Enuma Elish (The Babylonian Epic of Creation)

← Ancient texts · Mesopotamian

Akkadian (Babylonian) · Composed by c. 1100 BC; our copies are 7th-century-BC school and library tablets from Nineveh and Ashur.

Translation: L. W. King, rendered by E. A. Wallis Budge, 1921 — E. A. Wallis Budge, The Babylonian Legends of the Creation and the Fight Between Bel and the Dragon (British Museum, 1921). Public domain.

Seven tablets, recited at the Babylonian New Year festival. It opens before the world exists, with nothing but two mingled waters — fresh Apsu and salt Tiamat. The younger gods are born inside them, Apsu resolves to destroy the noisy children, and after two rounds of conflict the storm-god Marduk kills Tiamat, splits her body to make the sky and the earth-waters, sets the stars as a calendar, and forms humankind from the blood of a slain god to do the gods' labour. The tablet ends by proclaiming Marduk's fifty names.

The overlap with Genesis 1 is structural, not verbal: a watery formless beginning, a separation of upper and lower waters, the heavenly lights fixed for timekeeping, humankind made last. Genesis keeps the sequence and inverts the theology — one God ordering by speech, no combat, humankind made in God's image and given rest rather than drafted for toil. The Hebrew word for the primeval deep, tehom, is the same word as the name Tiamat.

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Tablet I 1 biblical parallel
Before heaven and earth are named, the gods are born within Apsu and Tiamat. Apsu plots to destroy them; Ea kills Apsu; Tiamat prepares for war and spawns eleven monsters.
Tablet II
The gods learn of Tiamat's army. Ea and Anu fail against her. Marduk agrees to fight — on condition that his word be made supreme.
Tablet III
The message is carried to the assembly of the gods; they feast and grant Marduk sovereignty.
Tablet IV 1 biblical parallel
Marduk is enthroned, arms himself with wind and storm, kills Tiamat, and splits her carcass 'like a flat fish into two pieces' — one half becomes the sky, held back so its waters cannot escape.
Tablet V 1 biblical parallel
Marduk sets the constellations, fixes the year and the months, and makes the moon to mark time. Much of this tablet is damaged.
Tablet VI 2 biblical parallels
Marduk resolves to make humankind from blood and bone 'that the service of the gods may be established'. Kingu, who led Tiamat's revolt, is executed and people are fashioned from his blood.
Tablet VII + Epilogue 1 biblical parallel
The gods proclaim Marduk's fifty names. The epilogue tells fathers to teach the names to their sons.