The Creation Story of Ancient Babylon Essay Example for Free

The Creation Story of Ancient Babylon Essay The Enuma Elish is one of the most famous stories in the Babylonian corpus of mythology. It is a creation story that is erroneously through to have led to the creation story in Genesis. Some, such as Bracher (2006) hold that this story is no more than the recitation of much older stories personifying the agricultural movement between birth (Spring) and death (later fall, after the harvest). The two major figures are Tiamat and Apsu, both gods of water, but two distinct properties of water: the one, the water used to fertilize fields, water that is fresh and good, but the other, salty and chaotic, the goddess of the Ocean, that is Tiamat. Timat, the female, with her husband Apsu gives birth to two gods of intermediate rank: that of the sky, and their names are Anshar and Kishar. These gods begin, like so many gods do, by behaving badly, and they ultimately need to be destroyed. Eah, the grandson of Tiamat, once this plan to have them destroyed is realized, he seeks to murder his grandfather Apsu. Once this is done, Eah and Damkina, his wife, give birth to the chief of the Babylonian pantheon, Marduk, the patron of the city and of Babylonian civilization. So far, it is quite a stretch to see how this has anything to do with the story of creation found in Genesis. Marduk is similar to the Greek god Apollo, for he the god of the sun, of geometry and order, all things necessary to build a city. He is the god of â€Å"re-creation† or re-creating an allegedly bad earth through the ingenuity of man, urban, civilized man. Once the murder of Apsu is discovered, Tiamat marries again and seeks to wreak havoc on the children and grandchildren. In the first tablet (section 90), Marduk is described in this way: He rendered him perfect and endowed him with a double godhead. Greatly exalted was he above them, exceeding throughout. Perfect were his members beyond comprehension, Unsuited for understanding, difficult to perceive. Four were his eyes, four were his ears; When he moved his lips, fire blazed forth. Tiamat, as said before, is chaos. She is the sea, not only dangerous, but useless in that one cannot drink it and one cannot grow crops by watering them with it. She, however, is a perennial element in the universe, the chaos of which all urban, civilized societies fear. The second tablet says: â€Å"Her decrees are firm, they are beyond resisting. † In other words, all civilizations fail. Man and technics can only go so far in taming her. He is the primal nature seeking revenge against the forces of man who have slashed into her with civilization: with technology (that Babylon had in abundance,) building of stone and cutting down trees of fuel and building materials. It seems here that Marduk is this god of civilization, that needs to â€Å"cut into† Tiamat in order to build their civilization. That the Babylonians had learned to harness water might have something to do with this fear of chaos. At the end of section 20 of Tablet II, this description of Tiamat’s army is given: She has set up the Viper, the Dragon, and the Sphinx, The Great-Lion, the Mad-Dog, and the Scorpion-Man, Mighty lion-demons, the Dragon-Fly, the Centaur Bearing weapons that spare not, fearless in battle Many of these objects and creatures became part of later mythological constructions. The Sphinx is the most fascinating, but its adoption by Egypt makes little sense, not only in that the two civilizations were bitter enemies, but that if the Sphinx is part of the arsenal of disorder, in that it works for Tiamat, how was it adopted as a major figure by Egypt? The Great Lion was used in Israel and Ethiopia, the Dragon is well known throughout ancient mythology of both eastern and western background (a dragon is just an old name for the dinosaur). It seems that this anti-pantheon is very important to mythology and might speak of either the land based forces of chaos and their affect on man (i. e. the scorpion man). In the meantime, Eah has learned of Tiamat’s plan, but it is clear that resisting her is futile. As both Eah and Anu both fail to stop this vengeful symbol of chaos and the passions, there is great fear from the progeny of the first couple, through it must be said that this second tablet is damaged, and only so much can be taken from it. The only one that has the ability to stand up to the forces of chaos now is Marduk himself, and ths is the purpose of tablet III. Significantly, section 130 of Tablet III has Marduk confronting chaos with rhetoric of civilization: Unalterable shall be what I may bring into being; Neither recalled nor changed shall be the command of my lips! Now hasten here and promptly fix for him your decrees, That he may go forth to face your mighty foe! When Lahmu and Lahamu heard this, they cried out aloud, All the Igigi wailed in distress: How strange that they should have made this decision! We cannot fathom the doings of Tiamat! They made ready to leave on their journey, All the great gods who decree the fates Several issues bear discussion at this point. First, Marduk, the god of order and civilization, says that his life will be forever. â€Å"Unalterable shall be what I bring into being. † But what he brings into being is identical to Apollo. Civilization and order, man’s fight against an alleged â€Å"mal-formed† universe, the very heart of Gnosticism and the secret societies who claim ( to this day) to have preserved the wisdom of Apollo, Marduk and Osiris. A council of the gods is called in the beginning of Tablet IV. This council suggests a sort of divine oligarchy of power that will be imitated in Babylon, an oligarchy of wealth, as all civilizations are. The wisdom of Marduk, it seems, is only for the powerful. The gods need to test his abilities, and a test is the destruction and re-creation of matter, things that science, with some reservations, says is impossible. The creation and re-creation of prime matter (really any matter) is the real holy grail for science, since it would permit the scientific elite to create (or re-create) the world nearly from zero, it is the grail of true revolution (cf Hoffman, 2001, for a detailed discussion of this). He passes this particular test and makes a cloak disappear and re-appear, a trick that has substantial ritual overtones. What is interesting here is that Marduk is no dictator, he is commissioned, as some say, to fight Tiamat by the council or pantheon of gods, all springing from the original union of Tiamat and Apsu. His weapons are the four winds of destruction, which seems to suggest that the forces of order can use, but not necessarily control, the forces of disorder for their own purposes (e. g. the water wheel, or the use of wind to harness power). It is this wind, and the chariot of destruction that Marduk rides, that eventually with destroy Tiamat: she is â€Å"inflated† by the use of the winds of destruction, and she is then killed by an arrow. With the carcass of Tiamat, Marduk will fashion the earth, with its laws, joining form with matter, as well as â€Å"setting the bounds† of the waters in an ordered universe. I’m still waiting to see exactly how this has anything to do with the Genesis story that many authors claim show â€Å"unmistakable† connections (see Heidel, 1966). At the very end of Tablet IV, at section 150 (which is apparently cut off) it is written: He crossed the heavens and surveyed the regions. He squared Apsus quarter, the abode of Nudimmud, As the lord measured the dimensions of Apsu. The Great Abode, its likeness, he fixed as Esharra, The Great Abode, Esharra, which he made as the firmament. Anu, Enlil, and Ea he made occupy their places. This is of immense importance, since out of chaos, civilization is born, everything, both man and matter, â€Å"has its place† and function with the rationally organized whole. But in order to do this, Marduk and his allies needed the â€Å"tablets† of knowledge that the goddess of Chaos had. But Tablet IV says that â€Å"these are not rightly his† (first line, section 130). Hence, the manipulation and destruction of the pristine nature (rather than chaos) is not the right of civilization. Marduk has created civilization and ordered the universe with form and number, law and regularity that civilization will take as its hallmark. But Marduk has no right to do this. His is the right of conquest. Tablet V is the most interesting of all the sections of this story. It is really the description of the infusion of order and number into chaos. It is the creation of the universe by the infusing of wisdom, that is, form, into chaos, that is, matter. The seasons of the agricultural year are ordered in the cycle of birth and death that already plants the seeds (so to speak) of all civilization’s eventual destruction. He creates the planets and their movements, and lastly, given the law giving of the natural world, he creates the human city, the lowest of the orders of nature, law of the city is the law of form in matter. It is the later natural law theory of human relations. This section of the tablet sums it up: Below I have hardened the ground for a building site, I will build a house, it will be my luxurious abode. I will found therein its temple, I will appoint its inner rooms, I will establish my sovereignty. When you come up from the Apsu for assembly, You will spend the night in it, it is there to receive all of you. When you descend from heaven for assembly, You will spend the night in it, it is there to receive all of you. I will call its name Babylon which means the houses of the great gods, I shall build it with the skill of craftsmen (section 130) This is likely the most important section of the story, in that it describes, not an Adam and Eve in a non-civilized paradise ordered by God, but civilization, the domination of men over nature under the decrees of Marduk. Nothing more different could be imagined. It is worth noting that only after Cain had killed his brother is the first city formed. The city is the place of sin, the place where the elite oppress the poor in the name of law and order. In the Babylonian story, it is the opposite, the very structure of Marduk’s wisdom is manifest in the city, that is a city only in that it is established by the sovereignty of Marduk. Tablet VI is the story of human creation, again without the slightest relation to the Hebrew story. Man, in short, is created by the blood of the second husband of Tiamat, the leader and instigator of the revenge on Tiamat’s progeny, and that is Kingu. Man is created with the blood of the first rebel, the consort of the goddess of chaos. Man is created, basically, to work as slaves for the gods, to manifest their wisdom and order at the lowest, material level. Several issues should be taken from the above: first, that man is a creation of two forces, light and darkness, chaos and order, wisdom and passion. These are opposite in the sense of bearing dialectical movement to higher and higher levels of synthesis. Second, that this is the pagan wisdom so beloved of the Masons and other societies, it is the beginnings of magic. Magic, given the above, is the ability to balance the order of the universe with its underlying drive to destruction and atomization. Force is at the root of this synthesis: force brought order and chaos together, form and matter. Force destroyed Tiamat, force created the world. Hence, all is force, all is manipulation. Magic takes its start from here. Man will not rest content begin the plaything of the Gods. He is made from the blood of rebellion, yet the order of the universe is to be found in him. This IS the very foundation of magic: making of one’s own order, not the god’s order. The creation and re-creation of matter in the council where Marduk proves his mettle is a symbolic and ritual form that shows the coming rebellion of men: to seek the power of the gods for themselves, for them to become gods themselves. This later myth is brought to fruition in Prometheus and Lucifer. Marduk and his creation of man is the fulness of man’s development, through it is far from clear that this development is a good thing. Civilization partakes of both forms of existence, chaos and order: it uses order in its general affairs, seeks the domination of Tiamat through technology, but also uses chaos, things such as subterfuge, massacre in war and other devices to maintain this order. Order is self defeating in that it must, like Marduk himself, use disorder in the maintenance of order. These two principles of the universe are at the root of all paganism: the moral equivalence of light and dark, order and disorder. There is no sin, only inappropriateness, something that any good magician would know. The nature of pagan religion here is manifest in the last Tablet: Who produces riches and treasures, establishes abundance; Who has turned all our wants to plenty; Whose favoring breeze we felt in sore distress. Let them speak, let them exalt, let them sing his praises! (Section 30) Marduk is not a god of mercy or of goodness, but he is the later Baal, the god who one approaches to ask for things. Through civilization, Marduk gives prosperity and treasure, but at a price. Civilization demands sacrifice, sacrifice through war, accident, disease and overcrowding. It seems that only the elite will share in Marduk’s wisdom. It is the continued multiplication of want and desire. It is the never ending cycle of spring and winter, want and satisfaction, good and bad, life and death, war and peace. References: Enuma Elish. (2006) Translated and Introduced by Dennis Bratcher. CRI Institute Press. Hoffman, Michael. (2001) Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare. Independent Press. (Excellent resource for explaining how the ancient pagan creation myths are used by modern civilization as a form of control). Heidel, Alexander. (1963). The Babylonian Genesis. University of Chicago Press.