Enuma Elish: The Babylonian Creation Epic of Marduk and Tiamat

Enuma Elish is the Babylonian epic of creation, a poem in Akkadian that tells how the god Marduk defeated the primeval sea goddess Tiamat, built the universe from her body and became king of the gods. Its name comes from its opening words, meaning “When on high”. Written on seven clay tablets, it was recited during the Babylonian New Year festival and remains one of the most important religious texts of ancient Mesopotamia.

The story

The poem begins before heaven and earth had names, when only two waters existed: Apsu, the fresh water, and Tiamat, the salt sea. From their mingling the first gods were born. The noise of the younger gods disturbed Apsu, who planned to destroy them, but the wise god Ea learned of the plot and killed him.

Ea then fathered Marduk, a god of overwhelming power. Tiamat, urged to avenge Apsu, created an army of eleven kinds of monsters and placed the god Qingu at its head. The other gods were terrified. Marduk agreed to fight on one condition: that if he won, he would be given supreme authority among them.

Armed with winds, a bow, a net and the storm, Marduk confronted Tiamat. He drove a wind into her open mouth and shot an arrow into her body, killing her. He split her corpse in two like a dried fish, forming the sky from one half and the earth from the other. He then set the stars, the Moon and the calendar in order.

Finally, Ea created humankind from the blood of the rebel Qingu, so that people would do the work of the gods and free them to rest. In gratitude the gods built Babylon and Marduk’s temple, Esagil, and the poem ends by proclaiming Marduk’s fifty names.

A poem about Babylon’s rise

Enuma Elish is more than a story of creation. It explains why Marduk, once a minor city god, deserved to rule over the ancient gods of Sumer, and why Babylon was the centre of the world. In this sense it is a political as well as a religious text.

Dating the epic

When the poem was composed is debated. The oldest surviving copies come from the 1st millennium BC. Many scholars, following W. G. Lambert, link it to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I (c. 1125–1104 BC), who brought the statue of Marduk back from Elam after it had been carried off following the Elamite raid on Babylonia. Others argue that Marduk’s rise began in the Old Babylonian period, under or soon after Hammurabi, and that the poem could be several centuries older.

Ritual use at New Year

Late Babylonian ritual texts describe the Akitu, the spring New Year festival held in the month of Nisannu. They state that on the fourth day the whole of Enuma Elish was recited before Marduk’s statue in Esagil. The epic thus renewed each year the victory of order over chaos and Marduk’s kingship over the gods.

In Assyria, scribes produced a version in which the national god Ashur replaced Marduk, showing how easily the poem could be adapted to political needs.

Rediscovery

Fragments of the epic were found in the 19th century in the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, the same collection that preserved the Epic of Gilgamesh. The British Museum scholar George Smith published a first account in The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876). L. W. King’s The Seven Tablets of Creation (1902) presented a much fuller text, and later finds at Ashur, Kish, Sultantepe and elsewhere have filled most of the gaps.

Enuma Elish and Genesis

Early readers were struck by parallels with the first chapter of Genesis: a dark watery deep at the beginning, the division of waters above and below, the creation of the heavenly lights and the making of humans. The Hebrew word for the deep, tehom, is often compared with the name Tiamat.

The differences are just as important. Genesis has one God who creates by command, with no battle, no divine family and no monsters. Most scholars today explain the similarities as shared ideas from the wider ancient Near East rather than direct borrowing, and they note that “seven tablets” and “seven days” are a coincidence of number, not of structure.

Myths and facts

• Myth: a famous Nimrud relief shows Marduk killing Tiamat. An Assyrian relief from the temple of Ninurta at Nimrud is often reproduced with that label, but most specialists think it shows a god, probably Ninurta, fighting a different monster.
• Fact: it is not the oldest creation myth. Earlier Sumerian texts describe creation, and Enuma Elish draws on older traditions.

Timeline

• c. 18th–16th century BC: Earliest possible date for the epic, according to some scholars.
• c. 1125–1104 BC: Reign of Nebuchadnezzar I, a widely favoured date for composition.
• 7th century BC: Copies are kept in Ashurbanipal’s library at Nineveh.
• 1876: George Smith publishes The Chaldean Account of Genesis.
• 1902: L. W. King publishes The Seven Tablets of Creation.

Why it matters

Enuma Elish shows how the Babylonians understood the origins of the world, the place of humans as servants of the gods and the right of their city to rule. It also offers a key point of comparison for anyone studying the creation stories of the Bible and the wider ancient world.