Babylonian Civilization

"As Anšar had made like him | Anu, his scion, | Anu equally, in his own likeness, | He created (Ea-) Nudimmud. | Now, Nudimmud, he, | Future organizer (?) of his parents, | He was of broad intellect, wise | He is endowed with immense strength; | Much more powerful | Of his father's creator, Anšar, | He had no equal, | Compared with his brother gods. Having therefore formed a band, | These god-brothers | They disturbed Tiamat | Surrendering to the hustle and bustle (?): | Shocking | The interior of Tiamat, | They disturbed, with their entertainment, | The interior of the «Divine Abode». (I, 15-24)"

"His nature was exuberant; | His withering gaze; | He was a made man from birth, | And full of strength from the beginning. (I, 87-88)"

"His shapes are incredible, | Admirable: | Impossible to imagine, | Unbearable to watch. | Four are his eyes, | And his ears are four. | When he moves his lips, | The Fire blazes! | Four ears | They're ticked off, | And his eyes, in equal number, | They inspect the Universe! (An, I, 93-98)"

"Tiamat, having therefore | Incited his progeny, | Gathered troops for battle | Against the gods, his offspring! | By now (?), [more] than Apsû. | Tiamat showed herself to be wicked! (II, 1-3)"

"The Mother-Abyss, | Who formed everything, | He has prepared Irresistible Weapons: | He brought giant dragons into the world | With sharp teeth, | From the ruthless (?) fangs, | Whose body he filled | Of poison instead of blood; | And Leviathans ferocious, | To which he gave a frightening appearance And surrounded with supernatural splendor, | Thus equating them to the gods: | "Whoever sees them (he said) | Lose his senses! | And let them once launched, | Let them never retreat!" | He created Idre again, | Formidable dragons, Sea monsters, | Colossal Lions, | Rabid molossians, Scorpion men, | Aggressive monsters, | Fishmen, Gigantic Bisons: | Wielding all merciless weapons | And without fear of combat; | Their delegated powers, immeasurable, | And they, irresistible! (Ea, II, 19-31)"

"In the Deliberation Hall, | Sit happily together | And ensure that, with a word, on your behalf, | I fix destinies: | That nothing has changed | Of what I will have. | And that every order uttered by my lips | May it remain irreversible and irrevocable! (Marduk, II, 146-150?)"

"Oh Marduk, only you emerge | Among the Great Gods! | Your destiny is unmatched, | Your command, sovereign! | From now on, | Your orders will be irrevocable! | Raise or tear down | It will be in your power! | What comes out of your mouth will come true, | Your command will never be deceptive! | None, among the gods, | It will go beyond the limits you set! | And like our places of worship | You will have your assigned seat | In all our sanctuaries! | Oh Marduk, to you alone, | Our avenger, | We have conferred Kingship | On the totality of the Universality around! (IV, 5-4)"

"Having therefore faced | Tiamat and Marduk, the Wise among the gods, | They entwined in the fight | And they joined in melee! | But the Lord, having spread his Net, | He wrapped it in you, | Then he cast the evil Wind against her, | Which he kept in the rear. | And when Tiamat had opened | The mouth, to swallow it, | The evil Wind poured into it | To prevent her from closing her lips. | All the Winds, with fury, | Then they filled her belly, | So that his body was swollen, | His mouth wide open. | Then he launched his Arrow | And he tore her chest, | He divided her body in half, | And he opened her belly. | Thus he triumphed over her, | Ending his life. | Then he threw the body to the ground And he stood there. (IV, 93-104)"

"With a fresh mind, the Lord | He contemplated Tiamat's corpse: | He wanted to cut off the monstrous flesh | To make beautiful things out of it. | He cut her in two, | Like a fish to be dried, | And he arranged half of it | Which curved like the Sky. | He stretched the skin, | On which he installed guardians | To whom he entrusted the mission | To prevent its waters from bursting. (IV, 135-140)"

"Then the Head of Tiamat was placed, | He piled you on top of a mountain Where he opened a Source | (In which) a River trembled. | He opened in his eyes | The Euphrates and the Tigris. (V, 53-55)"

"Al di sopra dell'Apsû | Dimora che voi occupate; | Come copia dell'Ešarra | Che io stesso ho costruito per voi, | Ma più in basso: in un luogo | Di cui ho consolidato la base, | Voglio costruirmi un Tempio | Che sarà la mia Dimora preferita, | In mezzo al quale | Impianterò il mio Santuario | E assegnerò i miei appartamenti, | Per stabilirvi il mio regno. | Quando voi lascerete l'Apsû, | Per salire all'Ass[embl]ea, | Quella sarà la vostra sosta, | Per ricevervi tutti insieme; | Quando lascerete il Cielo | Per scendere all'[Assemblea]; | Quella sarà la vostra sosta, | Per ricevervi tutti insieme! | [Gli] darò il nome di "Babilonia: | Il Tempio dei Grandi dèi". (Marduk, V, 119-129)"

"Voglio condensare del sangue, | Costituire un'ossatura | E creare così un Prototipo umano, | Che si chiamerà "Uomo"! | Questo Prototipo, questo Uomo, | Voglio crearlo | Perché gli siano imposte le fatiche degli dèi | E che essi abbiano tempo libero. (Marduk, VI, 5-8)"

"It could not be admitted without damaging the truth that there is anything in common between the polytheistic expressions of the Babylonian story and the strictly monotheistic ones of the Holy Scripture. But, as for the poetically representative way of weaving the cosmogonic tale, certain parallels between the Babylonian poem and the first chapter of Genesis are so undeniable and evident that it is useless for us to continue to dwell on them. The primitive existence of an oceanic Chaos, precisely called tehôm-tiamat, whose property is confusion and darkness [...] its division into two parts, one to form the sky, the other earth, is a parallelism so close that it cannot be said to be the result of chance in any way. (Salvatore Minocchi)"

"TheEnûma eliš had the same function during the New Year celebration that every hymn to the god had during ceremonies in the temple. The poem is also a grandiose hymn, in which abundant biographical passages of the god are included. They remind the god of his great deeds and invite him to do something great again in favor of the one who recites the hymn. The god who saved his fellow gods from evil beings will certainly want to save his faithful now!"

"The purpose of the recitation was first of all this: to narrate, to make the great deeds of the god Marduk well known to all, to praise the just as he, as a young and insignificant son of Ea had managed through his great valor to gain first place in the Babylonian pantheon, and thereby in a certain sense motivate the celebration of the festival."

"We cannot say anything about the author of the grandiose poem, since in the numerous Mesopotamian texts in cuneiform characters made public so far no information can be found about him, and probably never will be found, as the Babylonians have annexed very little or no importance to the property literature and the belonging of works of literature to this or that artist, just as they have never taken care to pass on to posterity the names of their most famous sculptors, carvers of bas-reliefs and seals, painters, and builders of palaces and temples."

"The whole epic story, and in particular the conflict of Marduk and Tiāmat, have an astral meaning, and certain traits in which we are not yet able to see it must also have it. Unfortunately we do not know exactly which events in the starry sky the poem depicts: we do not yet know its true astral meaning. However, since the Babylonian and Assyrian religion acquired this character to an ever greater degree only as time progressed, we must assume that originally the poem reflected a mythical event of a fundamentally different character, some natural, cosmic event. Behind the gods-people there should therefore be natural gods-phenomena, and especially behind the conflict between Marduk and Tiāmat, which is the central and culminating point of the mythical action. In other words: what physical event represents this conflict? A natural fact interpreted as a divine adventure and transferred to the origins? Here too the answer is not easy. One might suppose that it was a question of depicting the struggle of spring with winter or that of the sun and light with darkness, but Marduk was never truly a solar god, any more than Aššūr was, or that Tiāmat and his offspring would represent the fury of the elements, of the rain and the storm, the rainy and stormy season, which in a region like that of the Valley of the Two Rivers causes destruction, until in spring the sun triumphs over the bad weather: Marduk would therefore represent the sun of spring, and the world would begin this very season. Tiāmat instead represents winter and night and also disorderly chaos, according to the view of the various theological schools of the country and also of the Babylonians and Assyrians of different eras."

"J. Bottero - S.N. Kramer, Men and Gods of Mesopotamia, Einaudi Milan 1992, pp. 642-695"

"Scholars have often noted how the name of the great mother-goddess in this Babylonian creation story, ti'amat, is etymologically linked to the Hebrew term tehom, "the abyss", of the second verse of Genesis, and that like the wind of Anu expired on the abyss and that of Marduk on the face of Tiamat, so in Genesis 1, 2, "the wind [the spirit] of Elohim hovered [or blew] on the surface of the waters". Furthermore, as Marduk arranged the upper half of the mother's body as a roof with the waters below, so in Genesis 1, 7, "Elohim made the firmament and separated the waters that were under the firmament from those that were above." Again, as Ea defeated Apsu and Marduk defeated Tiamat, so did Yahweh with the sea monster Rahab (Job 26, 12-13) and with the Leviathan ( Job 41; Psalms 74, 14). (Joseph Campbell)"

"Rahab is the formidable Tiamat, who the Babylonian demiurge Marduk cut into two parts, from which heaven and earth arose. The Jews were able to learn about this myth even before the captivity. Traces of it are found in Job and in some psalms. (Alfred Loisy)"

"The Mother-Abyss, | Who formed everything, | He has prepared Irresistible Weapons: | He brought giant dragons into the world | With sharp teeth, | From the ruthless (?) fangs, | Whose body he filled | Of poison instead of blood; | And ferocious Leviathans, | To which he gave a frightening appearance And surrounded with supernatural splendor, | Thus equating them to the gods: | "Whoever sees them (he said) | Lose his senses! | And let them once launched, | Let them never retreat!" | He created Idre again, | Formidable dragons, Sea monsters, | Colossal Lions, | Rabid molossians, Scorpion men, | Aggressive monsters, | Fishmen, Gigantic Bisons: | Wielding all merciless weapons | And without fear of combat; | Their delegated powers, immeasurable, | And they, irresistible!"

"Having therefore faced | Tiamat and Marduk, the Wise among the gods, | They entwined in the fight | And they joined in melee! | But the Lord, having spread his Net, | He wrapped it in you, | Then he cast the evil Wind against her, | Which he kept in the rear. | And when Tiamat had opened | The mouth, to swallow it, | The evil Wind poured into it | To prevent her from closing her lips. | All the Winds, with fury, | Then they filled her belly, | So that his body was swollen, | His mouth wide open. | Then he launched his Arrow | And he tore her chest, | He divided her body in half, | And he opened her belly. | Thus he triumphed over her, | Ending his life. | Then he threw the body to the ground And he stood there.""

"With a fresh mind, the Lord | He contemplated Tiamat's corpse: | He wanted to cut off the monstrous flesh | To make beautiful things out of it. | He cut her in two, | Like a fish to be dried, | And he arranged half of it | Which curved like the Sky. | He stretched the skin, | On which he installed guardians | To whom he entrusted the mission | To prevent its waters from erupting.""

"Then the Head of Tiamat was placed, | He piled you on top of a mountain Where he opened a Source | (In which) a River trembled. | He opened in his eyes | The Euphrates and the Tigris.""

"From what we have explained about the depictions of the conflict between Marduk and Tiāmat, it can be seen that the monster was the famous dragon of Babel, represented countless times in Mesopotamian art, a dragon that could have either an elongated shape, almost like a serpent, or a shortened one of a lion. Originally, however, it must have been a snake."

"In a cylinder from the British Museum, a cylinder dating back to around 800 BCE., Tiāmat has the exact shape of a serpent, as long as the seal itself. [...] In addition to some other similar cylinders, with Tiāmat in the form of a serpent, we also have cylinders with Tiāmat in the guise of a lion-griffin or dragon. This depiction of the monster is very common in the last period, but it is nothing more than an artistic variant of the first."

"Marduk would represent [...] the spring sun, and the world would have begun precisely in this season. Tiāmat instead represents winter and night and also disorderly chaos, according to the view of the various theological schools of the country and also of the Babylonians and Assyrians of different eras."

"The primordial chaos is represented with the term Tehôm, which has the linguistic sense of stormy oceanic abyss, and which is simply the masculine form of the corresponding expression Tiamat (Babylonian pronunciation of the Semitic Tihamat), in [...] Poem of Creation."

"The serpent of the third chapter of Genesis is not at all its own creation, exclusive to the biblical story. The concept of the principle of evil and pain, represented in the figure of a monstrous reptile, which lurks against the Divinity and against the well-being of all created works of the visible cosmos, but even more against the human race, is obvious and fundamental in the Babylonian religion. We recall in the aforementioned creation poem Marduk's struggle against Tiamat and the other powers of darkness, in the form of dragons and similar wriggling monstrous reptiles; to linger in the multiform plastic and literary expressions that the dragon, the monstrous reptile, the principle of evil, in short, assumes in the ideal Babylonian world, seems superfluous to us."

"In fact, while for the Babylonians, for example, the primordial Chaos (Tiamat) existed ab aeterno, and the generating principle of the powerful Gods to make them a cosmos, instead for the Jews this Chaos (Tehôm ) not only was it something separate and divided from God - existing in itself, outside and apart from the world - but it was a non-entity, something empty and vain, relating to God, before he created the cosmos visible. The hagiographer of Genesis}} would have been annoyed by anyone who had told him that the earth and the waters of this verse were to be considered as an entity not created by God; he would have denied that they are an entity."

"Miðgarðsormr"