ENUMA ELISH: THE BABYLONIAN CREATION EPIC Introduction Enuma Elish is a major seven tablet Babylonian myth relating the beginning of gods, the rise of the god Marduk, the battle of between Marduk and Tiamat, and the creation of the universe and of humankind. It was one of the earliest mesapotamian literary creations discovered and found during the excavation at Nineveh(1848-76). In this paper, we shall highlight the account of this myth with its possible interpretation.
We shall also compare it with the Bible for the similarities. Account of Enuma Elish:The meaning of ‘Enuma Elish’ according to Tyndale Bible Dictionary ‘when on high’ and the first two words of the epic, introducing the reader to a time when the heavens had not been named and the earth did not yet exist. The account is often known as the creation epic but it is more of the exaltation of Marduk. The text can be interpreted on several levels and from different perspectives. But the first and probably the most important is the political level.
It is a political document describing the rise of Marduk to Kingship of the gods but also sees the cosmos as a political organization.According to Enuma Elish, man is created by the interplay between Ea (the traditional Sumerio-Babylonian creator), and Marduk (who replaced the mother goddess of tradition). The particular version of creation used is that of the Atra-hasis epic, in which Ea and the mother goddess make men from clay mixed with the blood of a slain god. In the Mesopotamian myth Enuma Elish a tension developed between the first creator and their offspring. This tension led to a rapture in the initial creation, and a struggle between its god and their offspring.
In the ensuing battle, the foundation is established for human existence. In the Enuma Elish, the god Marduk was the leader of the offspring who fight Tiamat, the mother who was slain in the battle. After his military victory, marduk turned back to crush Tiamat and creates the universe. He divided Tiamat’s body into two, separating the two halves with the sky and created the heavenly bodies, the mountains and the springs. He then brought Tiamat monster and the tablets of destiny back to the gods.
Who again declared him king.Marduk proposed to built Babylon as a place where the gods could come to assemble, and the gods offered to do the building according to his specifications. In response Marduk had Ea created men out of the blood of the slain Kingu, so that men could do the works of god and he organized the worlds of the gods, assigning to each god his functions. The gods built the temple of Marduk in Babylon and gathered to celebrate his kingship.
They awarded him fifty great names, each bearing each own power, thus, “making his way supreme”. The epic ends with an injunction that all should tell this story and rejoice in Marduk.Enuma Elish and the Bible Since the publication of the work text, comaparisions have been drawn between Enuma Elish and the Bible especially with the creation account of Genesis. Some considerations have been made to the parallels between the seven tablets of Enuma Elish and the biblical seven days of creation.
Both the stories began with water; and the spirit (or wind) of God hovering on the waters bears similarity to the winds of Anu that roiled Tiamat. Just as the sky divided the waters from above and below, Tiamat’s body was divided by the sky from her lower half.They also narrated the origin and function of the sun and moon in the same manner. But there were also great differences in these two accounts that one can not just talk about the literary inter- dependence or mythological similarities.
The similarity is the evidence of a shared cosmology and a shared science that understood the world as beginning and surrounding in water, a concept also found in early Greece. The importance is that these concepts were commom in the near east region which the Israelites also used to convey their own independent message.The other parallel is the scattered poetic passages that allude to the Lord’s defeat of the sea in ancient times. The defeat of the sea is often followed by the mention of the reign of God and of the creation of the world, and sometimes the building of the temple. These themes presented the fundamental biblical cluster ideas but it does not mean that the motifs have a Babylonian origin.
Conclusion There are other creation myths similar to that of creation. This showed that this kind of myth was common in those days in the ancient near east region.These are just myth not the fact which can not be proved scientifically but they threw light on the historical backround. So they can not just be ignored. BIBLIOGRAPHY Water A.
Elwell, Philip W. Comfort, Eds. , Tyndale Bible Dictionary (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001) Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. “Enuma Elish” in The Encyclopaedia of Religion. Edited by Mircea Eliade.
New York: MacMillan Library Reference, USA, 1995. p. 125. Lambert, W.
G. “Enuma Elish” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 2, edited by D. N. Freedman.
New York: Doubleday, 1992. p. 527.
