Enuma Elish - The Babylonian Creation Story :: Enuma Elish

Enuma Elish - The Babylonian Creation Story the like the Greek Theogony, the creation of the world in the Enuma elish begins with the universe in a formless state, from which emerge two primary gods, male and female When the skies preceding(prenominal) were not yet named Nor globe below pronounced by name, Apsu, the commencement ceremony wiz, their begetter, And maker Tiamat, who bore them all, Had mixed their waters together, But had not make pastures, nor discovered reed-beds When yet no gods were manifest, Nor names pronounced, nor destinies decreed, Then gods were born indoors them. (Dalley 233)Apsu, the male begetter, is the sweet waters, while Tiamat, the female maker, is the bitter, sodium chloride waters. Sweet and salt water mingle together at the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, site of the origins of Mesopotamian civilization. Some translators understand the word maker in line 4 not as an adjective describing Tiamat but as another god, named Mummu, who emerges at the same time. As you might expect, Mummu means maker, form, mold, or matrix. Besides being Apsus vizier, Mummu is the mold or the undifferentiated substance from which things are made. Like Eros at the stemma of the Theogony, this Mummu-power is necessary to get the job of birth-creation going. Stephanie Dalley notes that the bit-mummu was the term for a urinateshop that produced statues of deities (274). N. K. Sandars, however, sees mummu as potential, or entropy (27). In this early period, postcode is named yet because nothing has appeared or been created yet. Notice that pasture-land must be formed--wrested from the desert by the thorny work of digging and irrigation. The reed-beds mentioned in line 6 are handier than one might think in southern Iraq today, the marsh dwellers live and work in floating houses and boats made from the reeds in the reed-beds. The destinies mentioned in line 8 are somewhat like the Sumerian me--cultural patterns and ways of living. Aft er the waters of Apsu and Tiamat mix, the gods Lahmu and Lahamu (slime, mud) emerge. And from this pair come Anshar (whole sky) and Kishar (whole earth), meaning perhaps the horizon, the street arab rim of heaven and the corresponding circular rim of earth (Jacobsen 168). Anshar and Kishar give birth to Anu, the sky god, who in subprogram begets what one translation calls his likeness (Heidel 18) Ea, the trickster god of the flowing waters, who is acquainted(predicate) to us as Enki.