Babylon

Enuma Elish

Anonymous / tradition · composed c. 1600-1100 BC · Babylon (Iraq) · scripture

Order is not given but won: Marduk becomes king of the gods only after defeating the chaos-sea Tiamat in single combat, and creation itself is built from her corpse.

order won through combat, not given
creation from a slain god's body
Marduk's kingship as political legitimation
humanity created to serve the gods

Babylon's creation epic, recited during the Akitu New Year festival, recounts a war among the gods that ends when the young god Marduk kills the primordial sea-mother Tiamat and splits her body to form sky and earth. Humanity is fashioned afterward from the blood of a defeated rebel god to serve the gods, and Marduk's kingship over the pantheon mirrors and legitimizes Babylon's own political supremacy.

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Sacred Texts - Enuma Elish

Descends from

Atrahasis · c. 17th century BC (Old Babylonian version)

Fed into

Torah · composed c. 9th-5th century BC
Theogony · c. 700 BC
The Babylonian Akitu Festival Ritual Text · c. 3rd-2nd century BC (Seleucid-period copy of a much older ritual tradition)

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