Tiamat
In Babylonian mythology[1], Tiamat is the sea, personified as a
goddess,[2] and a monstrous embodiment of primordial chaos.[3] In
the Enûma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, she gives birth
to the first generation of gods; she later makes war upon them and
is split in two by the storm-god Marduk, who uses her body to form
the heavens and the earth. She was known as Thalattē (as variant of
thalassa, the Greek word for "sea") in the Hellenistic Babylonian
Berossus' first volume of universal history, and some Akkadian
copyists of Enûma Elish slipped and substituted the ordinary word
for "sea" for Tiamat, so close was the
association.[4]
Etymology
of the name
Thorkild Jacobsen[5] and Walter Burkert both argue for a connection
with the Akkadian word for sea tâmtu, following an early form
ti'amtum.[6] Tiamat can also be derived from the Sumerian ti,
"life", and ama, "mother".[7] Burkert continues by making a
linguistic connection to Tethys. The later form thalatth he finds
to be clearly related to Greek thalassa, "sea". The Babylonian epic
Enuma Elish is named for its incipit: "When above" the heavens did
not yet exist nor the earth below, Apsu the freshwater ocean was
there, "the first, the begetter", and Tiamat, the saltwater sea,
"she who bore them all"; they were "mixing their waters". It is
thought that female deities are older than male ones in
Mesopotamia, and Tiamat may have begun as part of the cult of
Nammu, a female principle of a watery creative force, with equally
strong connections to the underworld, predating the appearance of
Ea-Enki.[8]
This "mixing of the waters" is a natural feature of the middle
Persian Gulf, where fresh waters from the Arabian aquifer mix and
mingle with the salt waters of the sea.[9] This characteristic is
especially true of the region of Bahrain, whose name means in
Arabic, "two seas" and which is thought to be the site of Dilmun,
the original site of the Sumerian creation.[10]
Tiamat has also been claimed to be also cognate with West Semitic
tehom ("the deeps, abyss"), in the Book of Genesis 1.[11]
Tiamat's
appearance
Though Tiamat is often described by modern authors as a sea serpent
or dragon, no ancient texts exist in which there is a clear
association with those kinds of creatures. Though the Enûma Elish
specifically states that Tiamat did give birth to dragons and
serpents, they are included among a larger and more general list of
monsters including scorpion men and merpeople, none of which imply
that any of the children resemble the mother or are even limited to
aquatic creatures.
Within the Enûma Elish her physical description includes a tail, a
thigh, "lower parts" (which shake together), a belly, an udder,
ribs, a neck, a head, a skull, eyes, nostrils, a mouth, and lips.
She has insides (possibly "entrails"), a heart, arteries, and
blood.
The strictly modern depiction of Tiamat as a multi-headed dragon
was popularized in the 1970s as a fixture of the Dungeons &
Dragons roleplaying game thanks to earlier sources conflating
Tiamat with later mythological characters, such as Lotan.
Tiamat appears in the Final Fantasy series as a multi-headed
dragon. Tiamat also makes another appearance as a summon in the
Nintendo Game Boy Advance RPG, "Golden Sun." Tiamat is also used in
Blizzards MMORPG Diablo II on a unique Dragon shield called
Tiamat's Rebuke.
In The Ogre Battle series a Tiamat is a third-stage black
dragon.
Mythology
Apsu (or Abzu, from Sumerian ab = water, zu = far) fathered upon
Tiamat the Elder Gods Lahmu and Lahamu (the "muddy"), a title given
to the gatekeepers at the Enki Abzu temple in Eridu. Lahmu and
Lahamu, in turn, were the parents of the axis or pivot of the
heavens (Anshar, from an = heaven, shar = axle or pivot) and the
earth (Kishar); Anshar and Kishar were considered to meet on the
horizon, becoming thereby the parents of Anu and Ki. Tiamat was the
"shining" personification of salt water who roared and smote in the
chaos of original creation. She and Apsu filled the cosmic abyss
with the primeval waters. She is "Ummu-Hubur who formed all
things".
In the myth, the god Enki (later Ea) believed correctly that Apsu,
upset with the chaos they created, was planning to murder the
younger gods; and so slew him. This angered Kingu, their son, who
reported the event to Tiamat, whereupon she fashioned monsters to
battle the gods in order to avenge Apsu's death. These were her own
offspring: giant sea serpents, storm demons, fish-men, scorpion-men
and many others. Tiamat possessed the Tablets of Destiny, and in
the primordial battle she gave them to Kingu, the god she had
chosen as her lover and the leader of her host. The Gods gathered
in terror, but Anu, (replaced later, first by Enlil and, in the
late version that has survived after the First Dynasty of Babylon,
by Marduk, the son of Ea), first extracting a promise that he would
be revered as "king of the gods", overcame her, armed with the
arrows of the winds, a net, a club, and an invincible spear.
And
the lord stood upon Tiamat's hinder parts,
And with his merciless club he smashed her skull.
He cut through the channels of her blood,
And he made the North wind bear it away into secret
places.
Slicing Tiamat in half, he made from her ribs the vault of heaven
and earth. Her weeping eyes became the source of the Tigris and the
Euphrates. With the approval of the elder gods, he took from Kingu
the Tablets of Destiny, installing himself as the head of the
Babylonian pantheon. Kingu was captured and was later slain: his
red blood mixed with the red clay of the Earth would make the body
of humankind, created to act as the servant of the younger Igigi
Gods.
The principal theme of the epic is the justified elevation of
Marduk to command over all the gods. "It has long been realized
that the Marduk epic, for all its local coloring and probable
elaboration by the Babylonian theologians, reflects in substance
older Sumerian material," E. A. Speiser remarked in 1942[12] adding
"The exact Sumerian prototype, however, has not turned up so far."
Without corroboration in surviving texts, this surmise that the
Babylonian version of the story is based upon a modified version of
an older epic, in which Enlil, not Marduk, was the god who slew
Tiamat,[13] is more recently dismissed as "distinctly
improbable",[14] Marduk in fact has no precise Sumerian
prototype.
Michael Tsarion’s
Perspective
on Tiamat:
Aliens
came to Earth thousands of years ago to escape some other aliens
chasing them.
They planted a decoy on a planet called Tiamat that the other
aliens took to mean that they were there, not on Earth, and
proceeded to destroy Tiamat.....the resulting debris became the
Asteroid belt.
Tiamat, was covered in water, and after being destroyed, quite a
lot of the water reached Earth and rose our ocean levels
considerably. Possibly related to Noahs flood
After destroying Tiamat, the chasing Aliens, to be safe, put a
protective barrier around the Earth to stop ANYONE from escaping
from it, in case any Aliens landed there as well.
The alien race on earth looked like us and mixed their DNA with
ours to produce slaves....didnt work to well because the slaves
were to intelligent to obey them forever. They then tried again to
make another race..... that didnt work to well either.
They then mixed their DNA with Reptiles
after
2 failures with us, and the reptilians
took
to living underground.
The descendants of the original aliens are now the royal bloodlines
we all know from around the world, and all serve the serpent
religion, that is why there is so much symbology of serpents all
over the world from ages back.
They are using humans to try and get an escape route from this
"prison planet" through the protective barrier that was placed
around it.
They have got past 2 of the 3 stages they need to, there is one
other stage to go.
They are not from this planet, hence their uncaring way in which
they treat it.....its not theirs and they think they will soon be
from here to leave us with the mess.
References:
1. ^ And doubtless in Sumerian mythology as well, though all the
surviving texts are later.
2. ^ Jacobsen, Thorkild. "The Battle between Marduk and Tiamat",
Journal of the American Oriental Society, 88.1 (January-March
1968), pp 104-108.
3. ^ Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford University
Press, 1987), p. 329.
4. ^ Jacobsen 1968:105.
5. ^ Jacobsen 1968:105.
6. ^ Burkert, Walter. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern
Influences on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age 1993, p
92f.
7. ^ Palmer, Abram Smythe .Babylonian influence on the Bible and
popular beliefs : "Tĕhôm and Tiâmat", "Hades and Satan" :
a comparative study of Genesis I. 2 (London, 1897)
8. ^ Steinkeller, Piotr. "On Rulers, Priests and Sacred Marriage:
tracing the evolution of early Sumerian kingship" in Wanatabe, K.
(ed.), Priests and Officials in the Ancient Near East (Heidelberg
1999) pp.103-38
FAIR USE NOTICE:
This site may contain copyrighted material, the use of which has
not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This
website distributes this material without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information
for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes
a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17
U.S.C § 107.
NOTE TO AUTHORS: If you are the author or owner of an article or
video that I have made available through THEINFOVAULT.NET and you
do not wish to have your article or video posted on theinfovault,
please contact
me and I will
remove the item.