The Seven Tablets of Creation: The Enuma Elish

It is clear from the outset that the rudimentary descriptions in the seven tablets are difficult to envision. This is particularly true in the early portions of the First Tablet as the creation of the gods is recorded. After all, how can one imagine a limitless, lightless, watery void? Even the ocean has a top and a bottom, but the Enuma Elish begins prior to the existence of the world. No description is given of the appearances, powers, or purposes of the gods themselves as they come into being, but clearly present from the beginning are the emotions of the gods, which are powerful and quite human. The vague overall description does grow more specific to an extent as the conflict between the gods builds.

As the story progresses, it reveals that although the gods are immortal, they can be destroyed; while they are powerful, there are limits to their power. The notion of an omnipotent god is not present in the Enuma Elish. Anshar, the god who sired the first gods, does not have the ability to control his creations. It seems the best he can do, with the help of Gaga, his messenger, is summon the gods together for the occasional assembly. Marduk, who ends up being the most powerful of the gods, receives his mighty position only after all the gods of the pantheon assemble, become inebriated, and decide to make him the high lord by decree.

The Enuma Elish generally depicts the gods as being grumpy, fearful, enraged, and, only when spared destruction, quite grateful. Gratitude is virtually the only positive emotion collectively expressed by the gods. The angrier a god becomes, the more the reader learns about that god’s characteristics, abilities, and intentions. The prime example of this is Tiamat, a mother goddess whose unrelenting rage causes her undoing. She is initially perturbed by the invention of light, which establishes a boundary in the chaos of existence for the first time. Then Tiamat becomes infuriated that her comrade and lover, Apsu, gets cast into “the depths” when he sets about destroying the gods who brought light forth into the darkness. Her rage only grows as she raises an army to destroy the gods.

By far the most descriptive passage in the Enuma Elish deals with Tiamat creating a demonic horde and arming them to do battle with the other gods. These vivid details are repeated four times over the span of the first three tablets. The gathering, prepping, and arming for battle are minutely depicted. The description of Tiamat’s army appears in the First Tablet and Second Tablet and twice in the Third Tablet. This repetition of a particularly expressive description, especially in light of the vague depictions of the gods that precede it, is intended to reinforce the immense gravity of what the gods are facing. Repetition of important passages is a literary device that appears in many ancient texts. It is often used in the Hebrew Bible as a means of emphasizing an idea or driving home a particular perspective. A good example is found in the biblical book of Job, in which a series of simultaneous disasters wipe out Job’s family, fortune, and livelihood. The messengers arrive in succession to tell him about his misfortune, each concluding his portion of bad news by saying, “I alone have escaped to tell you” (New Revised Standard Edition, 1:13-19). In the case of the Enuma Elish, the poet restates this horrifically descriptive passage to emphasize the gravity of the threat: Tiamat and her legion are intent on destroying all the gods of the pantheon.

Regarding the progression of the creation myth, a number of gods who are mentioned at the beginning of the First Tablet disappear quickly from the story. There is inconsistency here in that Anshar, who gets tagged as the father of the gods, is not listed first among all the gods who have come into existence.

Throughout the Enuma Elish, there is a great focus on the ranks and primacy of the various gods. Discord only begins among them when the second-generation gods become annoyed at the creative activities of the third-generation gods. Marduk alone quells the gods’ underlying desire for supremacy by demanding that he receive the right to organize creation and, importantly, that none of his decisions or decrees can be undone.

There is a great disparity between Marduk, the eventual victor in the battle of the gods, and Tiamat. Marduk is portrayed as subservient to the will of Anshar when he is summoned as the avenger and immediately comes to the aid of the other gods (142-43). He is portrayed as thoughtful and wise in his willingness to be dissuaded by his father, Ea, from punishing the gods for their childishness after his victory (179). On three occasions he is described as being cunning. Marduk takes swift action to establish order in the heavens and the earth once he receives permission from the pantheon of gods. Note that Marduk is relying on a democratic process to achieve his goals: He only proceeds with the approval and acclimation of the other gods, although Anshar fed them well and filled them with wine before the vote. Tiamat, on the other hand, is portrayed as vengeful, constantly enraged, and beyond appeasement. Even when her army sees the overwhelming might Marduk has amassed and shrinks from battle, Tiamat charges forward into the trap Marduk has set for her and is annihilated in short order.

The myth dictates that it isn’t simply Marduk’s might that prevails, but also his personal qualities: cleverness, careful planning, and humility. These same characteristics are apparent in Marduk when he assumes control of creation. One of the most intriguing elements of his actions is the way he creates humanity to build shrines and serve the gods. This is after his father has discouraged him from punishing the gods for their childish behavior, which sparked the divine war in the first place. This raises the question of why he would reward the gods with a whole race of servants when they are clearly undeserving. It seems to be the case, ironically, that Marduk’s creation of humanity as divine servants is a divine prank: In human beings, the gods have received exactly the capricious, undependable servants they deserved. Moreover, because people are childish, fearful, grumpy, and self-centered, the Enuma Elish is a demonstration not just that gods are like humans, but also that humans are pretty much like the gods.

It should be reiterated, however, that the creation of human beings by Marduk is essentially an afterthought. He is studious and meticulous as he systematically establishes the heavens, earth, and chronology and appoints the proper gods to oversee them all. When he does get around to creating humanity, Marduk takes special care, using his own blood and bone to make human beings from the dust. There is a confusing inconsistency here in that, after Marduk instructs his father, Ea, to cut off his head and obtain his blood to make humans, Marduk is still alive and still in charge. King argues that Marduk ends the Sixth Tablet with instructions to humanity about how to honor the gods, a portion of the Creation Series that ironically is lost (181).

The 50 titles ascribed by the gods to Marduk in the Seventh Tablet are instructive in that they reveal what citizens of the ancient Near East desired most in the way of favor from their god. As this was an agrarian culture, it’s not surprising to hear that many of his initial attributes have to do with planting, sowing, abundant crops, and favorable winds. As well, however, Marduk is praised for his counsel and mercy, for establishing the heavens, for keeping everything where it should be, and for dealing justice to the evil doer. These qualities assumed to belong to the king of the gods may seem surprisingly current given that belief in Babylonian theology is generally assumed to be quite primitive. The later developing religions identify Marduk, by the various names that refer to him—Bel, Baal, Beelzebub—as demonic.

In terms of literary devices, it is important to remember that the Creation Series is a poem. It is specifically, originally written in a mode that today would be called “ballad verse.” While the original words do not rhyme, they have a melodic cadence and rhythm when read in the original language. King talks about this point and the way the initial version of the poem is a help in understanding what later scribes tried to change or add to it. He writes:

It may be noted that in addition to the division of the text into couplets, the poem often falls into stanzas of four lines each. That the metre was not very carefully studied by Neo-Babylonian scribes is proved by the somewhat faulty division of verses upon some of the tablets on which the metre is indicated, and also by fact that the pupils of the scribes were allowed, and perhaps told, to write out portions of the poem in sections, not of four, but of five lines each […] (120-21).

This information means that, over the centuries, those who transcribed the Enuma Elish changed the way it looked and sounded. For a translator like King seeking the most original version of the poem, this point is significant. Recognizing the intended first construction of the stanzas, he is able to tell whether the cuneiforms on the tablet conform to the original style of the poem. Knowing that the style of the cuneiform lettering became less precise over the centuries and knowing that the scribes either didn’t recognize the ballad verse in which the poem was written or didn’t care, King was able to deduce the original, precise translation of the poem.

Another element of the way the poem is written is extremely helpful in understanding what the poet in trying to say. The joined couplets in dramatic poetry like the Enuma Elish are intended to comment on one another. This style may be seen in many of the psalms of the Hebrew Bible, a classic example being the first verse of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” The second half of the verse clarifies, specifies, and enhances the meaning of the first half. Thus, the couplet together is expressing the thought, “All my needs will be met because the Lord is my shepherd.” This literary device is at work in the Enuma Elish. For example, in the First Tablet, the poet describes the fearfulness of Tiamat’s soldiers in lines 119 and 120 by saying, “Whoever beheld them, terror overcame him, their bodies reared up and none could withstand their attack” (132). In effect, the poet says, “Those who saw the forces of Tiamat were frozen in fear, so much so that her army advanced at will.”

Another virtue of the regimented manner in which the poet first wrote the Enuma Elish is that it makes the text predictable to a degree. King was able to use this feature to exclude some material that later scribes wanted to add to the poem. King reveals the significance of this approach when he describes a controversy over the attempted inclusion of a lengthy set of moral commandments by George Smith at the end of the Sixth Tablet. Simply being aware that all the tablets ended after no more than 144 lines means that the portion Smith wanted to include was not part of the original document (29). It also agrees with King’s conclusion that the gods created humans and intended for them to be divine servants but didn’t give them many instructions and certainly no long list of commandments, at least not in the Enuma Elish.

Another tool King used to determine the original length and conclusion of the tablets was the use of colophons by scribes. The colophon was a mark a scribe made to indicate that he had finished what he intended to write upon a clay tablet. Thus, when King found text on a tablet following a colophon, it was a clear indication that someone was adding additional material that didn’t belong in the Creation Series (117).

There are often dozens of lines missing from individual tablets. Sometimes a single word or only a few words are present on a line. Often these single words and fragments are in the center of the line. It is not difficult to imagine that the portions of the clay tablets chipped and eroded from the edges inward. The question arises, however, as to how King or any translator could have any idea what a portion of a tablet said when there are a dozen lines and there is only one word on each line. This is the reason King so often quotes the scribe Berossus in his footnotes. Berossus was a priest of Marduk and a Greek scholar who wrote his own recounting of the Enuma Elish about 300 years after the tablets were created. The great similarity of Berossus’ account of the Babylonian creation myth to the existing lines of the Enuma Elish gives translators like King the confidence at least to describe the subject matter of the missing lines.

King’s copious footnotes allow the reader not only to maintain a handle on the portions of the story contained in the missing lines, but also to keep track of the characters. Most of the more important gods have multiple names. Sometimes these take the form of descriptive titles, and sometimes they are proper names. For instance, Tiamat is referred to as “our mother” and at other times as Ummu-Huber. The primary reason the gods have multiple names and titles is because, before arriving around 2000 BCE in the Enuma Elish, they all traveled through millennia of mythic tales in different cultures and different tongues before being codified in the Creations Series. Thanks to the work of Leonard William King, readers can once again make the acquaintance of these mythic characters.