Enuma Elish

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The great Poem of Babylonian Creation, the myth of Enmeduranki, the book of secrets of Enoch, the scrolls of Qumran. For the first time a single research path reveals the connections between a small bronze model of liver found in Ciavernasco of Piacenza, at the dawn of the unification of Italy, and the hidden plot of one of the most guarded mysteric disciplines of antiquity .
The threshold of time, that which is permanently defined by the alternation of state between day and night and which is induced by the continuous motion of rotation of the celestial framework, is the very essence of the principle on which the whole cosmological construction will be based. From this conceptual dimension of the sacred, which will correspond, in different places and traditions, and declined only formally in different times and ways, all the doctrinal theories of the ancient world on the nature of time and its origin. It is in this conceptual construction that the legacy of the religious orders of the Mesopotamian cultures - the one we find in the West still expressed within the Etruscan religion at the time of writing Qumran manuscripts - differs from others in assigning a key cosmogonic role to the functions of the liver, as a mundus of the body and metaphysical "threshold" placed at the origin of life and of the universe itself.
To the extent that the rhythms and rules of the passage of the great stars and the entire celestial framework on the threshold between light and darkness constituted the key to approaching the Great Secrets of the Cosmos, it was logical to imagine that the Great Babylonian Creation Poem had indicated right in the liver of Tiāmat, the germinator center of the ancient Mother on which Marduk recompiled the new celestial order, the vital seat for the "empathic" understanding of those laws.
Like a mirror of the "enimmatic" configurations that the system would have assumed in its future temporal development, the divination based on the inspection of the liver was considered in Mesopotamia, and then again for the Greeks and the Etruscans, the first and most important form of interrogation of the future destinies. And it is to this more extensive cosmological construction, and not to the only and changing outcomes of the judgments derived from it, that it is more correctly traced the interpretation of one of the most enigmatic archaeological finds of antiquity: the Etruscan Liver of Piacenza.

In 'Weapons of Words: Intertextual Competition in Babylonian Poetry' Selena Wisnom offers an in-depth literary study of three poems central to Babylonian culture: Anzû, Enūma eliš, and Erra and Išum. Fundamentally interconnected, each poem strives to out-do its predecessors and competes to establish its protagonist, its ideals, and its poetics as superior to those that came before them.

The first of its kind in Assyriology, Weapons of Words explores the rich nuances of these poems by unravelling complex networks of allusion. Through a sophisticated analysis of literary techniques, Selena Wisnom traces developments in the Akkadian poetic tradition and demonstrates that intertextual readings are essential for a deeper understanding of Mesopotamian literature.

English title: "Doom Messiah": Myth in the Religious Narratology of Science Fiction and Superhero Comics

| Abstrakt:
Diese Masterarbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Verwendung von Mythen in Science Fiction- und Supermenschencomics. Für dieses Unterfangen wird die Storyline Memento Mori aus der Marvel Comics-Serie 'New Avengers' (2013–2015) unter Federführung des Comicautors Jonathan Hickman herangezogen. Dieser verarbeitet in der Argumentation des Autors mythische Strukturen und Mythenästhetiken über die Vermittlung zweier Science Fiction-Werke ('When Worlds Collide' und 'God Emperor of Dune'), um über das Unterhaltungsmedium Comic eine lebens- bzw. moralphilosophische Diskussion zum Wert des menschlichen Lebens im Angesicht eines todbringenden, sinnlosen Universums anzustellen (d. i. kosmischer Pessimismus). Dafür übernimmt Hickman in Teilen narrative Strukturen aus dem Flutmythos und dem Chaoskampfmotiv (z. B. aus dem babylonischen Schöpfungsbericht), um die Erfahrung einer Menschendämmerung (d. i. die endzeitliche Erwartung des baldigen Aussterbens der Menschheit) zu allegorisieren. Anhand einer Kombination aus religionsästhetischen, -anthropologischen und -geschichtlichen Methoden, die der Autor hier als 'narrative Religionssemiotik' zusammenfasst, untersucht die Arbeit verschiedene Ebenen der Mythenverwendung in Medien. Darunter werden neben dem Produktionsumfeld des Comicautors die genrespezifischen Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten von Science Fiction- und Superheld_innengeschichten in der Analyse berücksichtigt. Die Arbeit legt zudem besonderen Wert auf eine eingehende, kritische Betrachtung der akademischen Mythenbegriffsbildung und plädiert letztlich für eine erzähltheoretische Wende der Mythenforschung in der zeitgenössischen Religionswissenschaft.

| Abstract:
This Master's thesis examines the deployment of myths in the narrative structure and rhetoric of superhero comics within the genre of science fiction. Written by Jonathan Hickman from 2012 to 2015, the Marvel Comics 'Memento Mori' storyline from the New Avengers series is taken as a case study. The central hypothesis is that Hickman uses the mythic structures of the Mesopotamian creation and deluge myths as metaphors to express a worldview here articulated as 'Menschendaemmerung' (the 'Twilight of Humanity'). In his philosophical discussion about morals and the worth of human life in a senseless, misanthropic universe, Hickman's debt to Mesopotamian myth is facilitated by science fiction authors such as Frank Herbert ('Dune'), Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer ('When Worlds Collide'). This thesis further examines Hickman's mythic semiotics with methods adapted from ethnographic writing, aesthetics of religion, and history of religion. Through this methodological mixture, the research takes a heightened interest in genre-specific modes of communication in science fiction comics peopled with superheroes. By doing so, the thesis advances a critical, pluralistic approach to the definition of myth and argues for a narrative turn for the study of myth within the field of religious studies.

Analysis for an astronomical interpretation of the Mesopotamian creation myth Enuma Elish in reference to the theory of Zecharia Sitchin - with analysis of 9 points of criticism posed by the scholar Ian Lawton.
Original Italian: 2009, Revised: September 2012, Translated: dec. 2020

Although pictographic writing was developed in the Climactic Phase of Old Europe between 5300-4300 BCE and equaled a script of its own kind (COG: 319), another or later form of writing was invented in Sumer, or southern Iraq, in the 4th mil. with the earliest literary documents c. 3100 BCE. (POTW: 22.) In addition to these documents, the Enuma Elish (When on High) was the first completed Sumerian text of mythology found in the Nineveh library, c. 668-626 BCE, providing “the earliest evidence of the complete inversion of the mythology of the earlier era.” (MG: 275.)

The first monotheist human, Adam, was originally a god, in the Mesopotamian mythology, just as the Hebrew Genesis reluctantly revealed, and the assertive Quran slightly hinted. Specifically, he was the pre-monotheist, Sumerian god, Idim, who was also called GodEa and many other nicknames over the millenniums. The names Idim and Adam are even linguistically related, according to early Arabic root words analysis. As a Mesopotamian god, Idim was the creator of the first human, and the father of his immediate generations, as he was sometimes referred to in the ancient literature. He was the preserver of life on earth, and the protector of humans against the evil designs of their, and his arch enemy, GodEnlil, the future monotheist Satan. The names and roles of these two important divine characters, GodIdim and GodEnlil, were etched too deep in the collective folk memory of the peoples of the greater Mesopotamia and the Near East, to be completely erased by the new monotheist order. The early monotheists had likely eased in their new believes to the peoples of the region by incorporating these two second highest ranking gods under the supreme god of heavens, GodAnu (or GodAlu), as new altered divine characters. The top god, GodAnu, was then given the post-monotheist role of the one and only god, Alhim or Allah, consistent with the key theme of the Monotheist faiths. Several important narrative details involving the events, characters, and roles in the Hebrew Genesis story of Adam must have predated it for many centuries. The story in the Quran omitted much of the details in Genesis, but included a few unique details on its own. However, all of these ancient stories seem to be independent, original stories borrowing only bits and pieces from each other.

Çivi yazısıyla yazılmış Sami yazıtları arasında ,
adını destanın başlangıç sözcüklerinden alan
Enuma Eliş (Vaktiyle yukarda ) kadar ilgi
uyandırmış yazıt azdır. İlk parçaları
Asurbanipal'in N inova'daki büyük kütüphanesinin
yıkıntıları arasında bulunan bu destan,
Mezopotamyalıların teogoni ve kozmogonileri
hakkında önemli bilgiler vermektedir. Destanın
bir diğer önemi de eski Yakındoğu dinlerinin
karşılaştırmalı elemeleri için temel
olmasıdır. Destan özellikle Eski Ahit'in ilk iki
bölümünde anlatılanlarla önemli benzerlikler
gösterir.

Los mitos de las más diversas culturas, que tienen como propósito relatar el origen del mundo, describen siempre un tiempo primigenio, heterogéneo al actual, caracterizado principalmente por la indiferenciación de los seres o su confusión. Sobre esa realidad caótica y generalmente vinculada con el elemento acuático, se impuso siempre, a través de un crimen fundacional una ruptura.
El presente escrito pretende mostrar cómo es que esa ruptura no es sino la descripción de la génesis de la conciencia, entendida ésta como la escisión que da nacimiento al yo.
Se argumenta como es que ciertas formas de misticismo, particularmente el neoplatonismo, tienen como búsqueda la reintegración del ser a través de la disolución del yo, que no sería, sino el retorno al caos primordial que nos ha dado origen.

The mythology of Babylonian Creation Epic, “Enuma Elish” suggests that goddesses, nature, and chaos represented forces to conquer similar to the Garden of Eden Epic. In both the “Enuma Elish” and the “Garden of Eden,” the centerpiece is either god overcoming the serpent – or – Marduk overcoming the snake/dragon (Tehom the deep). (MG: X1-XV, 298; FAD: 16-17; RGS.)

The prevailing understanding among critical scholars is that Genesis is made up of stories that are parochial versions of popular mythological stories and what they consider to be the unquestionable proof is the story about Noah and the flood that supposedly was copied from the ancient story about Gilgamesh. Moreover, scholars claim that what characterizes all these ancient stories is that they were written by people who had mythical minds and what they wrote had no relationship to the world as we know it today. The article analyses these ancient stories and finds out that the reason modern scholars cannot make any sense of these stories is because they are handicapped by the concept of objective reality so that they interpret all the images used by ancient authors as descriptions of a world that they imagined and had no relationship to the world in which they lived. Scholars claim that the reason ancient writers were unable to provide descriptions of the world in which they lived that made sense is because they had a different kind of mind than that of modern people, a mind that they call mythical and is radically different from their own that they call scientific. As a result of this study, those supposed mythical minds that ancient people had turns out to be a myth in itself, but one created by the scholars themselves due to their inability to read ancient texts, and debunking this myth is meant by demythologizing mythology. Therefore, ancient stories not only were not written by idiots who were unable to describe the world in which they lived, but were masterpieces that not only accurately described the problems that ancient societies faced, but those problems are to a greater extent present today. Although traditional understandings of mythological stories are fascinated with great heroes such as Herakles/Hercules, Achilles, Odysseus/Ulises, Hector, Paris, Aeneas, Gilgamesh, and so on, when read with the proper concepts and using the methodology employed in these studies, they make clear that violence has always led to the collapse of all ancient societies and civilizations, and they do not see or offer any solution to the problem of violence and evil. As the story about Gilgamesh and about Noah prove, the biblical writers not only were aware of the mythological stories that were popular at their time, but unlike those stories that only accurately described the problems that human societies from all times faced without offering any solution, the Bible is the only book that offers a radical and revolutionary solution to the problem of evil in the end of the story about the Flood.

En el horizonte de una investigación amplia acerca de las solidaridades entre las configuraciones de lenguaje (usos poéticos y formas de escritura incluidos) y las maneras de concebir lo real y habitar el mundo, se interrogará el legado de la antigua Mesopotamia (legado que ha sido sólo recientemente puesto a disposición de un público más vasto, llenándose así un vacío importante en la historia y genealogía de las concepciones intelectuales, las cuales suelen ser remontadas sólo hasta el pensamiento de Grecia clásica). Tras un bloque preliminar –en que, guiados por De la Gramatología de J. Derrida, se delimitarán los desafíos mayores que impone un pensamiento de la escritura– la serie de indagaciones a seguir pueden ser agrupadas bajo las rúbricas de dos títulos ya clásicos en los estudios mesopotámicos: Antes de la Musas (Foster) y Antes de la Filosofía (Jacobsen). En el primer bloque, a través de una lectura e interpretación de los llamados ‘textos literarios’ –y poniendo especial atención a las formas poéticas de significación– se examinarán las concepciones mesopotámicas de un ‘lenguaje fuerte’ (Enuma Elish), del origen y funciones de la escritura (El mito de Anzu, Enmerkar y el Señor de Aratta), para luego evaluar las hipótesis dominantes acerca de la intencionalidad de la escritura a la luz del lugar que se asignaba el hombre en el cosmos (el consabido pesimismo existencial mesopotámico: Atrahasis, Gilgamesh). En el segundo bloque del seminario, a través de una lectura y análisis de los llamados ‘textos científicos’, se examinará cómo, impactados por su propio invento, se desarrolla en Mesopotamia una racionalidad y conciencia histórica bajo la lógica de su escritura, introduciéndose un giro frente al pensamiento mitopoético al transformarse la comprensión y experiencia del espacio y el tiempo. Se pondrá atención a una serie de saberes (que en Mesopotamia se hallaban tramados en la figura del escriba y sólo pueden ser separados desde una perspectiva moderna) para evaluar hasta qué punto la semiótica, la hermenéutica y las estrategias específicas de la escritura se imponen en la taxonomía de lo real (análisis de ‘listas léxicas’), en la ‘ciencia’ de la adivinación deductiva como lectura de la escritura del mundo (tratados adivinatorios), en la medicina diagnóstica como lectura de la sintomatología del cuerpo (tratados médicos), y, sobre todo, en la historiografía como sometimiento de la dispersión temporal a formas de narración que configuran la experiencia histórica (crónicas).

Jordan Peterson’s books and lectures have struck a deep chord with audiences hungry for the kind of insights that Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell once extracted from mythological sources. Central to Peterson's cosmology is a perceived virtue in slaying dragons—a metaphor for controlling chaos and dominating the unruly “feminine” principle of nature—which he sees exemplified in the Babylonian creation epic Enuma Elish. Peterson argues that the archetypal significance of this dragon-slaying hero story has roots in nothing less than our evolutionary history. But according to Peterson's own sources—as well as contemporary scholars—Enuma Elish is more correctly understood as a political work, likely created to justify changes to the Babylonian pantheon made during a period of imperial power consolidation. This paper analyzes the discrepancy between Peterson’s view and the consensus of scholars on Enuma Elish, as well as some of the the social, political, and environmental implications of that discrepancy.

Presented at
Conference: Responding to Peterson: An Intervention In Lieu of a Debate
Boise State University
October 20, 2018

As the title itself shows, we do not aim to complete a study that seeks for evidence to promote an atheistic identity in Antiquity, whether Classical or not. Here, we will discuss the possibility of the study of Atheism as a theme, by finding theoretical and methodological resources that we will analyze, and proposing several questions around this theme, with studies on Etymology, Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Israel, as well as a hypothetical bridge to the Greek world. We will work with Portuguese words like ateu and deus, their etymology, and with theories about ancient beliefs, with mythology, cosmogony, translation issues, resulting in knowledge that will help us to dialogue with our research proposals, e.g. the universe of artistic activity, as well as skepticism and pessimism. Whatever may be the suggested theoretical resource, we will consider the interdisciplinary dialogue between Antiquity and nowadays.

In his publication "Die Physik der Finsternis" (in German) the author postulates a 3rd Millennium Cosmology and sheds revolutionizing lights on Jewish mysticism and rabbinical Kabbalah.

Proceeding from his groundbreakuing discovery of the concealed meaning of the Three Mother-Letters and their fundamental connection with Special Relativity, he can open up breathtaking views onto dimensions of existence that have been subject to persistent tabooing for many thousands of years involving the biblical Kings of Edom, Daath and the mysteries of the Sitra Achara and the principal doctrine of Shabbataism, that is  Two Lights Cosmology developped by Nathan of Gaza, but also, and prominently, the occult messages embobied in the works of the famous American writer HP Lovecraft centering around a mythical race of divine beings.

All these threads the reader finds combined in more than 350 pages of "Die Physik der Finsternis". Apart from that, his book also provides hitherto unexplained details of tantric, auto-erotic techniques in close connection with all the mentioned subject-matters.

The Dragon, the Mountain, and the Nations investigates the origins, manifestations, and meanings of a myth that plays a major role in the Hebrew Bible and a substantial role in the New Testament: the dragon-slaying myth.

The dragon-slaying myth has a hoary ancestry, extending back long before its appearance in the Hebrew Bible, and a vast range, spanning as far as India and perhaps even Japan. This book is a chronicle of its trajectories and permutations. The target of this study is the biblical myth. This target, however, is itself a fluid tradition, responding to and reworking extrabiblical myths and reworking its own myths. In this study, Robert Miller examines the dragon and dragon-slaying myth throughout India, the proto-Indo-European cultures, and Iran, and among the Hittites as well as other ancient Near Eastern and Mesopotamian traditions, and then throughout the Bible, including Genesis, the Psalms, Daniel, and ultimately the New Testament and the book of Revelation. He shows how the myth pervades many cultures and many civilizations and that the dragon is always conquered, despite its many manifestations. In his conclusion, Miller points out the importance of the myth as a hermeneutic for understanding key parts of biblical literature.

The Enuma Elish as an ancient comic strip Scenes from the Enuma Elish are depicted on many neo-Assyrian cylinder seals. If we link these scenes to the text, then a kind of comic strip emerges. In this essay I begin to elaborate the Enuma Elish in comic form, which, as you may understand, is far from complete. Besides that I also realize that not everyone will agree with my results.

Sumeria and Babylon departed from goddess religions as discussed previously in the Babylonian myth of Tiamat and Marduk. Son (God) Marduk killed his mother then smashed her carcass but kept her skin. (BAC: 18.) (See, Killing of Rahabsu,  (or Rahab) in Psalm 89: 9-10.) Introducing this entry is the earlier Enuma Elish summary in RGS, Proto Bronze Age Crete.

Vi invito a preparare uno zaino leggero e ad unirvi a me, addentrandovi in queste pagine come fareste in un antico viaggio nel mare primordiale, nel cuore dell’Abisso e del Chaos.
In queste acque nessuna meta finale è prefissata, nessun approdo è certo, ovunque la lettura riuscirà a portarvi, avrà a che fare esclusivamente con il rapporto che sceglierete di intrattenere con le onde.
Le stesse onde che nel testo si muovono sinuosamente nelle curve delle eMMe, fluendo direttamente in MUMMU-TIAMAT, la Grande Madre

This is a chapter from Part 3 of 'The Sacred History of Being' (forthcoming 2015). It looks at the names of the gods listed as aspects of Marduk in the Enuma Elish (the liturgy of the Babylonian New Year Festival), and their associated properties and attributes, as an aggregation of the characteristics understood to be necessary for the proper exercise of Mesopotamian kingship.

In 1650 BCE, migrating Hurrians entered Syria–Palestine. Their presence and contributions were significant including ancient Middle Eastern languages and the Hurrian Creation Epic known as the Enuma Elish, initiated a new order. Various Babylonian, Hurrian, Phoenician, and Greek interpretations of this Creation Epic indicate that the originators were the Hurrians/Babylonians. Marduk who replaced the god Enlil, slaughtered dragon–goddess Tiamat. * (OGR: 30, 58-63; MG: 273-298.)
* (Enlil was king of all lands and father of all the gods. (KSH: 224.))

A brief examination of differing exegetical approaches to Genesis 1, and the development of their main arguments, inevitably leads to the conclusion that the biblical creation account is best understood in its proper polemical/idolatrous context (as a direct response to it) rather than in a modern-day scientific description of events.

The metaphor is a hallmark of Classical Hebrew poetry. Some metaphors, such as “Yhwh is king” or “Yhwh is warrior,” play a foundational role. The same does not hold for metaphors from the fishing industry. Because they had access to only two major freshwater sources, archaeological research demonstrates that this industry did not play a major socioeconomic role in ancient Israel. Fishing has nevertheless made a substantial contribution to prophetic and wisdom literature. All metaphors manifest reality, but given the physical circumstances of a largely agrarian, nonmarine society, what does the sustained presentation of fishing metaphors in the Hebrew Bible communicate?

Examining the use of fishing images in the Hebrew Bible is a formidable task that demands an open mind and a capacity to mine the gamut of contemporaneous evidence. In Fishers of Fish and Fishers of Men, Tyler Yoder presents the first literary study devoted to the fishing images used in the Hebrew Scriptures as well as in the Mesopotamian textual records. This calls for a penetrating look into cultural contact with Israel’s neighbors to the east (Mesopotamia) and southwest (Egypt). Though nearly all fishing metaphors in the Hebrew Bible carry overt royal or divine connotations that mirror uses well-attested in Mesopotamian literature, this comparative analysis remains a largely untapped area of research. In this study of the diverse literary qualities of fishing images, Yoder offers a holistic understanding of how one integral component of ancient Near Eastern society affected the whole, bringing together the assemblage of disparate materials related to this field of study to enable scholars to integrate these data into related research and move the conversation forward.

The Book of Isaiah eloquently incorporates a plethora of references to mammals and birds, which have yielded different interpretations by theologians and translators.  The context of Ancient Near East mythology and the themes throughout the Hebrew Bible provide a backdrop for Isaiah’s rich symbolic meaning in his zoological motifs. The employment of natural imagery expresses prophetic imagination as a means of hope, and defining reality for Israel’s exile in Babylon serves as a model for 21st century believers living in North American exile.

Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal are well known to scholars of ancient Near Eastern prophecy, thanks to their affinity for prophecy and the prophetic goddess Ištar in particular, which resulted in the preservation of oracular material in a manner not attested for other Sargonid kings. It has been suggested that one of the reasons for this affinity was the reliance of both kings on prophetic legitimation to buttress their contested claims to kingship. This paper explores how Assurbanipal in particular also relies on Ištar to legitimate his military activities, also as a result of the difficult political circumstances in which he was obliged to operate. This legitimation takes the form of allusion to Enuma Elish and the accrual of the characteristics of its warrior hero to the goddess Ištar.

El seminario abordará la tradición de la filosofía del lenguaje, con énfasis preferente en la antigüedad griega y la época moderna, reconociendo sus matrices fundamentales y proponiendo un contrapunto con el trabajo y la eficacia poética del lenguaje.
1. Examinar la disputa por el logos y el trabajo protagónico de la metáfora en la Grecia Clásica, con particular énfasis en los legados de los sofistas, Platón y Aristóteles.
2. Examinar la pugna de y en torno a los lenguajes originarios, lenguajes universales y lenguajes reales en el pensamiento moderno, con particular énfasis en sus usos y eficacias, así como en las relaciones entre lenguaje y pensamiento en el contexto de las concepciones del lenguaje de los siglos XVII y XVIII.
3. Examinar la revolución copernicana del lenguaje como forma poética del mundo, donde se determina el fundamento, la diversidad y la transformación de la representación humana, con especial énfasis en los legados de Vico, Hamann, Herder y Humboldt.

Resumo Este artigo examina as conexões da filosofia grega com as sabedorias pré-platônicas da Grécia e das culturas do Oriente Médio, detendo-se no exemplo de Tales, considerado tanto um dos sete sábios, quanto escolhido como o primeiro dos filósofos por Platão e Aristóteles. Concluo que, sendo debitário de outros sábios da área de convergência cultural do Mediterrâneo oriental, o filósofo não se dissolve nessa categoria, apresentando-se como uma autêntica criação grega. Palavras-chave: Platão. Tales. Filósofo. Filosofia. Literatura Sapiencial. Abstract This paper examines the connections of Greek philosophy with the pre-Platonic wisdoms of Greece and the cultures of the Middle East, dwelling on the example of Tales, considered both of the seven sages, and chosen as the first of the philosophers by Plato and Aristotle. I conclude that the philosopher owes much to other wises of the cultural convergence area of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, but does not dissolve into this category, presenting himself as a Greek creation.

ABSTRAK. Artikel ini merupakan sebuah kajian untuk menyodorkan gagasan teologis narasi penciptaan berdasarkan kebudayaan Timur Dekat Kuno. Dengan menggunakan pendekatan historis-kultural dan memakai metode studi komparatif, artikel ini akan membedah narasi penciptaan dalam Kejadian 1:1-2:3 melalui persamaan dan perbedaaan dengan Enuma Elish. Berdasarkan asumsi umum bahwa adanya kekerabatan kultur kultus di Fertile Crescent, artikel ini hendak mencari gagasan-gagasan teologis yang sejatinya hendak diungkapkan oleh penulis kitab Kejadian. Hasil dari pendekatan historikal kultural menyingkapkan bahwa penulis kitab Kejadian menaruh perhatian terhadap dua kerangka besar, yaitu konsep pencipta dan konsep ciptaan. Tentang konsep pencipta, hal-hal yang terungkap adalah penegasan terhadap konsep monoteisme, kenihilan teogoni dan ketiadaan konflik ilahi. Sedangkan terhadap konsep ciptaan, creatio ex nihilo dalam Kejadian 1:1-2:3, keteraturan dan kesempurnaan adalah hakikat dan sifat ciptaan. Kata Kunci: studi komparatif, literatur timur dekat kuno, kejadian, enuma elish, narasi penciptaan.

The Babylonian Enūma eliš opens with the well-known motif of the primeval waters covering the world. Although this motif is very important in Enūma eliš itself and in other cosmogonies of the Ancient Near East, it is not attested in identified Mesopotamian creation accounts older than Enūma eliš and it can be found just in the old Babylonian divine name dama- TU-an-ki „Mother, creator of heaven and earth“, a byname of the goddess Namma, the personified ground waters. This paper provides a brief overview of the motifs of personified waters in Mesopotamian texts of the third and second millennia. The sources argue for the existence of a southern Mesopotamian tradition with the personified ground waters and a western tradition
with the personified sea. These traditions were combined together in Enūma eliš, where the male god Apsû embodied the ground waters. Abzu/Apsû doesn’t appear to have been personified until the second half of the second millennium. The paper closes with a critique of Lambert’s etymology of the name Namma.