in most mythical stories elements of nature are always considered divine and such was
the case for mesopotamian myths too tiamet is believed to be a primordial goddess of the sea
who mated with apsu the deity of groundwater to birth younger gods in mesopotamian religion
she is a representation of chaos she is addressed as a beautiful and glowing woman
the tiamat mythology is said to be divided into two halves in the first she is a creation
goddess who quietly creates the cosmos via consecutive generations through a sacred union
between diverse waters while in the second she is regarded as the ugly symbol of primordial chaos
images of a sea serpent or dragon have been used to identify her in certain instances for millennia
scholars dispute whether tiamet was a goddess or not many said she was a monster or demon
the incarnation of another god or even a mortal dragon so strong that all other dragons worshiped
her as their queen and creator whatever she was scholars knew she was strong and was adored as a
goddess by evil dragons to be very precise she is a babylonian mythological figure the enuma elish
a story about the creation of babylonian culture is the only myth that features her she is a fairly
confusing character in this tale since she is originally represented as a positive mother-like
figure who gave birth to the first generation of gods and later changed into an evil character
and despite the fact that there are two different versions of her personality in sumerian writings
they both describe her in the same way the evil five-headed dragon queen she had one head for each
color of a dragon black blue green red and white and each head possessed the power of different
dragons her body was a fusion of many colorful dragon forms with a multi-colored coat to match
it also had a long tail with a poisonous sting at the tip but if both versions of
the myth describer in the same way what is the story behind her transformation from goddess
to the queen of dragons to give you an overview it all started with enuma elish the oldest book in
the babylonian epic of creation where tiamat bears the first generation of gods with her husband
apsu who subsequently declares war on gods and is later killed by them for his throne tiamat becomes
enraged and transforms them into a giant sea dragon to take revenge on her husband's killers
however she was not able to win against all the gods and was killed by them just like her husband
both their bodies became the origins of earth sky and the life on earth tiamet was arrogant envious
and spiteful she was never forgiving of betrayals and was only interested in gaining more power and
fortune she despised humans considering them to be nothing more than worthless puppets in her plans
she was beautiful and mesmerizing when she needed to be but she always returned to her true
nature of being evil she was always surrounded by dragons that she used to collect treasures for her
her rage arrogance and demonic personality are carefully depicted in enuma elish tiamat and
her husband apsu played the central character in one of its legends apsu was the god of fresh and
underground waters whereas tiamet was the goddess of the salty seawater together they gave birth to
the first generation of gods the first two gods born were lamu and lahamu who later gave birth
to anshar and kishar eventually they started to create the universe and two more generations of
gods were born apsu and tiamat found the younger gods to be a threat to them but just like any
mother tiamat ignored the troubles they caused apsu on the other hand had had enough of their
actions and planned to kill them tiamat tried to control his anger but apsu went ahead to kill his
children however before apsu could kill all the gods they discovered apsu's plane and decided
to kill apsu instead among them were god ia the god of knowledge and magical powers he used his
magical powers to put absolute asleep and murdered him he was then thrown into the heavens and the
night sky and his body gave birth to land and laid the foundation for the creation of earth
it was also after this that marduk was born and given the four winds to play with
marduk was thought to be more powerful than the other gods and he was characterized in the
writings as dazzling mighty and with the power of the ten gods some of the younger gods were
jealous of him and complained to tiamunt these complaints triggered tiamat to take revenge for
the loss of her beloved husband as she could not fight alone she gave birth to 11 monsters known
as tiamat's creatures who could serve her in the battle against the younger gods she also chose her
son the god chingu to head her army of monsters and gave him the tablets of destiny it is believed
that whoever holds them possesses the ultimate authority over the heavens earth and underworld
when the gods learned about tiamat's plan to destroy them they attempted to kill tiamat too
but were unsuccessful the only choice left was to seek marduk the strongest of them all
he took advantage of the situation and made a deal with the other gods that if he won
he would sit on the throne and control other gods following an agreement he offered to battle
against tiamut and only after an intense battle with the power of all the other gods behind him
was he finally able to defeat tiamunt in spite of her having the tablets of destiny he did so
by shooting an arrow into her belly splitting her down the middle following this he was given
all power as agreed upon by the other gods and he created and ruled both heaven and the underworld
marduk created the entire planet and using the divided body of tema created life on earth
finally he formed heaven and earth from her tears and her weeping eyes gave birth
to tigris in euphrates river as well as the milky way chingu too was killed and his blood
was used by ia to cast a number of spells that resulted in the creation of lulu the first man
so this was the myth behind tiamat if you ever travel to the middle east you will find that
the tigris and euphrates river are the most spiritually renowned and largest river systems
there interestingly both these rivers have also been mentioned in the bible in the book of genesis
as the rivers that flowed out of eden to water the garden don't you find it amazing how all the
different mythologies have so much overlap we surely do now if you enjoyed this video
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so we can bring more of such stories to you in the future we'll see you next time until then goodbye