The Babylonian Legends of the Creation | Page 5

the Babylonians and Assyrians have supplied us with representations of Tiamat, and these show us what form ancient tradition assigned to her. She is depicted as a ferocious monster with wings and scales and terrible claws, and her body is sometimes that of a huge serpent, and sometimes that of an animal. In the popular imagination she represented all that was physically terrifying, and foul, and abominable; she was nevertheless the mother of everything, [1] and was the possessor of the DUP SHIMATI or "TABLET OF DESTINIES". No description of this Tablet or its contents is available, but from its name we may assume that it was a sort of Babylonian Book of Fate.[2] Theologically, Tiamat represented to the Babylonians the same state in the development of the universe as did _t?h? wa-bh?h?_ (Genesis i. 2), i.e., formlessness and voidness, of primeval matter, to the Hebrews She is depicted both on bas-reliefs and on cylinder seals in a form which associates her with LABARTU, [3] a female devil that prowled about the desert at night suckling wild animals but killing men. And it is tolerably certain that she was the type, and symbol, and head of the whole community of fiends, demons and devils.
[Footnote 1: Muallidat gimrishun.]
[Footnote 2: It is probable that the idea of this Tablet is perpetuated in the "Preserved Tablet" of the Kur'an (Surah x, 62), on which the destiny of every man was written at or before the creation of the world. Nothing that is written (_makt?b_) there can be erased, or altered, or fail to take effect.]
[Footnote 3: (_Cun. Texts_,

Part XXIV, Plate 44, l. 142).]
[Illustration: Terra-cotta plaque with a Typhonic animal in relief. [No. 103,381.]]
In the consultation which took place between APS? and TI?MAT, their messenger MU-UM-MU took part; of the history and attributes of this last-named god nothing is known. The result of the consultation was that a long struggle began between the demons and the gods, and it is clear that the object of the powers of darkness was to destroy the light. The whole story of this struggle is the subject of the Seven Tablets of Creation. The gods are deifications of the sun, moon, planets and other stars, and APS?, or CHAOS, and his companions the demons, are personifications of darkness, night and evil. The story of the fight between them is nothing more nor less than a picturesque allegory of natural phenomena. Similar descriptions are found in the literatures of other primitive nations, and the story of the great fight between Her-ur, the great god of heaven, and Set, the great captain of the hosts of darkness, may be quoted as an example. Set regarded the "order" which Her-ur was bringing into the universe with the same dislike as that with which APS? contemplated the beneficent work of Sin, the Moon-god, Shamash, the Sun-god, and their brother gods. And the hostility of Set and his allies to the gods, like that of Tiamat and her allies, was everlasting.
[Illustration: between Marduk (Bel) and the Dragon. Drawn from a bas-relief from the Palace of Ashur-nasir-pal, King of Assyria, 885-860 B.C., at Nimr?d. [Nimr?d Gallery, Nos. 28 and 29.]]
At this point a new Text fills a break in the First Tablet, and describes the fight which took place between Nudimmud or Ea, (the representative of the established "order" which the rule of the gods had introduced into the domain of Aps? and Tiamat) and Aps? and his envoy Mummu. Ea went forth to fight the powers of darkness and he conquered Aps? and Mummu. The victory over Aps?, i.e., the confused and boundless mass of primeval water, represents the setting of impassable boundaries to the waters that are on and under the earth, i.e., the formation of the Ocean. The exact details of the conquest cannot be given, but we know that Ea was the possessor of the "pure (or white, or holy) incantation" and that he overcame Aps? and his envoy by the utterance of a powerful spell. In the Egyptian Legend of Ra and Aapep, the monster is rendered spell-bound by the god Her-Tuati, who plays in it exactly the same part as Ea in the Babylonian Legend.
When Tiamat heard of Ea's victory over Aps? and Mummu she was filled with fury, and determined to avenge the death of Aps?, her husband.
The first act of TI?MAT after the death of Aps? was to increase the number of her allies. We know that a certain creature called "UMMU-KHUBUR" at once spawned a brood of devilish monsters to help her in her fight against the gods. Nothing is known of the origin or attributes of UMMU-KHUBUR, but some think she was a form of TI?MAT. Her brood probably consisted of personifications of mist, fog, cloud, storm, whirlwinds and the blighting and destroying powers