Mesopotamian Myth and the Meaning of Mortality

Mesopotamian cosmogony found its most complete literary expression in the Enuma Elish, a Babylonian creation epic composed, in the form that survives, probably during the latter half of the second millennium BCE and known from cuneiform tablets recovered largely at Nineveh in the nineteenth century. The poem opens before the existence of the ordered cosmos, when only the primordial waters existed, personified as Apsu, god of fresh water, and Tiamat, goddess of the salt sea, whose mingling gave rise to successive generations of gods. When the younger gods’ restlessness disturbed Apsu, he plotted their destruction, but was slain first by the god Ea, prompting the enraged Tiamat to wage war against her own descendants. The god Marduk, champion of the younger gods and patron deity of Babylon, agreed to fight Tiamat only after being granted supreme authority among the gods, and he ultimately killed her, splitting her corpse in two to form the heavens and the earth. From the blood of her defeated ally Qingu, Marduk then fashioned humanity, whose purpose was to labor in service of the gods, a theme of human subordination that recurs throughout Mesopotamian myth.