Image: Chaos monster and sun god
Leonard William Kings (1902) was the authoritative work on the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth. The etext linked to at the end of this blog includes the complete introduction, and the English text of the Enuma Elish and other related texts, with selected footnotes.
About
Enuma Elish is the earliest written creation myth, in which the God Marduk battles the chaos Goddess Tiamat and her evil minions. It originated in the land of Sumer, or the ‘land of civilized kings’, flourished in Mesopotamia, now modern-day Iraq, around 4500 BC. Sumerians created an advanced civilization with its own system of elaborate language and writing, architecture and arts, astronomy and mathematics. Their religious system was a complex one comprised of hundreds of gods. According to the ancient texts, each Sumerian city was guarded by its own god; and while humans and gods used to live together, the humans were servants to the gods.
The Sumerian creation myth can be found on a tablet in Nippur, an ancient Mesopotamian city founded in approximately 5000 BC.
The creation of Earth (Enuma Elish) according to the Sumerian tablets begins like this:
When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,
And the primeval Apsu, who begat them,
And chaos, Tiamut, the mother of them both
Their waters were mingled together,
And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods none had been called into being,
And none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained;
Then were created the gods in the midst of heaven,
Lahmu and Lahamu were called into being...
In the beginning, Sumerian mythology tells us human-like gods ruled over Earth. When they came to the Earth, there was much work to be done and these gods toiled the soil, digging to make it habitable and mining its minerals. The texts mention that at some point the gods mutinied against their labour:
When the gods like men
Bore the work and suffered the toll
The toil of the gods was great,
The work was heavy, the distress was much.
Anu, the god of gods, agreed that their labour was too great. His son Enki, or Ea, proposed to create man to bear the labour, and so, with the help of his half-sister Ninki, he did. A god was put to death, and his body and blood was mixed with clay. From that material the first human being was created, in likeness to the gods:
You have slaughtered a god together
With his personality
I have removed your heavy work
I have imposed your toil on man.
…
In the clay, god and man
Shall be bound,
To a unity brought together;
So that to the end of days
The Flesh and the Soul
Which in a god have ripened –
That soul in a blood-kinship be bound.
Links to Eden
This first man was created in Eden, a Sumerian word which means ‘flat terrain’. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Eden is mentioned as the garden of the gods and is located somewhere in Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Initially human beings were unable to reproduce on their own, but were later modified with the help of Enki and Ninki. Thus, Adapa was created as a fully functional and independent human being. This ‘modification’ was done without the approval of Enki’s brother, Enlil, and a conflict between the gods began. Enlil became the adversary of man, and the Sumerian tablet mentions that men served gods and went through much hardship and suffering.
Adapa, with the help of Enki, ascended to Anu where he failed to answer a question about ‘the bread and water of life’. Opinions vary on the similarities between this creation story and the biblical story of Adam and Eve in Eden.
Sumerian tablet depicting Enki in the creation myth. (world-myth.com)
Origins
The name ‘Enuma Elish’ is derived from the first two words of the myth, meaning ‘When in the Height’. Tiamat takes the form of a gigantic snake, and Marduk battles and defeats her using an arsenal of super-weapons. After his victory Marduk is made the leader of the Gods by acclamation. Marduk divides Tiamat’s corpse into two portions, the upper half becoming the sky and the lower half, the earth. Marduk then creates humanity from his blood and bone.
The Enuma Elish has long been considered by scholars to be primary source material for the book of Genesis. It has also been hypothesized that this is a legend about the overthrow of the matriarchy or records of some cosmic catastrophe. It was discovered in the ancient Royal Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (current day Mosul, Iraq) in 1849. George Smith translated the text and released his work in 1876 in the book, The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
History
The Assyrian copies of the work are from the great library which was founded at Nineveh by Ashur-bani-pal, king of Assyria from B.C. 668 to about B.C. 626; the Babylonian copies and extracts were inscribed during the period of the kings of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods ; and one copy of the Seventh Tablet may probably be assigned to as late a date as the period of the Arsacidae. All the tablets and fragments, which have hitherto been identified as inscribed with portions of the text of the poem, are preserved in the British Museum.
From the time of the first discovery of fragments of the poem considerable attention has been directed towards them, for not only are the legends themselves the principal source of our knowledge of the Babylonian costnogony, but passages in them bear a striking resemblance to the cognate narratives in the Book of Genesis concerning the creation of the world. A suggestion has been made that the prominence given to the word of the Creator in the Hebrew account may have found its parallel in the creation by a word in the Babylonian poem. It is true that the word of Marduk had magical power and could destroy and create alike; but Marduk did not employ his word in any of his acts of creation which are at present known to us. He first conceived a cunning device, and then proceeded to carry it out by hand.
The only occasion on which he did employ his word to destroy and to create is in the Fourth Tablet, 11. 19-26,2 when, at the invitation of the gods, he tested his power by making a garment disappear and then appear again at the word of his mouth. The parallelism between the two accounts under this heading is not very close.
The order of the separate acts of creation is also not quite the same in the two accounts, for, while in the Babylonian poem the heavenly bodies are created immediately after the formation of the firmament, in the Hebrew account their creation is postponed until after the earth and vegetation have been made. It is possible that the creation of the earth and plants has been displaced by the writer to whom the present form of the Hebrew account is due, and that the order of creation was precisely the same in the original forms of the two narratives. But even according to the present arrangement of the Hebrew account, there are several striking points of resemblance to the Babylonian poem. These may be seen in the existence of light before the creation of the heavenly bodies ; in the dividing of the waters of the primeval flood by means of a firmament also before the creation of the heavenly bodies ; and in the culminating act of creation being that of man.
It would be tempting to trace the framework of the Seven Days of Creation, upon which the narrative in Genesis is stretched, to the influence of the Seven Tablets of Creation, of which we now know that the great Creation Series was composed. The reasons for the employment of the Seven Days in the Hebrew account are, however, not the same which led to the arrangement of the Babylonian poem upon Seven Tablets. In the one the writer's intention is to give the original authority for the observance of the Sabbath; in the other there appears to have been no special reason for this arrangement of the poem beyond the mystical nature of the number "seven." Moreover, acts of creation are recorded on all of the first six Days in the Hebrew narrative, while in the Babylonian poem the creation only begins at the end of the Fourth Tablet.
In Exilic and post-Exilic times the account of the Creation most prevalent in Babylonia was that in the poem Enuma edir, the text of which was at this time absolutely fixed and its arrangement upon Seven Tablets invariable. That the late revival of mythology among the Jews was partly due to their actual study of the Babylonian legends at this period is sufficiently proved by the minute points of resemblance between the accounts of the Deluge in Genesis and in the poem of Gilgamesh.' It is probable, therefore, that the writer who was responsible for the final form of Gen. i - ii, 4a, was familiar with the Babylonian legend of Creation in the form in which it has come down to us.
Links
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/stc/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chaos_Monster_and_Sun_God.png
http://www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-folklore/origins-human-beings-according-ancient-sumerian-texts-0065
http://www.etana.org/sites/default/files/coretexts/14907.pdf
http://www.world-myth.com/mesopotamian/sumerian-creation-myth
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