Editing Tiamat (section)

==Mythology==
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, the parents of [[Anu]] (Heaven) and [[Ki (goddess)|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''' [{{Literal translation|Mother-Watercourse}}] who formed all things".

In the myth recorded on [[Cuneiform|cuneiform tablets]], the deity [[Enki]] (later Ea) believed correctly that Abzu was planning to murder the younger deities as 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 [[É (temple)|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'), [[Lahmu|Laḫmu]] (the 'Hairy One'), [[Ugallu]] (the 'Big Weather-Beast'), [[Uridimmu]] ('Mad Lion'), [[Girtablilu|Girtablullû]] ('Scorpion-Man'), [[Umū dabrūtu]] ('Violent Storms'), [[Kulullû]] ('Fish-Man'), and [[Kusarikku]] ('Bull-Man').

Tiamat was in possession of the [[Tablet of Destinies (mythic item)|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 was later replaced first by [[Enlil]], and (in the late version that has survived after the [[First Babylonian dynasty|First Dynasty]] of [[Babylon]]) then subsequently by [[Marduk]], the son of Ea.

{{poemquote|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 the vault of heaven and earth. Her weeping eyes became the sources of the [[Tigris]] and the [[Euphrates]], her tail became the [[Milky Way]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Barentine|first=John C.|title=The Lost Constellations |chapter-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-22795-5_27 |chapter=Tigris |year=2016|publisher=Springer Praxis |isbn=978-3-319-22795-5 |location=Springer, Cham |pages=425–438 |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-22795-5_27}}</ref> 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 (gods)|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 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. American Assyriologist [[Ephraim Avigdor Speiser|E. A. Speiser]] remarked in 1942 that "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&nbsp;... The exact Sumerian prototype, however, has not turned up so far."{{check quotation|reason=Remove ellipsis if this is a continuous quotation|date=May 2025}}<ref>{{cite journal |last=Speiser |first=E. A. |title=An Intrusive Hurro-Hittite Myth |journal=Journal of the American Oriental Society |volume=62 |issue=2 |date=June 1942 |page=100 |jstor=594461 |doi=10.2307/594461}}</ref> However, this surmise that 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,<ref>Expressed, for example, in {{cite book |first=E. O. |last=James |title=The Worship of the Skygod: A Comparative Study in Semitic and Indo-European Religion |location=London |publisher=Athlone Press, University of London |series=Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion |year=1963 |pages=24, 27ff}}</ref> has been more recently dismissed as "distinctly improbable".<ref>As by {{cite journal |first=W. G. |last=Lambert |title=E. O. James: ''The worship of the Skygod: a comparative study in Semitic and Indo-European religion''. (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion, vi.) viii, 175 pp. London: University of London, the Athlone Press, 1963. 25s. |type=book review |journal=Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies |publisher=Cambridge University Press |volume=27 |issue=1 |year=1964 |pages=157–158 |doi=10.1017/S0041977X00100345}}</ref>