Enūma Eliš

A Charter First, a Cosmogony Second

First attested
9th century BCENo manuscript survives from the period of composition. The earliest datable copies are ninth-century tablets from Ashur; the bulk are seventh-century manuscripts from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh, recovered by Austen Henry Layard from 1849 and Hormuzd Rassam from 1852, with further copies from Kish, Sultantepe, Babylon and Uruk running down into the Hellenistic period. W. G. Lambert's 2013 edition is the collation of record for the manuscripts, and gaps remain. George Smith announced the creation tablets in the Daily Telegraph on 4 March 1875 and published them in The Chaldean Account of Genesis in 1876. The only evidence that the poem was recited on the fourth of Nisannu is a New Year ritual text of Babylon whose surviving manuscripts are all Seleucid — close to a thousand years younger than the poem — first edited by François Thureau-Dangin in Rituels accadiens (1921); Céline Debourse argued in 2022 that these ritual texts are late priestly compositions, programmatic rather than records of long-standing practice.

In the Assyrian recension copied at Ashur, Aššur stands where Marduk stood — a creation story whose creator can be swapped out is a charter for a city, not an account of how the world began.

Seven Akkadian tablets: Marduk kills Tiamat, builds the sky from her, wins first rank — Babylon's charter.

The poem has no ancient title: Enūma eliš, "When on high", is its first two words. Across seven tablets Marduk agrees to fight Tiamat only on terms — the assembly must grant him a word that fixes fates and can never be revoked. He splits her, in Stephanie Dalley's rendering sliced in half like a fish for drying, roofs the sky with one half, and is given fifty names, fifty being Enlil's number. W. G. Lambert placed the composition no earlier than about 1100 BCE, near the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I. A Babylonian ritual text has the chief priest of Esagil recite it entire to Marduk on the fourth of Nisannu. The tehom of Genesis 1:2 is not her name borrowed: David Tsumura argued in 2005 that both descend from a common Semitic word for the deep.

Light

It is candid about power. Marduk does not inherit his rank: he names his price before the divine assembly and is granted a word that can never be revoked, and the sky is built from the body of what he defeated, not from nothing.

Shadow

Read since George Smith as evidence in a quarrel about Genesis, not as Babylonian writing. Friedrich Delitzsch's Babel und Bibel lectures, from 13 January 1902, turned that quarrel into an attack on the Hebrew Bible; his last book, Die große Täuschung (1920–21), was openly antisemitic.

Sources and verification9 sources · 7 links

Primary source

  • George Smith, The Chaldean Account of Genesis, 1876, the chapters on the Creation tablets; discovery announced in the Daily Telegraph, 4 March 1875The first publication of the creation tablets in English, and the framing that has shadowed the poem ever since — a Babylonian text named, in its own editor's title, after the younger biblical book.
  • François Thureau-Dangin, Rituels accadiens, 1921, the New Year (akītu) ritual of Babylon, the fourth of NisannuThe ritual prescription that the chief priest recite Enūma eliš in its entirety before Bel on the fourth day of Nisannu — the text on which the whole claim of a liturgical function rests.
  • Stephanie Dalley (trans.), Myths from Mesopotamia, rev. ed., 2000, The Epic of Creation, Tablet IV (the splitting of Tiamat); Tablets VI–VII (the fifty names)Quotable English wording with line numbering and gaps honestly marked: Marduk slicing Tiamat in half like a fish for drying and setting up one half as the sky, and the proclamation of the fifty names across the last two tablets.
  • Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, 3rd ed., 2005, The Epic of Creation, Tablet II (Marduk's terms to Anšar)Marduk's condition before he will face Tiamat — that the assembly convene at Ubshu-ukkinakku and grant that his own utterance fix fates in their place, never to be revoked — with dating and provenance for the piece.

Scholarship

  • Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary, 1992, entries for Marduk, Tiamat, Anshar and the numbers of the godsThe identification of Anšar with the Assyrian Aššur, and the Mesopotamian scheme of divine numbers in which fifty is Enlil's — the point of Marduk receiving fifty names.
  • David Toshio Tsumura, Creation and Destruction: A Reappraisal of the Chaoskampf Theory in the Old Testament, 2005, the discussion of tehom and of the Chaoskampf thesisThe argument that Hebrew tehom in Genesis 1:2 is not a borrowing of the name Tiamat but a reflex of a common Semitic word for the deep, and the wider case against reading Genesis 1 as a combat myth.
  • W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths, 2013, the edition of Enūma eliš, Tablets I–VII, and the Assyrian recensionThe text, transliteration and manuscript base of the seven tablets; the argument for a composition no earlier than about 1100 BCE, in or near the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I, rather than the older Hammurabi-era dating; the poem's character as a composition arguing Marduk's supremacy; and the Assyrian recension in which Anšar — the Assyrian god Aššur — stands in Marduk's place.
  • Céline Debourse, Of Priests and Kings: The Babylonian New Year Festival in the Last Age of Cuneiform Culture, 2022, the argument that the Babylonian New Year festival texts are Late Babylonian priestly compositions; the treatment of the manuscripts and their Seleucid dateThat every surviving manuscript of the Babylonian New Year Festival texts is of the Seleucid period, and that they are best read as late priestly compositions rather than as transcripts of an unbroken older rite.

Where this claim originates

  • Friedrich Delitzsch, Babel und Bibel, 1902, first lecture, Sing-Akademie, Berlin, 13 January 1902, before the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft with Wilhelm II present; a second lecture followed in January 1903 and a third in 1904What Delitzsch claimed and when — cited for the provenance and dating of the Babel-Bibel-Streit, not as evidence that Babylonian priority over the Hebrew Bible was established.

Linked entries

  • Set againstThe Epic of GilgameshAttested

    Both came out of Ashurbanipal's library and both were published by George Smith inside a decade, but Gilgamesh is a narrative poem about a man who cannot escape death, and this is a text with a job in a temple on a named day.

  • Set againstThe Descent of InannaAttested

    Called "the Mesopotamian creation myth" as though there were only one: the Sumerian compositions copied at Nippur centuries before Enūma eliš was composed give a different cast, a different order of the world, and no Marduk at all.

  • Set againstCreation of the WorldDisputed

    The resemblances — a watery beginning, a firmament dividing the waters, the making of lights for the calendar — are real and were fought over publicly from Delitzsch's lecture of 13 January 1902; the etymology of tehom from Tiamat, long the popular proof, is rejected by most scholars.

  • Set againstThe AvestaAttested

    Both are misread by being read silently: the Avesta's texts exist to be recited in ceremony, and a Babylonian ritual text has this poem read aloud to Bel on the fourth of Nisannu. The difference is that the Avesta is a corpus of many texts and this is one fixed composition in seven tablets.

  • Set againstThe NornsA modern connection

    Babylonian destiny is a written Tablet of Destinies that changes hands with power; Norse fate is chosen, carved and twisted by women at a well the gods must ride to.

  • Set againstVelesA modern connection

    Babylon's storm-god-against-the-monster combat survives as an actual poem on seven tablets recopied for a thousand years; the Slavic version of the same pattern survives only as a reconstruction of 1974 - the difference between having a myth and having a hypothesis about one.

  • Set againstXibalbaAttested

    Marduk destroys Tiamat and builds a world from her body. The Twins kill One Death and Seven Death and refuse to revive them, but spare the rest of Xibalba and only cut what may be given to it - the underworld is demoted, not abolished, and goes on receiving offerings of broken things.

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