Tiamat is usually described as a sea serpent or dragon, although Assyriologist Alexander Heidel disagreed with this identification and argued that "dragon form can not be imputed to Tiamat with certainty". She has insides (possibly "entrails"), a heart, arteries, and blood. In the Enûma Elish her physical description includes a tail, a thigh, "lower parts" (which shake together), a belly, an udder, ribs, a neck, a head, a skull, eyes, nostrils, a mouth, and lips. The difference in density of salt and fresh water drives a perceptible separation. This characteristic is especially true of the region of Bahrain, whose name in Arabic means "two seas", and which is thought to be the site of Dilmun, the original site of the Sumerian creation beliefs. Harriet Crawford finds this "mixing of the waters" to be a natural feature of the middle Persian Gulf, where fresh waters from the Arabian aquifer mix and mingle with the salt waters of the sea. It is thought that female deities are older than male ones in Mesopotamia and Tiamat may have begun as part of the cult of Nammu, a female principle of a watery creative force, with equally strong connections to the underworld, which predates the appearance of Ea-Enki. The Babylonian epic Enûma Elish is named for its incipit: "When above" the heavens did not yet exist nor the earth below, Abzu the subterranean ocean was there, "the first, the begetter", and Tiamat, the overground sea, "she who bore them all" they were "mixing their waters". Tiamat also has been claimed to be cognate with the Northwest Semitic word tehom (תְּהוֹם 'the deeps, abyss'), in the Book of Genesis 1:2. It is thought that the proper name ti'amat, which is the vocative or construct form, was dropped in secondary translations of the original texts because some Akkadian copyists of Enûma Elish substituted the ordinary word tāmtu ('sea') for Tiamat, the two names having become essentially the same due to association. The later form Θαλάττη, thaláttē, which appears in the Hellenistic Babylonian writer Berossus' first volume of universal history, is clearly related to Greek Θάλαττα, thálatta, an Eastern variant of Θάλασσα, thalassa, 'sea'. Burkert continues by making a linguistic connection to Tethys. Thorkild Jacobsen and Walter Burkert both argue for a connection with the Akkadian word for sea, tâmtu ( □□□), following an early form, ti'amtum. Marduk then integrates elements of her body into the heavens and the earth. She is then slain by Enki's son, the storm-god Marduk, but not before she brings forth the monsters of the Mesopotamian pantheon, including the first dragons, whose bodies she fills with "poison instead of blood". Enraged, she also wars upon her husband's murderers, bringing forth multitudes of monsters as offspring. In the Enûma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, Tiamat bears the first generation of deities her husband, Abzu, correctly assuming that they are planning to kill him and usurp his throne, later makes war upon them and is killed. Some sources identify her with images of a sea serpent or dragon. In the second Chaoskampf Tiamat is considered the monstrous embodiment of primordial chaos. In the first, she is a creator goddess, through a sacred marriage between different waters, peacefully creating the cosmos through successive generations. It is suggested that there are two parts to the Tiamat mythos. She is referred to as a woman and described as "the glistening one". She is the symbol of the chaos of primordial creation. In Mesopotamian religion, Tiamat ( Akkadian: □□□□ D TI.AMAT or □□□ D TAM.TUM, Ancient Greek: Θαλάττη, romanized: Thaláttē) is a primordial goddess of the sea, mating with Abzû, the god of the groundwater, to produce younger gods.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |