Sumerian and Akkadian Myths

Myths

The Akkadian myths are in many ways dependent on Sumerian materials, but they show originality and a broader scope in their treatment of the earlier Sumerian concepts and forms; they address themselves more often to existence as a whole. Fairly close to Sumerian prototypes is an Akkadian version of the myth of "Nana’s Descent." An Old Babylonian myth about the Thunderbird Ansud, who stole the tablets of fates and was conquered by Ninurta, who was guided by Enki's counsel, is probably closely related to the Sumerian story of Ninurta's contest with Enki.

Also important is an Old Babylonian "Myth of Atrahasis," which, in motif, shows a relationship with the account of the creation of man to relieve the gods of toil in the "Enki and Ninmah" myth, and with a Sumerian account of the Flood in the "Eridu Genesis." The Atrahasis myth, however, treats these themes with noticeable originality and remarkable depth. It relates, first, how the gods originally had to toil for a living, how they rebelled and went on strike, how Enki suggested that one of their number--the god We, apparently the ringleader who "had the idea"--be killed and mankind created from clay mixed with his flesh and blood, so that the toil of the gods could be laid on man and the gods left to go free. But after Enki and the birth goddess Nintur (another name for Ninmah) had created man, man multiplied at such a rate that the din he made kept Enlil sleepless. At first Enlil had Namtar, the god of death, cause a plague to diminish mankind's numbers, but the wise Atrahasis, at the advice of Enki, had man concentrate all worship and offerings on Namtar. Namtar, embarrassed at hurting people who showed such love and affection for him, stayed his hand. Next Enlil had Adad, the god of rains, hold back the rains and thus cause a famine, but, because of the same stratagem, Adad was embarrassed and released the rains. After this, Enlil planned a famine by divine group action that would not be vulnerable as the earlier actions by individual gods had been. Anu and Adad were to guard the heavens, he himself earth, and Enki the waters underground and the sea so that no gift of nature could come through to man. The ensuing famine was terrible. By the seventh year one house consumed the other and people began eating their own children. At that point Enki--accidentally he maintained--let through a wealth of fish from the sea and so saved man. With this, however, Enlil's patience was at an end and he thought of the Flood as a means to get rid of humanity once and for all. Enki, however, warned Atrahasis and had him build a boat in which he saved himself, his family, and all animals. After the flood had abated and the ship was grounded, Atrahasis sacrificed, and the hungry gods, much chastened, gathered around the offering. Only Enlil was unrelenting until Enki upbraided him for killing innocent and guilty alike and--there is a gap in the text--suggested other means to keep human numbers down. In consultation with the birth goddess Nintur, Enki then developed a scheme of birth control by inventing the barren woman, the demon Pashittu who kills children at birth, and the various classes of priestesses to whom giving birth was taboo.

The myth uses the motif of the protest of the gods against their hard toil and the creation of man to relieve it, which was depicted earlier in the Sumerian myth of "Enki and Ninmah," and also the motif of the Flood, which occurred in the "Eridu Genesis." The import of these motifs here is, however, new: they bring out the basic precariousness of man's existence; man's usefulness to the gods will not protect him unless he takes care not to annoy them, however innocently. He must stay within bounds; there are limits set for his self-expression.

A far more trustful and committed attitude toward the powers that rule existence finds expression in the seemingly slightly later Babylonian creation story, Enuma elish, which may be dated to the later part of the 1st dynasty of Babylon (c. 1894-c. 1595 BC). Babylon's archenemy at that time was the Sealand, which controlled Nippur and the country south of it--the ancestral country of Sumerian civilization. This lends political point to the battle of Marduk (thunder and rain deity), the god of Babylon, with the Sea, Tiamat; it also accounts for the odd, almost complete silence about Enlil of Nippur in the tale.

The myth tells how in the beginning there was nothing but Apsu, the sweet waters underground, and Tiamat, the sea, mingling their waters together. In these waters the first gods came into being, and generation followed generation. The gods represented energy and activity and thus differed markedly from Apsu and Tiamat, who stood for rest and inertia. True to their nature the gods gathered to dance, and in so doing, surging back and forth, they disturbed the insides of Tiamat. Finally, Apsu's patience was at an end, and he thought of doing away with the gods, but Tiamat, as a true mother, demurred at destroying her own offspring. Apsu, however, did not swerve from his decision, and he was encouraged in this by his page Mummu, "the original (watery) form." When the youngest of the gods, the clever Ea (Sumerian Enki), heard about the planned attack he forestalled it by means of a powerful spell with which he poured slumber on Apsu, killed him, and built his temple over him. He seized Mummu and held him captive by a nose rope.

In the temple thus built the hero of the myth, Marduk, was born. From the first he was the darling of his grandfather, the god of heaven, Anu, who engendered the four winds for him to play with. As they blew and churned up waves, the disturbing of Tiamat--and of a faction of the gods who shared her desire for rest--became more and more unbearable. At last these gods succeeded in rousing her to resistance, and she created a mighty army with a spearhead of monsters to destroy the gods. She placed her consort Kingu ("Task[?]") at the head of it and gave him absolute powers.

When news of these developments reached the gods there was consternation. Ea was sent to make Tiamat desist, and then Anu, but to no avail. Finally Anshar, god of the horizon and king of the gods, thought of young Marduk. Marduk proved willing to fight Tiamat but demanded absolute authority. Accordingly, a messenger was sent to the oldest of the gods, Lahmu and Lahamu ("Silt[?]"), to call the gods to assembly, and in the assembly the gods conferred absolute authority on Marduk, tested it by seeing whether his word of command alone could destroy a constellation and then again make it whole, hailed him king, and set him on the road of "security and obedience," a formula of allegiance that based his power and authority on the pressing need for protection of the moment.

In the ensuing encounter with Tiamat's forces Kingu and his army lost heart when they saw Marduk. Only Tiamat stood her ground, seeking first to throw him off his guard by flattery about his quick rise to leadership, but Marduk angrily denounced her and the older generation: "The sons (had to) withdraw (for) the fathers were acting treacherously, and (now) you, who gave birth to them, bear malice to the offspring." At this Tiamat, furious, attacked, but Marduk loosed the winds against her, pierced her heart with an arrow, and killed her. Kingu and the gods who had sided with her he took captive.

Having thus won a lasting victory for his suzerain, King Anshar, he gave thought to what he might do further. Cleaving the carcass of Tiamat, he raised half of her to form heaven, ordered the constellations, the calendar, the movements of Sun and Moon, and, keeping control of atmospheric phenomena for himself, made the Earth out of the other half of her, arranging its mountains and rivers. Having organized the various administrative tasks, he put their supervision in Ea's hands; to Anu he gave the tablets of fate he had taken from Kingu. His prisoners he paraded in triumphal procession before his fathers, and as a monument to his victory he set up images of Tiamat's monsters at the gate of his parental home. The gods were overjoyed to see him; Anshar rushed toward him and Marduk formally announced to him the state of security he had achieved. He then bathed, dressed, and seated himself on his throne, with the spear "Security and Obedience," named from his mandate, at his side. By now, however, the situation had subtly altered. The old fear and urgent need for protection was gone, but in its stead had come a promise held out by Marduk's organizational powers; so when the gods reaffirmed their allegiance to him as king they used a new formula: "benefits and obedience." From then on Marduk would take care of their sanctuaries and they, in turn, would obey him.

Marduk then announced his intention of building a city for himself, Babylon, with room for the gods when they come there for assembly. His fathers suggested that they move to Babylon themselves to be with him and help in the administration of the world he had created. Next, he pardoned the gods who had sided with Tiamat and had been captured, charging them with the building tasks. Grateful for their lives, they prostrated themselves before him, hailed him as king, and promised to do the building.

Pleased with their willingness, Marduk magnanimously wanted to relieve them even from this chore and planned to create man to do the toil for them. At the advice of his father Ea, he then had them indict Kingu as instigator of the rebellion. Kingu was duly sentenced and executed, and from his blood Ea created man. Then Marduk divided the gods into a celestial and a terrestrial group, assigned them their tasks in the cosmos, and allotted them their stipends. Thus freed from all burdens, the gods wanted to show their gratitude to Marduk, and as a token they took, of their own free will, for one last time, spade in hand to build Babylon and Marduk's temple Esagila. In the new temple the gods then assembled and distributed the celestial and terrestrial offices. The "great gods" went into session and permanently appointed the "seven gods of destinies," or better "of the decrees," who would formulate in final form the decrees enacted by the assembly. Marduk then presented his weapons, and Anu adopted the bow as his daughter and gave it a seat among the gods. Lastly, Marduk was enthroned, and after the gods had prostrated themselves before him they bound themselves by oath--touching their throats with oil and water--and formally gave him kingship, appointing him permanently lord of the gods of heaven and earth. After this they solemnly named his 50 names expressive of his power and achievements. The myth ends with a plea that it be handed on from father to son and told to future rulers, that they may heed Marduk: it is the song of Marduk who bound Tiamat and assumed the kingship.

The motifs from which this myth is built up are in large measure known from elsewhere. The initial generation of the gods is a variant form of the genealogy of Anu in the great god list An: Anum. The threat to annihilate the disturbers of sleep are known from the Atrahasis and the Sumerian Flood traditions. The battle of Marduk with Tiamat seems to stem from western myths of a battle between the thunder god and the sea. The organization of the universe after victory recalls the organization of conquered territory in Lugal-e. The killing of a rebel god to create man to take over the gods' toil is found in the Atrahasis myth and--without the rebel aspect--in a bilingual creation myth found in Assur. New and original, however, is the way in which they have all been grouped and made dependent on the figure of the young king. The political form of the monarchy is seen as embracing the universe; it was the prowess of a young king that overcame the forces of inertia; it was his organizational genius that created and organized all; and it is he that--like his counterpart on earth, the human king--grants benefits in return for obedience.

The high value set on the monarchy as a guarantor of security and order in the Enuma elish can hardly have seemed obvious in Babylonia in the first troubled years of Assyrian rule in the second quarter of the 1st millennium BC. From this period (c. 700 BC) comes a myth usually called the Erra epic, which reads almost like a polemic against Enuma elish. It tells how the god of affray and indiscriminate slaughter, Erra, persuaded Marduk to turn over the rule of the world to him while Marduk was having his royal insignia cleaned, and how Erra, true to his nature, used his powers to institute indiscriminate rioting and slaughter. Royal power here stands no longer for security and order but for the opposite: license to kill and destroy.

Two other Akkadian myths may be mentioned--both probably dating from the middle of the 2nd millennium--the myth of the "Dynasty of Dunnum" and the myth of "Nergal and Ereshkigal." The first of these tells of succeeding divine generations ruling in Dunnum, the son usually killing his father and marrying, sometimes his mother, sometimes his sister, until--according to a reconstruction of the broken text--more acceptable mores came into vogue with the last generation of gods, Enlil and Ninurta. This myth, as has been mentioned, underlies the Greek poet Hesiod's Theogony. The myth of Nergal and Ereshkigal relates the unorthodox way in which the god Nergal became the husband of Ereshkigal and king of the netherworld.

Epics

The quick rise of Sargon, the founder of the dynasty of Akkad (c. 2334-c. 2154 BC), from obscurity to fame and his victory over Lugalzagesi of Uruk form the theme of several epic tales. The sudden eclipse of the Akkadian empire long after Naram-Sin, which was wrongly attributed to that ruler's presumed pride and the gods' retaliation, is the theme of "The Fall of Akkad." Akkadian epic tradition continues and gives focus to the Sumerian tales of Gilgamesh.

The Akkadian epic of Gilgamesh seems to have been composed in Old Babylonian times but was reworked by a certain Sin-leqe-unnini later in the 1st millennium BC. It tells how Gilgamesh, the young ruler of Uruk, drives his subjects so hard that they appeal to the gods for relief. The gods create a wild man, Enkidu, who at first lives with the animals in the desert but is lured away from them and becomes Gilgamesh's friend. Together they vanquish the terrifying Huwawa, set by Enlil to guard the cedar forest in the West, and, when on their return the goddess of Uruk, Ishtar, falls in love with Gilgamesh, is jilted by him, and sends the dread "bull of heaven" to kill him, he and Enkidu manage to kill the bull. At this point, however, their fortunes change. Enlil, angered at the killing of Huwawa, causes Enkidu to fall ill and die, and Gilgamesh, inconsolable at the death of his friend and terrified at the realization that he himself must someday die, sets out to find eternal life.

After many adventures he reaches his ancestor Utnapishtim, to whom the gods have granted eternal life, but his case proves to be a unique one and so of no help to Gilgamesh. Utnapishtim was rewarded for having saved human and animal life at the time of the great Flood. Eventually, just as Gilgamesh is ready to return home, he is told about a plant that rejuvenates and makes old men children again. Gilgamesh finds it and begins his return journey. But, as the day is warm, when he passes an inviting pool he leaves his clothes and the plant on the shore and goes in for a swim. A serpent smells the plant, comes out of its hole, and eats it. Thus Gilgamesh's quest comes to naught. Eternal life is beyond man's grasp. The Gilgamesh epic is perhaps the most moving work in ancient Mesopotamian literature, with its sharp contrast of values: the warrior's disdain of death and danger, which informs the early parts of the epic, and the haunting fear that drives Gilgamesh in the later parts.

Other Akkadian epics that deserve to be mentioned are the Etana epic, which tells how Etana, the first king, was carried up to heaven on the back of an eagle to obtain the plant of birth so that his son could be born. Also important are the epic tales about Sargon of Akkad, one of which, the birth legend, tells of his abandonment in a casket on the river by his mother--much as the Bible tells that Moses was abandoned--and his discovery by an orchardman, who raised him as his son. Another Sargon tale is "The King of Battle," which tells about conquests in Asia Minor to protect foreign trade. Naram-Sin is the central figure in another tale dealing with that king's pride and also relating the destructive invasions by barbarous foes. A late flowering of primary epic is the Assyrian Tukulti-Ninurta (reigned 1243-07 BC) epic that deals with that king's wars with Babylonia.  

The Mesopotamian worldview as expressed in myth

The more completely a given culture is embraced, the more natural will its basic tenets seem to the people involved. The most fundamental of its presuppositions are not even likely to rise into awareness and be consciously held but are tacitly taken for granted. It takes a degree of cultural decline, of the loosening of the culture's grip on thought and action, before its most basic structural lines can be recognized and, if need be, challenged. Since culture, the total pattern within which man lives and acts, is thus not likely to be conceived of consciously and as a whole until it begins to lose its obvious and natural character, it is understandable that those myths of a culture that may be termed existential--in the sense that they articulate human existence as a whole in terms of the culture and show its basic structure--are rarely encountered until comparatively late in the history of a culture. Before that occurs, it is, rather, the particular aspects and facets of existence that are apt to claim attention.

In ancient Mesopotamia the oldest known materials, the Sumerian myths, have relatively little to say about creation; scholars must, for the most part, turn to the introductions of tales and disputations to infer how things were believed to be in the beginning. Thus, a story about the hero Gilgamesh refers in its introductory lines to the times "after heaven had been moved away from earth, after earth had been separated from heaven." The same notion that heaven and earth were once close together occurs also in a bilingual Sumero-Akkadian text from Ashur about the creation of man. The actual act of separating them is credited to the storm god Enlil of Nippur in the introduction to a third tale that deals with the creation of the first hoe. From similar passing remarks scholars have inferred that the gods, before man came into being, had to labor hard at the heavy works of irrigation agriculture and dug out the beds of the Tigris and the Euphrates.