in counterpoint to male-oriented creation myths, like those of the ex nihilo variety. Emergence myths commonly describe the creation of people and/or supernatural beings as

1180-483: Is placed on beginnings emanating from the depths. According to Gudmund Hatt and Tristram P. Coffin , Earth-diver myths are common in Native American folklore , among the following populations: Shoshone , Meskwaki , Blackfoot , Chipewyan , Newettee , Yokuts of California, Mandan , Hidatsa , Cheyenne , Arapaho , Ojibwe , Yuchi , and Cherokee . American anthropologist Gladys Reichard located

1239-536: Is pre-existing within the unformed void. In creation from chaos myths, there is nothing initially but a formless, shapeless expanse. In these stories the word "chaos" means "disorder", and this formless expanse, which is also sometimes called a void or an abyss, contains the material with which the created world will be made. Chaos may be described as having the consistency of vapor or water, dimensionless, and sometimes salty or muddy. These myths associate chaos with evil and oblivion, in contrast to "order" ( cosmos ) which

SECTION 20

#1732793020013

1298-506: Is the good. The act of creation is the bringing of order from disorder, and in many of these cultures it is believed that at some point the forces preserving order and form will weaken and the world will once again be engulfed into the abyss. One example is the Genesis creation narrative from the first chapter of the Book of Genesis . There are two types of world parent myths, both describing

1357-622: The Chukchi and Yukaghir , the Tatars , and many Finno-Ugric traditions, as well as among the Buryat and the Samoyed. In addition, the earth-diver motif also exists in narratives from Eastern Europe, namely Romani , Romanian, Slavic (namely, Bulgarian, Polish, Ukrainian, and Belarusian), and Lithuanian mythological traditions. The pattern of distribution of these stories suggest they have

1416-523: The Rig Veda , and many animistic cultures in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and North America. In most of these stories, the world is brought into being by the speech, dream, breath, or pure thought of a creator but creation ex nihilo may also take place through a creator's bodily secretions. The literal translation of the phrase ex nihilo is "from nothing" but in many creation myths the line is blurred whether

1475-516: 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, has been more recently dismissed as "distinctly improbable." 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

1534-770: The Greek lore of Apollo 's killing of the Python as a necessary action to take over the Delphic Oracle ; and to Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. A number of writers have put forth ideas about Tiamat: Robert Graves , 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

1593-492: 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

1652-534: The Sumerian creation beliefs. The difference in density of salt and fresh water drives a perceptible separation . 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

1711-512: The appearance of Ea-Enki. 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. 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

1770-462: The cosmos from Tiamat’s body. Some sources have dubiously identified her with images of a sea serpent or dragon . Thorkild Jacobsen and Walter Burkert both argue for a connection with the Akkadian word for sea, tâmtu ( 𒀀𒀊𒁀 ), following an early form, ti'amtum . Burkert continues by making a linguistic connection to Tethys . The later form Θαλάττη , thaláttē , which appears in

1829-399: The creative act would be better classified as a creation ex nihilo or creation from chaos. In ex nihilo creation myths, the potential and the substance of creation springs from within the creator. Such a creator may or may not be existing in physical surroundings such as darkness or water, but does not create the world from them, whereas in creation from chaos the substance used for creation

Tiamat - Misplaced Pages Continue

1888-477: The distribution of the motif across "all parts of North America", save for "the extreme north, northeast, and southwest". In a 1977 study, anthropologist Victor Barnouw surmised that the earth-diver motif appeared in " hunting-gathering societies ", mainly among northerly groups such as the Hare , Dogrib , Kaska , Beaver , Carrier , Chipewyan , Sarsi , Cree , and Montagnais . Similar tales are also found among

1947-579: The doorkeepers of his temple in Eridu and possibly as the "guardians of the sea" known from some versions of the Atra-Hasis . Some texts list as many as 50 Lahmu in such roles. It's possible they were initially river spirits believed to take care of domestic and wild animals. Apotropaic creatures such as Lahmu weren't regarded as demonic; they protected the household from demons. However, myths may depict them as defeated and subsequently reformed enemies of

2006-482: 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

2065-568: The gods worshiped by the Mesopotamians weren't the product of incestuous relationships. Wilfred G. Lambert wrote, "The history of these two [theogonies] shows that steps were sometimes taken quite specifically to avoid the implication of incest, which was socially taboo." In the Enūma Eliš , compiled at a later date and relying on the tradition mentioned above, Lahmu is the first-born son of Abzu and Tiamat . He and his sister Laḫamu are

2124-410: The gods. 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,

2183-458: The gods. At the same time, they weren't viewed as fully divine, as their names were rarely if ever, preceded by the dingir sign ("divine determinative") and they do not wear horned tiaras (a symbol of divinity) in art. Wiggermann 1992 , p. 165 In apotropaic rituals, Lahmu was associated with other monsters, for example mušḫuššu , bašmu (a type of mythical snake), kusarikku (bison-men associated with Shamash ) or Ugallu . In god lists,

2242-665: The ground begins to sink away, and the treetops catch and carry down the sick daughter with it. As the girl falls from the skies, two swans rescue her on their backs. The birds decide to summon all the Swimmers and the Water Tribes. Many volunteer to dive into the Great Water to fetch bits of earth from the bottom of the sea, but only the toad (female, in the story) is the one successful. Lahmu Laḫmu ( 𒀭 𒌓𒈬 or 𒀭𒈛𒈬 , laḫ-mu, lit.   ' hairy one ' )

2301-424: The habitable cosmos), but with assigning roles so that the cosmos should function. In the early 2nd century CE, early Christian scholars were beginning to see a tension between the idea of world-formation and the omnipotence of God, and by the beginning of the 3rd century creation ex nihilo had become a fundamental tenet of Christian theology. Ex nihilo creation is found in creation stories from ancient Egypt ,

2360-488: The hands of a male hero corresponded to the overthrow of these matristic religions and societies by male-dominated ones. The depiction of Tiamat as a multi-headed dragon was popularized in the 1970s as a fixture of Dungeons & Dragons , a role-playing game inspired by earlier sources that associated Tiamat with later mythological characters, such as Lotan (Leviathan). In the Monsterverse , an unseen monster

2419-564: The ordering of the cosmos from a state of chaos or amorphousness. Creation myths often share several features. They often are considered sacred accounts and can be found in nearly all known religious traditions . They are all stories with a plot and characters who are either deities , human-like figures, or animals, who often speak and transform easily. They are often set in a dim and nonspecific past that historian of religion Mircea Eliade termed in illo tempore ('at that time'). Creation myths address questions deeply meaningful to

Tiamat - Misplaced Pages Continue

2478-466: The ordinary word tāmtu ('sea') for Tiamat, the two names having become essentially the same due to association. 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. The Babylonian epic Enuma Elish is named for its incipit : "When on high [or: When above]," the heavens did not yet exist nor

2537-419: The origin and nature of being from non-being. In this sense cosmogonic myths serve as a philosophy of life – but one expressed and conveyed through symbol rather than through systematic reason. And in this sense they go beyond etiological myths (which explain specific features in religious rites, natural phenomena, or cultural life). Creation myths also help to orient human beings in the world, giving them

2596-509: The parents of Anshar and Kishar , parents of Anu and thus ancestors of Ea and Marduk according to this specific theogony. Both of them bestow 3 names upon Marduk after his victory. However, Lahmu - presumably of the same variety as the apotropaic rather than cosmological one - also appears among Tiamat's monsters. A fragmentary Assyrian rewrite of Enuma Elish replaced Marduk with Ashur , equated with Anshar , with Lahmu and Lahamu replacing Ea/Enki and Damkina . Wilfred G. Lambert described

2655-415: 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

2714-504: The past, historians of religion and other students of myth thought of such stories as forms of primitive or early-stage science or religion and analyzed them in a literal or logical sense. Today, however, they are seen as symbolic narratives which must be understood in terms of their own cultural context. Charles Long writes: "The beings referred to in the myth – gods, animals, plants – are forms of power grasped existentially. The myths should not be understood as attempts to work out

2773-464: The primordial realm. The earth-diver is among the first of them to awaken and lay the necessary groundwork by building suitable lands where the coming creation will be able to live. In many cases, these stories will describe a series of failed attempts to make land before the solution is found. Among the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the earth-diver cosmogony is attested in Iroquois mythology :

2832-519: The result of a sexual union and serve as genealogical record of the deities born from it. In the second form of world parent myths, creation itself springs from dismembered parts of the body of the primeval being. Often, in these stories, the limbs, hair, blood, bones, or organs of the primeval being are somehow severed or sacrificed to transform into sky, earth, animal or plant life, and other worldly features. These myths tend to emphasize creative forces as animistic in nature rather than sexual, and depict

2891-576: The sacred as the elemental and integral component of the natural world. One example of this is the Norse creation myth described in " Völuspá ", the first poem in the Poetic Edda , and in Gylfaginning . In emergence myths, humanity emerges from another world into the one they currently inhabit. The previous world is often considered the womb of the earth mother , and the process of emergence

2950-586: The same problem. ... There are no entirely satisfactory solutions to this dilemma. What we have to find is not a solution but some way of dealing with the mystery .... And we have to do so using words. The words we reach for, from God to gravity , are inadequate to the task. So we have to use language poetically or symbolically; and such language, whether used by a scientist, a poet, or a shaman, can easily be misunderstood. Mythologists have applied various schemes to classify creation myths found throughout human cultures. Eliade and his colleague Charles Long developed

3009-538: 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, adding, “The exact Sumerian prototype, however, has not turned up so far.” However, this surmise that

SECTION 50

#1732793020013

3068-426: The society that shares them, revealing their central worldview and the framework for the self-identity of the culture and individual in a universal context. Creation myths develop in oral traditions and therefore typically have multiple versions; found throughout human culture , they are the most common form of myth. Creation myth definitions from modern references: Religion professor Mircea Eliade defined

3127-681: The turtle's back, which grows larger with every deposit of soil. In another version from the Wyandot , the Wyandot lived in heaven. The daughter of the Big Chief (or Mighty Ruler) was sick, so the medicine man recommends that they dig up the wild apple tree that stands next to the Lodge of the Mighty Ruler, because the remedy is to be found on its roots. However, as the tree has been dug out,

3186-696: The vault of heaven and earth. Her weeping eyes became the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates , her tail became the Milky Way . 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

3245-715: The word myth in terms of creation: Myth narrates a sacred history; it relates an event that took place in primordial Time, the fabled time of the "beginnings." In other words, myth tells how, through the deeds of Supernatural Beings, a reality came into existence, be it the whole of reality, the Cosmos, or only a fragment of reality – an island, a species of plant, a particular kind of human behavior, an institution. Creation myths have been around since ancient history and have served important societal roles. Over 100 "distinct" ones have been discovered. All creation myths are in one sense etiological because they attempt to explain how

3304-436: The world formed and where humanity came from. Myths attempt to explain the unknown and sometimes teach a lesson. Ethnologists and anthropologists who study origin myths say that in the modern context theologians try to discern humanity's meaning from revealed truths and scientists investigate cosmology with the tools of empiricism and rationality , but creation myths define human reality in very different terms. In

3363-447: Was designed by Raymond Van Over: The myth that God created the world out of nothing – ex nihilo – is central today to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides felt it was the only concept that the three religions shared. Nonetheless, the concept is not found in the entire Hebrew Bible. The authors of Genesis 1 were concerned not with the origins of matter (the material which God formed into

3422-411: 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

3481-538: 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

#12987