55 pages • 1 hour read
Leonard William King, ed.The Seven Tablets of Creation: The Enuma Elish
Fiction | Scripture | Adult | BCEA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Tiamat’s Battle Plans
The Enuma Elish lists the battle plans of the god Tiamat four times, each time in great detail. No other text in the Creation Series comes close to the intensity or number of repetitions of this passage. Tiamat’s plans become a symbolic representation of the gravity of the imminent danger faced by the gods. The repeated description of Tiamat’s rage, demonic henchmen, and evil intentions create paralyzing fear among all the gods who hear her words. The only god who does not quake upon hearing Tiamat’s plans is Marduk, whose courage ends up being the only hope of the gods in the pantheon.
Sacred texts often use repetitive passages as motifs for emphasis, particularly when a significant truth is being presented. Repeatedly stating Tiamat’s battleplan and describing the horrific legion of warriors she gathered and trained is meant to emphasize the desperate situation faced by the rather helpless gods. Underlying the physical conflict about to happen is the symbolic battle between the forces of chaos and of order. Those who listen to the desolation threatened by Tiamat become more than willing to accept the stability and security promised by the gods of order.
The Judiciousness of Marduk as Opposed to the Emotionality of the Pantheon
Three times in the Enuma Elish, the poetic overtly praises Marduk for being cunning: when he devises a plan to defeat Tiamat, when he establishes order in the cosmos and creates the world, and when he decides how to create human beings. Apart from the malicious horde devoted to Tiamat, the other gods of the Babylonian pantheon are repeatedly portrayed as fearful, cowardly, vain and capricious. When Anshar wants the unanimous approval of the gods to grant ultimate authority to Marduk, first he must scare them by having Gaga repeat Tiamat’s threats, then he feeds and liquors them into compliance. Marduk, on the other hand, remains thoughtful, decisive, fearless, and wise in his actions. Even though each of the gods eventually receives responsibilities, the ultimate source of order, wisdom, and mercy is Marduk. Readers of the Enuma Elish will understand accordingly where to turn when real divine help is required.
The Divine River
In his Introduction, King discusses the notion of a divine river in each of the ancient Near Eastern religions he discusses. In the Enuma Elish, it is referred to as the River of Creation (53-54). King points to other ancient creation stories not included in the Creation Series that specifically describe Marduk creating human being by placing a reed upon the waters, the implication being that even human life comes from the divine river (37).
King notes that the Hebrew Bible refers to the River of Paradise (54). In Egyptian mythology, the divine river is the Nile (also called the Hap or Hapi River). It’s referred to in creation mythology as the Black River because of the annual carpet of dark silt with which it floods the delta. In the Egyptian creation stories, the gods themselves emerged from the river. It may also be noted that the receding Nile River left mounds shaped like pyramids in its wake, which Egyptian builders replicated in their monuments to the gods.
The Fertile Crescent of the ancient Near East was predicated on the fertility that was assured by the annual flooding of several great rivers. The eastern part of the region, Mesopotamia (literally, “the land between the rivers”), has been called the “cradle of civilization” because of the great human advances that occurred there. Residents of the area attributed the fertility and abundance of the region to the intercession of the river god, Huber (Tiamat), who was annually tamed by Marduk.
It’s interesting to recognize that Christianity officially notes the emergence of Jesus of Nazareth as its Lord from the moment he emerges from a divine river, the Jordan, and God’s Spirit descends upon him like dove (Mark 1:9-10). Further, the notion of “crossing the river” has long been symbolic in many faiths for transitioning from life to death.
The Divine Number Seven
As the complete scope of the Enuma Elish emerges for King, it becomes clear to him that there are seven tablets rather than four, as previous translators assumed. This is an “aha moment” in which he suddenly recognizes a truth that should have been apparent from the beginning because the number seven had mystical importance for the Babylonians. Thus, seven would be the default number of tablets to contain the story of the creation world (50). There are occasions in which the number seven appears in the Enuma Elish itself. For instance, when preparing to combat Tiamat, Marduk summons seven different winds, which prove to be the dragon’s undoing. During his flurry of creativity in establishing the world, additionally, Marduk creates the seven-day week. King holds that the observance of the seventh day as a sacred day devoted to worship, the Sabbath, probably originated with the Babylonians and was adopted by the Hebrews (51).
King points out Hebrew religious leaders in Genesis expressed the idea that God created the world in a seven-day week, utilizing the seventh day as time of rest. Their overriding purpose in doing this, he argues, is to sanctify the Sabbath, the seventh day, as a holy day of rest (51). The mystical number seven often appears in Hebrew scriptures as well. Indeed, even today it is common for people to view the number seven as lucky.
