In Mesopotamian Religion (Sumerian, Assyrian, Akkadian and Babylonian), Tiamat is a chaos monster, a primordial goddess of the ocean, mating with Abzû (the god of fresh water) to produce younger gods.
It is suggested that there are two parts to the Tiamat mythos, the first in which Tiamat is 'creatrix', through a "Sacred marriage" between salt and fresh water, peacefully creating the cosmos through successive generations.
In the second "Chaoskampf" Tiamat is considered the monstrous embodiment of primordial chaos.
Although there are no early precedents for it, some sources identify her with images of a sea serpent or dragon.
In the Enûma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, she gives birth to the first generation of deities; her husband, Aspu, later makes war upon them and is killed. When she, too, wars upon her husband's murderers, she is then slain by Ea's son, the storm-god Marduk. The heavens and the earth are formed from her divided body.
Tiamat was later known as Thalattē (as a variant of thalassa, the Greek word for "sea") in the Hellenistic Babylonian Berossus' first volume of universal history.
It is thought that the name of Tiamat was dropped in secondary translations of the original religious texts (written in the East Semitic Akkadian language) because some Akkadian copyists of Enûma Elish substituted the ordinary word for "sea" for Tiamat, since the two names had become essentially the same due to association.
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Tiamat nimen etymologia
Thorkild Jacobsen and Walter Burkert both argue for a connection with the Akkadian word for sea, tâmtu, following an early form, ti'amtum.
Burkert continues by making a linguistic connection to Tethys. He finds the later form, thalatth, to be related clearly to Greek Θάλαττα (thalatta) or Θάλασσα (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, which predates the appearance of Ea-Enki.
Bahrain!
Harriet Crawford finds this "mixing of the waters" to be 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. This characteristic is especially true of the region of Bahrain, whose name in Arabic means "two seas", and which is thought to be the site of Dilmun, the original site of the Sumerian creation beliefs. The difference in density of salt and fresh water drives a perceptible separation.
Tiamat also has been claimed to be cognate with Northwest Semitic tehom (תהום) (the deeps, abyss), in the Book of Genesis 1:2.
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Miltä Tiamat näytti babylonialaisten mielissä?
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, and the identification is debated. The Enûma Elish specifically states that Tiamat did give birth to dragons and serpents, but 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.
In 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.
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Tiamat Sumerista Assyriaan ja Babyloniaan
Joidenkin tutkijoiden esittämä ajatus Tiamat käsitteen kahdesta kerrostumasta sopii mielestäni hyvin muuallakin näkemäämme siirtymään Sumerista Assyriana ja Babyloniaan.
Sumerilainen rauhanomainen ja hyvin lähellä luontoäitiä oleva kerronta saa seemiläisessä maailmassa sotaisan taistelun luonteen.
Tässä suhteessa erityisen mielenkiintoinen on viittaus Sumerin paratiisiin, Dilmuniin, jonka on ajateltu viittaavan juuri Bahrainiin. Gilgamesh menee Dilmuniin etsimään ikuisen elämän lääkettä, ja saamme mielikuvan,että kyseessä ovat Bahrainin helmenkalastajat. "Kahden veden sekottuminen", kaksi merta, sopii tähän yhteyteen myös täydentävänä näkökulmana.
Minua viehättää ajatus, että suolaisen meriveden Tiamat on aluksi yhteydessä Sumerin suureen äiti Nammuun ja hänen kulttiinsa. Seemiläiset Akkadin asukkaat eivät ennättäneet paljon kertomuksia muuttaa.
Marduk on sitten lähes tuhat vuotta myöhemmin melkoinen tappelija uskollisten kannattajiensa tavoin, joista erityisesti assyrialaiset ovat kuuluisia armeijansa väkivaltaisuudesta ja raakuudesta. (Babylonialaiset löivät heidät, joten ytyä löytyi kyllä sieltäkin.)
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