The Mesopotamian Goddess Tiamat Was the Primordial Sea From Which Life Emerged

In the Mesopotamian creation myth, the goddess Tiamat was the primordial sea from which all life emerged, making her a “great mother” but also a dangerous force. As is often the case, she represents an older generation of gods that was the embodiment of a primordial force but was not worshipped. She was defeated by a younger generation of gods in a process that gave order to the chaos of the cosmos.

Tiamat in the Enuma Elish

The Enuma Elish is the Mesopotamian creation myth, the oldest written version of which survives from the 2^nd millennium BC. It begins with a description of two primordial seas, the salt sea Tiamat and the sweet sea Abzu. Their waters mingled together, and this created the gods. With Abzu, she is the mother of Lahmu and Lahamu (apotropaic creatures), who beget Ansar (heaven) and Kisar (earth). The gods continue to reproduce, creating a noisy mass of divine children.

Abzu becomes annoyed at the noise and tries to destroy the children. Tiamat initially opposes this idea and tries to calm Abzu and end the conflict, but Abzu is slain. This angers Tiamat, who is also chastised by the other older gods for not protecting her mate.

Therefore, Tiamat wages war on her children in vengeance. She creates an army of eleven monsters, including Bašmu (horned serpent), Ušumgallu (great dragon), scorpion-men, fish-centaurs, and rabid dogs. She also takes a new consort, Qingu, and bestows on him the Dup Šimāti (Tablet of Destinies), which represents legitimate divine rulership.

She is eventually defeated by Marduk, who incapacitates her with his “evil wind”  that he drove down her throat, bloating he belly so that she could no longer close her jaws. He then kills her with an arrow shot through her gaping mouth, piercing her heart and splitting her belly. He then splits her body in two, using her ribs to create the vault of heaven and earth, and creates the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers from her eyes. He makes the mist from her spittle, the mountains from her breasts, and so on. This mirrors the Norse creation myth in which Odin and his brothers kill the primordial giant Ymir and create the world from his body.

Qingu is also captured and slain, and his red blood mixes with the red clay of the earth to form the body of humankind.

Cult and Iconography

While there was no cult dedicated to Tiamat, the battle between Tiamat and Marduk played an important role in the New Year festival in Babylon. The Enuma Elish was recited on its fourth day, and the festival may have included a symbolic reenactment of the battle.

In a relief from the temple of Bel in Palmyra, Nabu and Marduk are depicted slaying Tiamat, who is shown with the body of a woman and the legs made of snakes. But this is a late Hellenistic adoption of the Babylonian motif, and no verifiable Mesopotamian images of Tiamat survive.

In the Enuma Elish, she is described as having a tail, a thigh, and lower parts that shake together, suggesting a single leg like a snake, a belt, an udder, ribs, a neck, a head, a skull, eyes, nostrils, a mouth, and lips. It also mentions her entrails, heart, arteries, and blood.