Tiamat (Mythology)

Tiamat is a Babylonian goddess that was the primal embodiment of the salt sea and former wife of Apsu, god of the sweet sea. She was one of the first of two entities to ever exist, the other being her husband, and through their unification, she would birth the first generation of gods. Tiamat is also regarded as the primal representation of chaos in the Babylon Creation Epic Enuma Elich, where she wages war against her descendants who killed her husband, only to be killed by the god Marduk. Having had split her in half, Marduk would then form Heaven and Earth from her two halves.

Etymology

According to scholar Jeremy Black, the word Tiamat comes from titanium ("sea"). The word has also been proposed to be related to the term תְּהﯴם ("the deep" or "the primeval ocean") from the Book of Genesis, although this cannot be verified.

Description

There have been different depictions of Tiamat throughout the course of history, none of which however actually originate from Ancient Mesopotamia. In the Enuma Elich, Tiamat is never given a clear image, but is described to have a head, a neck, a tail, a udder, a thigh, “lower parts”, a belly, ribs, a skull, eyes, nostrils, a mouth, breasts, arteries, a heart, and blood.

Tiamat has been depicted usually as a horned "dragon-like demon" with forearms, and has also been depicted as a beast that largely resembles a griffin.

Mythology

In the Enuma Elich , Tiamat existed in a time when there was no heaven or earth, and there was only the primeval seas, personified as both herself and her consort Apsu. They intermingled, leading Tiamat to birth the first gods, Lahmu and Lahamu. As more gods were created, the gods began to engage in clamor and other activities, which had irritated Tiamat, yet she still cared for them enough not to silence them on the issue.

This clamor would also however irritate her husband, Apsu, who would come to her to discuss the matter. While they conversed, Apsu decided that he would destroy their children’s way of life, which Tiamat immediately rejected and told Apsu to let the gods be. Whether this encouragement helped or not would not be known, as the gods would then hear about Apsu’s plan. Enraged, the god Ea put Apsu into a slumber and killed him while he slept.

Wanting to avenge her husband and after being encouraged by several opposing gods to destroy her husband’s murderers, Tiamat began to plot. Perparing to destroy her children, she bore eleven beasts of chaos whose blood was replaced with venom, of which included serpents, demons, a Dragon, a Hydra, a Hairy Hero, a Savage dog, a Scorpion-Man, a Bull-Man, and a Fish-Man. She also gave the god Quingu the Tablet of Destinies which she had possessed and put the deity as her minion's leader in the war of which would come.

The gods fought back against her creations, with Marduk, the king of gods eventually challenging Tiamat directly. In the war, Marduk demanded her reasoning, which turned Tiamat into a frenzy, incitings spells that caused her underlings to tremble. Marduk would then proceed to slay her with the Evil Wind, first bounding her before smashing her skull and splitting her body into two. Now dead, Marduk formed the heavens and the earth out of the two parts of her body, formed the clouds from her foam, made the Euphyrstes and Tigress rivers out of her eyes, and twisted her tail into the milky way.

Comparative Mythology

The battle between Tiamat and Marduk in the Enuma Elich is an original example of the Chaoskampf motif, with the original proposer of the trope Hermann Grunkel having compared the battle between Tiamat and Marduk to the Book of Genesis.

In Popular Culture

Tiamat is one of the most popular, if not the most popular Mesopotamian deity in modern media, which likely first originated from the popularity of her depiction in Dungeons & Dragons.

• In the first Final Fantasy, she appears as a boss as a member of the Four Fiends
• In Bruce Colville's Jeremy Thatcher: Dragon Hatcher (from the Magic Shop series), a boy who is given a dragon egg from Elias's magic shop names his dragon hatchling Tiamat, the two developing a mental connection
• In the mobile game and anime Fate/Grand Order, Tiamat appears as massive horned women where she had survived her initial defeat by her children and remained in a slumber, waiting to return to and claim the world as her own once again.
• In the online role-playing game Granblue Fantasy, Tiamat appears as a boss. She is associated with the wind, and is portrayed a humanoid women that is accompanied by three serpent heads.
• In the tabletop roleplaying game Pathfinder, Tiamat appears as a diety. According to dragon mythology, Tiamat was one of the first two entities to exist alongside Apsu. After Apsu declared war on his and Tiamat's first son Dahak after their son began to kill his other siblings for sport, Tiamat healed Dahak upon his request and offered to heal wounded dragons apart of Apsu's army. Those who accepted this were turned into the first Chromatic Dragons, which caused enough confusion as the war continued that Dahak and his followers were able to escape.
• In the MOBA Smite, Tiamat is a playable character, the first mage released in 2021. In the game, she is regarded as the mother of all creation and after having waking up from a deep slumber, she aims to retake control of the world she created from the lesser gods.

Gallery

External Links

• Tiamat - Wikipedia
• Tiamat - Encyclopedia.com