Tiamat was the primary goddess of the sea, one of two gods who at the dawn of creation was formed from whatever came before creation. Not nothingness, but some kind of inchoate something – there is no suggestion in Mesopotamian mythology that there was ever a creation of something from nothing – this something from which Tiamat and Apsu coalesced was seen as having always been there.
Tiamat embodied salt water, and Apsu fresh water. Their merging created life, like the fertile estuarine areas where the Tigris and Euphrates meet the Persian Gulf, and produced a lineage of younger gods including, among quite a few others, Anu and Enki.
But like any large family, they could be noisy. The tablet I’m sharing today, written by a schoolboy as part of a small collection of quotations, quotes two lines describing the distress this boisterousness provoked in the matriarch:
“Their clamour got loud, throwing Tiamat into a turmoil, / They jarred the nerves of Tiamat.”
Despite the annoyance and distress they caused her, she didn’t at first want to harm them. Apsu was less tolerant of his progeny:
“Their behaviour has become displeasing to me / And I cannot rest in the day-time or sleep at night. / I will destroy and break up their way of life / That silence may reign and we may sleep.”
Tiamat argues for leniency: “How can we destroy what we have given birth to? / Though their behaviour causes distress, let us tighten discipline graciously.”
But Apsu continues to plot, and soon the younger gods discover his intentions. Anu first puts him to sleep, and then kills him. So in a way, Apsu achieves his goal of sleep, though it doesn’t end quite as he had intended. Isn’t that always the way with myths?
After the killing of her beloved partner, Tiamat is finally pushed beyond her limits and she calls forth 11 monsters:
“She created the Hydra, the Dragon, the Hairy Hero / The Great Demon, the Savage Dog, and the Scorpion-man, / Fierce demons, the Fish-man, and the Bull-man, / Carriers of merciless weapons, fearless in the face of battle… / Altogether she made eleven of that kind.
So we can see, she’s a pretty fearsome goddess, an embodiment of pure chaos. And I haven’t even mentioned yet that she is often represented as a dragon or sea monster. She even inspired a Dungeons & Dragons monster, though maybe she’d have made a good dungeon master, given her knack for creating monsters.
