CHAPTER 4
MYTHS OF CREATION
He brought the rebel Kingu before the assembly:
They tied him up and dragged him in before Ea.
They carried out the execution, severedhis arteries.
From his blood they made man.
Ea made labor to be man's lot, but the gods he setfree.
Marduk then divided the gods into those who live in the skyand th~th
the earth. The grateful gods eagerlybegan to
' ,.
spoken, and after two years they completed the great ziggurat
moununiverse.
:~~"~~, tain) of Babylon. A banquet washeld and Marduk
The story ends with a long list of the fIfty names of
than one fourth
of the total poem), with detailed explanations
.In this way was the
world made, and the same order of kingship
among the gods as in
Babylon itself.
In Enuma Elishand
.the
original creative element is
watery, feminine, and ambivalent,
giving and life destroying. Above the
earth
land of the dead. 1ne sameambi~nce as that of the original, primeval element of
the universe is displayed by fe~e deities, who both nurture and destroy (see the
story of Inanna and
..Chapter 9). The dangerous, chaotic waters may be
represented by a
dragon who is overcome by a hero who fashions the
cosmos.
between water, chaos,monsters,and death.
Dragon
be one and the same.The hero establishesthe
world order and
the monster.
I orThe world has
the way it is now; its initial unity in the primeval waters has moved
to
Creation arises not from nothing but, as in Hesiod, from a primordial
reproduction and a series of successivelymore powerful
generation opposes,overcomes,and controls or destroysan
ol~er, until the present world order comesinto being.
The Hittite
Kingship in Heaven and the Song of Ullikummi
Other Eastern myths important to the later classical tradition come from the mighty
Indo-European Hittites, who ruled the central Anatolian plain in the Late Bronze
Age. Their powerful capital was near modern Ankara, and their art and culture were
strong well into the eighth century B.C. in what is today southeastern Turkey and
northern Syria. Only small portions of a poem called Kingship in Heaven survive, but
the myth has clear relevance to the Greek cosmogony:
In earlier years,Alalush was king in heaven.
Alalush sitsthere on his throne.
And strong Anush [= Anu], first of the gods,is his servant.
He bows to him at his feet.
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Powell, Barry B. Classical Myth. 2001 Prentice Hall, NJ.
99