Babylonian Cosmogony

[Clair B]

Babylonian Cosmogony.  A Semitic group (Amorites)  conquered Sumer about 2300 BCE, centered in Akkad (language Akkadian also called Assyro-Babylonian).  During Hammurabi's reign (1790s-50s BCE), the capital moved to Babylon.  They borrowed heavily from their Sumerian predecessors. The first 5 tablets of the creation/flood epic were likely written in the 1st Babylonian dynasty (1830-1531 BCE), the last two during the 2nd (Kassite) dynasty.

• The fresh water god is the male Apsu (Ab=water, zu=far) and the salt water god, the female Tiamat (may be related to Aakadian tâmtu "sea" or Sumerian ti=life, and ama=mother, may have originally been a Nammu cult.  Signifies chaos.  May be related to "Tehom" in Gen 1:2, rendered "Deep").
  
• Their mating produced the gods.  '"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."'
  
• These gods were noisy and Apsu could not rest by day or night (the sun, moon nor earth has not yet been created, yet day and night exist.  The Babylonians apparently had not yet conceived that the sun caused the day, but only marked the day).
• Apsu suggests killing of their offspring gods, but they kill Apsu.
• Marduk (counterpart to the Sumerian Enlil, god of light, called Merodach in the Bible, Asshur in Assyria), the chief of the offspring gods kills Tiamat, splits her body in half "like an oyster" and the two halves become the firmament (sky/heaven) and the earth.  Her spittle provide rain and clouds, and her head becomes the mountains.  From her eyes flow the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
  
• Marduk was credited for bringing order from chaos, and good from evil.
• Marduk slew Qingu while battling Tiamat, and mixed the blood of Qingu with clay to make Man, to work for the gods.
  
• Man's  sins invite chaos, and elaborate rituals were needed to rectify their sins, providing a ritual rebirth of the world, free from sins of the past.
• See  Brent Meeker, Cosmology and Cosmogony of Ancient Civilizations;  Wikipedia Mesopotamian Mythology.