Creation Myths

The very beginning, according to the Sumerians, was watery. According to their theology, the universe at the beginning was surrounded by sea and water on all sides. For them, the sea was the original matter, the first cause and prime mover. Unlike the genesis creation story, a god did not hover over these waters separating them from the land. Instead, the universe emerged through the action of several different deities.

The waters are identified with the Great Mother figure of Nammu. According to Eliade (1978), this is quite common in archaic cosmogonies in which the waters are imagined as both cosmic and divine, with them serving as first mother (or father, or both). In this instance, Nammu gives birth to the original couple of the Sky God An and the Earth Goddess Ki. From them was born the air god, Enlil.

The Sky God, An, carried off the heavens, or the sky, while the Earth Goddess Ki (later Ninhursag) carried off the earth. The air was separated out by Enlil, while Enki was the Water God, and eventually the God of Wisdom. There were other important deities, including Ereshkigal, Goddess of the Underworld, and Inanna, the

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m gods. However, Apsu and Tiamat come into conflict with their creations and Apsu desires to destroy them. Apsu, however, was killed instead and became simply the inanimate waters in which the gods resided. The second conflict was between Tiamat and her first set of sons. She became distressed with them and sought to overcome them by creating a new set of beings which were monsters, including the Dragon and Sphinx. These were defeated by Marduk, along with Tiamat. At that point, Marduk became the creator god and the controller god. He made half of Tiamat into heaven and half of her into earth, which resided in the bosom of Apsu, the subdued father. Marduk made many other things, and eventually created human beings from the bone and blood of one of the monsters. Human beings, in this myth, were created solely to serve the gods so that the gods would not have to work so hard. On the other hand, people seem like almost an afterthought in the Egyptian myth. They come into being from the tears Ra shed with his second eye. Interestingly enough, the second eye was not the real eye, and the first eye was angry with it and eventually replaced it. So, people came from the secretions of the second eye, while many other kinds of l
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Approximate Word count = 1490
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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