Review of Enūma Eliš (ca. 1100 BCE)
Anonymous (writer).
Read in 2025.
Read in Leonard William King’s 1902 translation of then-known fragments to English.
Gods arise, make war with one another, and create the world of human life from the corpse of Tiamat, one of the first gods.
The repetition typical of oral literature, together with the many lacunae, make the text somewhat tedious. It is a solemn epic with only a couple of strong images. The strongest is the identity of the wicked old god’s corpse with the universe as we know it. It’s an example of recycling, inspired by nature’s cycles, that portrays the oldest and strongest forces in the universe as anthropomorphic yet basically disinterested in humankind.
That motif puts both the writer and the reader in an unprivileged position inside the corpse, but it is not free from narcissism. It is only one step removed from later notions of gods creating the universe for our sake, because as it turns out, on the sixth of the epic’s seven tablets, the god Marduk says:
“I will create man who shall inhabit [the earth],”
“That the service of the gods may be established, and that [their] shrines [may be built].
This is charmingly ambiguous. In its fragmentary form, you can read it as Marduk coddling humankind, promising to “oppress” the other gods, our natural enemies. At the same time, you can read it as Marduk establishing a prison within the corpse, enslaving humans to serve the bloody-minded rebels who killed the true creators of a universe that is dead and rotting. You can see why this creation myth has inspired a lot of black-metal music.
References here: Genesis (ca. 500–400 BCE), “Ubbo-Sathla” (1933), Alien (1979).