Primal Myths

by Barbara C. Sproul

  “She has loosed the irresistible missile, spawned enormous serpents with cutting fangs, chock-full of venom instead of blood, snarling dragons wearing their glory like gods. (Whoever sees this thing receives the shock of death, for when they heave those bodies up they never turn them back.)

  “She has made the Worm

  the Dragon

  the Female Monster

  the Great Lion

  the Mad Dog

  the Man Scorpion

  the Howling Storm

  Kulili

  Kusariqu

  “There is no pity in their weapons, they do not flinch from battle for her law is binding, irrevocable. Eleven such monsters she has made, but she took from among the gods the clumsy laborer Kingu one of the first generation to be her Captain, War-leader, Assembly-leader, ordering the supplies, leading the van to battle, Supreme Commander of the Wars.

  “All this she gave him when she raised their Company, she has said,

  “‘Now it is in your hands, my spell will hold them bound, they must obey my will. You are supreme my one husband, your word will hold the rebel horde.’

  “She has given to him the Tables of Fate and fastened them on to his breast,

  “‘Now and for evermore your word is irrevocable, your judgements will last! They will quench the fire and the swinging mace will fail of its power.’

  “So Kingu has received the authority that belonged before to Anu, they have confirmed in their several natures the brood of monsters.

  “I sent Anu but he could not face her, Nudimmud came flying back in terror, then Marduk stood up, a wise god, one of your lineage, his heart has compelled him to set out and face Tiamat, but first he said this,

  “‘Creator of the gods who decides their destiny, if I must be your avenger, defeating Tiamat, saving your lives,

  “‘Call the Assembly, give me precedence over all the rest; and when you sit down to pass your decrees, cheerfully sit in Ubshukinna, the Hall of the Synod, now and forever let my word be law;

  “‘I, not you, will decide the world’s nature, the things to come. My decrees shall never be altered, never annulled, but my creation endures to the ends of the world.’

  “Come soon and confirm the destiny of Marduk and the sooner he is off to meet the Great Adversary.”

  When Lahmu and Lahamu heard this they muttered together, all the gods moaned with distress,

  “What a strange and terrible decision, the coil of Tiamat is too deep for us to fathom.”

  Then they prepared for the journey, all the gods who determine the nature of the world and of things to come came in to Anshar, they filled Ubshukinna, greeted each other with a kiss.

  In the Hall of the Synod the ancestral voices were heard, they sat down to the banquet, they ate the feast, they drank the new-drawn liquor and the tubes through which they sucked dripped with intoxicating wine.

  Their souls expanded, their bodies grew heavy and drowsy; and this was the state of the gods when they settled the fate of Marduk.

  IV They set up a throne for Marduk and he sat down facing his forefathers to receive the government.

  “One god is greater than all great gods,

  a fairer fame, the word of command,

  the word from heaven, O Marduk,

  greater than all great gods, the honour

  and the fame, the will of Anu, great

  command, unaltering and eternal word!

  Where there is action the first to act,

  where there is government the first to govern;

  to glorify some, to humiliate some,

  that is the gift of the god.

  Truth absolute, unbounded will;

  which god dares question it?

  In their beautiful places a place

  is kept for you, Marduk, our avenger.

  “We have called you here to receive the sceptre, to make you king of the whole universe. When you sit down in the Synod you are the arbiter; in the battle your weapon crushes the enemy.

  “Lord, save the life of any god who turns to you; but as for the one who grasped evil, from that one let his life drain out.”

  They conjured then a kind of apparition and made it appear in front of him, and they said to Marduk, the first-born son,

  “Lord, your word among the gods arbitrates, destroys, creates: then speak and this apparition will disappear. Speak again, again it will appear.”

  He spoke and the apparition disappeared. Again he spoke and it appeared again. When the gods had proved his word they blessed him and cried, “Marduk is King!”

  They robed him in robes of a king, the sceptre and the throne they gave him, and matchless war-weapons as a shield against the adversary,

  “Be off. Slit life from Tiamat, and may the winds carry her blood to the world’s secret ends.”

  The old gods had assigned to Bel what he would be and what he should do, always conquering, always succeeding;

  Then Marduk made a bow and strung it to be his own weapon, he set the arrow against the bow-string, in his right hand he grasped the mace and lifted it up, bow and quiver hung at his side, lightnings played in front of him, he was altogether an incandescence.

  He netted a net, a snare for Tiamat; the winds from their quarters held it, south wind, north, east wind, west, and no part of Tiamat could escape.

  With the net, the gift of Anu, held close to his side, he himself raised up Imhullu the atrocious wind, the tempest, the whirlwind, the hurricane, the wind of four and the wind of seven, the tumid wind worst of all.

  All seven winds were created and released to savage the guts of Tiamat, they towered behind him. Then the tornado Abuba his last great ally, the signal for assault, he lifted up.

  He mounted the storm, his terrible chariot, reins hitched to the side, yoked four in hand the appalling team, sharp poisoned teeth, the Killer, the Pitiless, Trampler, Haste, they knew arts of plunder, skills of murder.

  He posted on his right the Batterer, best in the melee; on his left the Battle-fury that blasts the bravest, lapped in this armour, a leaping terror, a ghastly aureole; with a magic word clenched between his lips, a healing plant pressed in his palm, this lord struck out.

  He took his route towards the rising sound of Tiamat’s rage, and all the gods besides, the fathers of the gods pressed in around him, and the lord approached Tiamat.

  He surveyed her scanning the Deep, he sounded the plan of Kingu her consort; but so soon as Kingu sees him he falters, flusters, and the friendly gods who filled the ranks beside him—when they saw the brave hero, their eyes suddenly blurred,

  But Tiamat without turning her neck roared, spitting defiance from bitter lips,

  “Upstart, do you think yourself too great? Are they scurrying now from their holes to yours?”

  Then the lord raised the hurricane, the great weapon, he flung his words at the termagant fury,

  “Why are you rising, your pride vaulting, your heart set on faction, so that sons reject fathers? Mother of all, why did you have to mother war?

  “You made that bungler your husband, Kingu! You gave him the rank, not his by right, of Anu. You have abused the gods my ancestors, in bitter malevolence you threaten Anshar, the king of all the gods.

  “You have marshalled forces for battle, prepared the war-tackle. Stand up alone and we will fight it out, you and I alone in battle.”

  When Tiamat heard him her wits scattered, she was possessed and shrieked aloud, her legs shook from the crotch down, she gabbled spells, muttered maledictions, while the gods of war sharpened their weapons.

  Then they met: Marduk, that cleverest of gods, and Tiamat grappled alone in single fight.

  The lord shot his net to entangle Tiamat, and the pursuing tumid wind, Imhullu, came from behind and beat in her face. When the mouth gaped open to suck him down he drove Imhullu in, so that the mouth would not shut but wind raged through her belly: her carcass blown up, tumescent, she gaped—And now he shot the arrow that split the belly, that pierced the gut a
nd cut the womb.

  Now that the Lord had conquered Tiamat he ended her life, he flung her down and straddled the carcass; the leader was killed, Tiamat was dead, her rout was shattered, her band dispersed.

  Those gods who had marched beside her now quaked in terror, and to save their own lives, if they could, they turned their backs on danger. But they were surrounded, held in a tight circle, and there was no way out.

  He smashed their weapons and tossed them into the net; they found themselves inside the snare, they wept in holes and hid in corners suffering the wrath of god.

  When they resisted he put in chains the eleven monsters, Tiamat’s unholy brood, and all their murderous armament. The demoniac band that marched in front of her he trampled into the ground;

  But Kingu the usurper, the chief of them, he bound and made death’s god. He took the Tables of Fate, usurped without right, and sealed them with his seal to wear on his own breast.

  When it was accomplished, the adversary vanquished, the haughty enemy humiliated; when the triumph of Anshar was accomplished on the enemy, and the will of Nudimmud was fulfilled, then brave Marduk tightened the ropes of the prisoners.

  He turned back to where Tiamat lay bound, he straddled the legs and smashed her skull (for the mace was merciless), he severed the arteries and the blood streamed down the north wind to the unknown ends of the world.

  When the gods saw all this they laughed out loud, and they sent him presents. They sent him their thankful tributes.

  The lord rested; he gazed at the huge body, pondering how to use it, what to create from the dead carcass. He split it apart like a cockle-shell; with the upper half he constructed the arc of sky, he pulled down the bar and set a watch on the waters, so they should never escape.

  He crossed the sky to survey the infinite distance; he stationed himself above Apsu, that Apsu built by Nudimmud over the old abyss which now he surveyed, measuring out and marking in.

  He stretched the immensity of the firmament, he made Esharra, the Great Palace, to be its earthly image, and Anu and Enlil and Ea had each their right stations.

  V He projected positions for the Great Gods conspicuous in the sky, he gave them a starry aspect as constellations; he measured the year, gave it a beginning and an end, and to each month of the twelve three rising stars.

  When he had marked the limits of the year, he gave them Nebiru, the pole of the universe, to hold their course, that never erring they should not stray through the sky. For the seasons of Ea and Enlil he drew the parallel.

  Through her ribs he opened gates in the east and west, and gave them strong bolts on the right and left; and high in the belly of Tiamat he set the zenith.

  He gave the moon the lustre of a jewel, he gave him all the night, to mark off days, to watch by night each month the circle of a waxing waning light.

  “New Moon, when you rise on the world, six days your horns are crescent, until half-circle on the seventh, waxing still phase follows phase, you will divide the month from full to full.

  “Then wane, a gibbous light that fails, until low down on the horizon sun oversails you, drawing close his shadow lies across you, then dark of the moon—at thirty days the cycle’s second starts again and follows through for ever and for ever.

  “This is your emblem and the road you take, and when you close the sun, speak both of you with justice judgement uncorrupt….[some lines are missing here].”

  When Marduk had sent out the moon, he took the sun and set him to complete the cycle from this one to the next New Year…. He gave him the Eastern Gate, and the ends of the night with the day, he gave to Shamash.

  Then Marduk considered Tiamat. He skimmed spume from the bitter sea, heaped up the clouds, spindrift of wet and wind and cooling rain, the spittle of Tiamat.

  With his own hands from the steaming mist he spread the clouds. He pressed hard down the head of water, heaping mountains over it, opening springs to flow: Euphrates and Tigris rose from her eyes, but he closed the nostrils and held back their springhead.

  He piled huge mountains on her paps and through them drove water-holes to channel the deep sources; and high overhead He arched her tail, locked-in to the wheel of heaven; the pit was under his feet, between was the crotch, the sky’s fulcrum. Now the earth had foundations and the sky its mantle.

  When God’s work was done, when he had fashioned it all and finished, then on earth he founded temples and made them over to Ea.

  But the Tables of Destiny taken from Kingu he returned as a first greeting to Anu; and those gods who had hung up their weapons defeated, whom he had scattered, now fettered, he drove into his presence, the father of the gods.

  With the weapons of war broken, he bound to his foot the eleven, Tiamat’s monstrous creation. He made likenesses of them all and now they stand at the gate of the abyss, the Apsu Gate; he said,

  “This is for recollection for Tiamat shall not be forgotten.”

  All the generations of the Great Gods when they saw him were full of joy, with Lahmu and Lahamu; their hearts bounded when they came over to meet him.

  King Anshar made him welcome with ceremony, Anu and Enlil came carrying presents; but when his mother Damkina sent her present, then he glowed, an incandescence lit his face.

  He gave to her servant Usmu, who brought the greeting, charge of the secret house of Apsu; he made him warden of the sanctuaries of Eridu.

  All the heavenly gods were there, all the Igigi fell prostrate in front of him, all that were there of the Anunnaki kissed his feet. The whole order came in together to worship.

  They stood in front of him, low they bowed and they shouted

  “He is king indeed!”

  When all the gods in their generations were drunk with the glamour of the manhood of Marduk, when they had seen his clothing spoiled with the dust of battle, then they made their act of obedience….

  He bathed and put on clean robes, for he was their king…. A glory was round his head; in his right hand he held the mace of war, in his left grasped the sceptre of peace, the bow was slung on his back; he held the net, and his glory touched the abyss….

  He mounted the throne raised up in the temple. Damkina and Ea and all the Great Gods, all the Igigi shouted,

  “In time past Marduk meant only ‘the beloved son’ but now he is king indeed, this is so!”

  They shouted together,

  “Great Lord of the Universe! this is his name, in him we trust.”

  When it was done, when they had made Marduk their king, they pronounced peace and happiness for him,

  “Over our houses you keep unceasing watch, and all you wish from us, that will be done.”

  Marduk considered and began to speak to the gods assembled in his presence. This is what he said,

  “In the former time you inhabited the void above the abyss, but I have made Earth as the mirror of Heaven, I have consolidated the soil for the foundations, and there I will build my city, my beloved home.

  “A holy precinct shall be established with sacred halls for the presence of the king. When you come up from the deep to join the Synod you will find lodging and sleep by night.

  “When others from heaven descend to the Assembly, you too will find lodging and sleep by night. It shall be Babylon the home of the gods. The masters of all the crafts shall build it according to my plan.”

  When the older of the gods had heard this speech they had still one question to ask:

  “Over these things that your hands have formed, who will administer law? Over all this earth that you have made, who is to sit in judgement?

  “You have given your Babylon a lucky name, let it be our home for ever! Let the fallen gods day after day serve us; and as we enforce your will let no one else usurp our office.”

  Marduk, Tiamat’s conqueror, was glad; the bargain was good; he went on speaking his arrogant words explaining it all to the gods,

  “They will perform this service, day after day, and you shall enforce my will as law.”

&n
bsp; Then the gods worshipped in front of him, and to him again, to the king of the whole universe they cried aloud,

  “This great lord was once our son, now he is our king. We invoked him once for very life, he who is the lord, the blaze of light, the sceptre of peace and of war the mace.

  “Let Ea be his architect and draw the excellent plan, his bricklayers are we!”

  VI Now that Marduk has heard what it is the gods are saying, he is moved with desire to create a work of consummate art. He told Ea the deep thought in his heart.

  “Blood to blood

  I join,

  blood to bone

  I form

  an original thing,

  its name is Man,

  aboriginal man

  is mine in making.

  “All his occupations

  are faithful service,

  the gods that fell

  have rest,

  I will subtly alter

  their operations,

  divided companies

  equally blest.”

  Ea answered with carefully chosen words, completing the plan for the gods’ comfort. He said to Marduk,

  “Let one of the kindred be taken; only one need die for the new creation. Bring the gods together in the Great Assembly; there let the guilty die, so the rest may live.”

  Marduk called the Great Gods to the Synod; he presided courteously, he gave instructions and all of them listened with grave attention.

  The king speaks to the rebel gods,

  “Declare on your oath if ever before you spoke the truth, who instigated rebellion? Who stirred up Tiamat? Who led the battle? Let the instigator of war be handed over; guilt and retribution are on him, and peace will be yours for ever.”

  The Great Gods answered the Lord of the Universe, the king and counsellor of gods,

  “It was Kingu who instigated rebellion, he stirred up that sea of bitterness and led the battle for her.”

  They declared him guilty, they bound and held him down in front of Ea, they cut his arteries and from his body they created man; and Ea imposed his servitude.

  When it was done, when Ea in his wisdom had created man and man’s burden, this thing was past comprehension, this marvel of subtlety conceived by Marduk and executed by Nudimmud.