Tiamat

In Mesopotamian religion, Tiamat (Akkadian: 𒀭𒋾𒀀𒆳 DTI.AMAT or 𒀭𒌓𒌈 DTAM.TUM, Ancient Greek: Θαλάττη, romanized: Thaláttē)[1] is the primordial sea, mating with Abzû (Apsu), the groundwater, to produce the gods in the Babylonian epic Enûma Elish, which translates as "when on high."

In the Enûma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, Tiamat bears the first generation of deities after mingling her waters with those of Apsu, her consort.

[2][3] She is ultimately defeated and slain by Enki's son, the storm-god Marduk, but not before she conjures forth monsters whose bodies she fills with "poison instead of blood."

[4] Thorkild Jacobsen and Walter Burkert both argue for a connection with the Akkadian word for sea, tâmtu (𒀀𒀊𒁀), following an early form, ti'amtum.

The later form Θαλάττη, thaláttē, which appears in the Hellenistic Babylonian writer Berossus' first volume of universal history, is clearly related to Greek Θάλαττα, thálatta, an Eastern variant of Θάλασσα, thalassa, 'sea'.

[7] The Babylonian epic Enuma Elish is named for its incipit: "When on high [or: When above]," the heavens did not yet exist nor the earth below, Abzu the subterranean ocean was there, "the first, the begetter", and Tiamat, the overground sea, "she who bore them all"; they were "mixing their waters".

In the Enuma Elish, Tiamat’s physical description includes a tail, a thigh, "lower parts" (which shake together), a belly, an udder, ribs, a neck, a head, a skull, eyes, nostrils, a mouth, and lips.

This angered Kingu, their son, who reported the event to Tiamat, whereupon she fashioned eleven monsters to battle the deities in order to avenge Abzu's death.

Tiamat was in possession of the Tablet of Destinies, and in the primordial battle, she gave the relic to Kingu, the deity she had chosen as her lover and the leader of her host, and who was also one of her children.

“It has long been realized that the Marduk epic, for all its local coloring and probable elaboration by the Babylonian theologians, reflects in substance older Sumerian material,” American Assyriologist E. A. Speiser remarked in 1942,[13] adding, “The exact Sumerian prototype, however, has not turned up so far.” However, this surmise that the Babylonian version of the story is based upon a modified version of an older epic, in which Enlil, not Marduk, was the god who slew Tiamat,[14] has been more recently dismissed as "distinctly improbable.

[16] It was once thought that the myth of Tiamat was one of the earliest recorded versions of a Chaoskampf, a mythological motif that generally involves the battle between a culture hero and a chthonic or aquatic monster, serpent, or dragon.