827: Creation Myths

1
8/27 Creation Myths
2
Mesopotamia
3
A Babylonian Theogony

• Culture Mesopotamian
• Author unknown
• Time 2nd-1st millenium BCE
• Type poetry
• Theme the birth of the gods, succession of
  generations by incest/murder
• Local Perspective (City of Dunnu)

4
Babylonian Theogony Plot

• Creation of Sea from Earth
• Earth and Hain create Amakandu (god of wild
  animals)
• Earth and Hain (?) built city of Dunnu, give it
  to Amakandu to rule.
• Earth and Amakandu have sex Amakandu kills his
  father Hain.
• Amakandu marries Sea, his sister.

5
Plot summary, continued

• Amakandu and Sea produce Lahar, god of cattle.
• Lahar kills A. and marries his mother.
• Sea murders her mother, Earth.
• Lahars son marries River, his sister, then kills
  his parents assumes kingship.
• The son of Lahars son kills his father and
  mother, marries his sister Gaum assumes
  kingship.
• Son of this god marries his sister Ningeshtinna,
  kills his father and mother, assumes kingship.

6
Narrative/Thematic Patterns

• Creation via sexual reproduction
• Marriage/incest
• Seizure of kingship through violence (murder)
• City-founding

7
Enuma Elish Babylonian Creation Epic

• Culture Mesopotamian
• Author unknown
• Time 2nd-1st millenium BCE
• Type epic poetry
• Theme birth of the world, gods and succession of
  generations through violence, est. of human life
  to serve the gods.
• Names to know Tiamat, Marduk

8
Plot Summary

• Apsu and Tiamat mix, producing divine offspring,
  who then also reproduce.
• Younger gods too noisy in play, disturb older
  gods. Apsu complains to Tiamat, angering her.

9
Enuma Elish, continued

• Apsu plots against his offspring Ea, god of
  fresh water, wisdom, incant- ations, reveals
  them.
• Ea kills Apsu with Damkina he creates Marduk.
• Anu gives Marduk 4 winds, which disturb the other
  gods.
• Gods complain to Tiamat, who agrees to fight.

10
Enuma Elish, continued

• The younger gods fear to face Tiamat Ea calls
  out Marduk, who tells his father Anshar, You
  shall soon set your foot upon the neck of Tiamat
  (p. 38).
• Marduk accepts challenge arms.

11
Enuma Elish, continued

• Marduk and Tiamat fight Tiamat defeated.
• Marduk slays Tiamats creatures.
• The Lord rested and inspected her corpse. He
  divided (it) created marvels from it . . . (p.
  39)

12
Marduk creates our world with Tiamats corpse

• He sliced her in half like a fish for drying
  Half of her he put up to roof the sky . . . Her
  waters he arranged so that they could not escape
  . . . He levelled Apsu . . . He opened the
  Euphrates and the Tigris from her eyes. . . He
  piled up clear-cut mountains from her udder . . .
  He tied her tail across . . as the cosmic bond .
  . . He set her thigh to make fast the sky, with
  half of her he made a roof, he fixed the earth.
  (pp. 39-40)

13
Founding of Babylon

• Marduk obtains kingship, creates Babylon as the
  center of religion and his cult.

14
Creation of Humanity

• Marduk creates humanity, out of the blood of
  Qingu, god on Tiamats side, to serve the gods.

15
Egypt
16
The Memphite Theology

• Culture Egyptian
• Time c. 2500 BC
• Type prose text
• Author unknown
• Name to Know Ptah
• Theme succession of kingship of Egypt

17
Ptah, Creator God

• Ptah is the intellectual principle of creation
• Most ancient and pre-eminent of gods
• God of Memphis, the ancient political capital of
  Egypt
• Created the Nine Gods (Ennead) by means of his
  tongue and heart they are his teeth and lips.
• Then Ptah created cities and sanctuaries for
  gods.

18
Ptah creates establishes order by speaking his
will

• It is Ptah who has given life to all the gods
  through this heart and through this tongue . .
  Ptah is in every body, and he, Ptah, is in every
  mouth of all gods, all men, all cattle, all
  creeping things, whatever lives . . . (p. 15)

19
Kingship of Egypt

• A succession tale
• Osiris had drowned Geb first divides Egypt
  between Osiris sons, Horus and Seth.
• Geb changes his mind, gives all of Egypt to
  Horus, who then rules both Upper and Lower Egypt.

20
Isis Nephthys save Osiris

• Osiris drowned.
• Isis and her sister Nephthys, at the command of
  Horus, grasp Osiris and bring him to land.
• Osiris rejoined the gods becomes Lord of the
  Dead (green skin is a mark of his rebirth).

21
The Pyramid Texts of Unas
22
The Pyramid Texts of Unas

• Culture Egyptian
• Time c. 2300 BCE
• Author unknown
• Genre poetry (orational style with a strong,
  regular rhythm)
• Context Carved on walls of burial chambers in
  pyramids.
• Content incantations and spells to protect and
  to promote the resurrection and well-being of the
  deceased king.

23
Stages of the Resurrection of the King and His
Ascent into the Sky

• The awakening in the tomb from the sleep of death
• The ascent to the sky
• The admission into the company of the gods
• The texts from the Unas pyramid are the oldest we
  have certain elements, such as the cannibalism,
  disappear in later tombs.

24
Pyramid Texts of Unas

• Continue themes we see in creation myths, such as
  succession of generations by violence.
• Utterance 309 continues theme of humanitys
  servant status to the gods Unas is gods
  steward . . . Unas does what Unas is told.

25
The Great Hymn to the Aten

• Culture Egypt
• Time 14th c. BCE
• Author unknown
• Genre hymn (poetry)
• Context Amarna revolution, Akhenatens attempt
  to center worship on the sun disk Aten, a
  manifestation of Re.

26
The Great Hymn to the Aten

• Composed for recitation by the king.
• Early form of monotheism (O Sole God beside whom
  there is none! p. 31 line 65)
• All life and happiness comes from the Aten.

27
Great Hymn to the Aten

• Expresses the cosmopolitan humanist outlook of
  the New Kingdom - all peoples are creatures of
  the sun-god, who has made them diverse in skin
  color, speech, and character. No claim for
  Egyptian superiority.

28
Hymns from the Rig Veda

• Culture Indian
• Time 1500-1000 BCE
• Genre poetry (hymns), written in Sanskrit
• Author unknown
• Transmitted orally for over 2,000 years.

29
The Sacrifice of Primal Man

• Basic plot the gods create the world by
  dismembering the cosmic giant, Purusa, the
  primeval man who is the victim in a Vedic
  sacrifice.
• Compare with creation of our world out of
  Tiamats body.

30
The Sacrifice of Primal Man

• Primal Man (Purusa) 3/4 of him is the gods, 1/4
  all mortal creatures.
• Geography 3/4 of the Man rose, creating the
  divine realm, 1/4 remains below, the mortal
  world.
• Viraj, the active, creative female principle was
  born from Primal Man, then he was reborn in her.
• The gods sacrificed Man spring was the clarified
  butter, summer the fuel, autumn the oblation.
• The Creator made the ghee into beasts.
• From this sacrifice all hymns (vedas) were born.

31
Creation of Classes

• The four classical Indian social classes were
  created out of Purusas body parts
• Brahman from his mouth
• Warrior from his arms
• The common people from his thighs
• Servants from his feet

32
Creation of Vedic Gods

• Moon born from Purusas mind
• Sun born from his eye
• Indra and Agni born from his mouth (image is
  Agni)
• Wind arose from his vital breath
• More geography his head became the sky, his
  feet, the earth, his ears, the quarters of the
  sky.

33
In the Beginning (Creation Hymn)

• This short hymn is conceptually provocative and
  has provoked hundreds of complex commentaries
  among Indian theologians and western scholars. It
  puzzles and challenges us, raises unanswerable
  questions, poses paradoxes.

34
Greece Hesiods Theogony

• Culture Greek
• Time 8th c. BCE
• Author Hesiod
• Genre epic poetry
• Theme origins of the universe and of the gods
• Names to know Gaia, Kronos

35
Hesiods Theogony

• Themes
• creation via sexual reproduction violence
  between the generations Kingship gained by
  castration of father (compare with
  Osiris/Seth/Horus)

36
Near Eastern Influence

• It is widely agreed now that the Theogony shows
  NE influence. There were extensive trade contacts
  between Asia Minor and Greece in the Bronze Age
  and Archaic period (time of Hesiod).

37
The Hittite Kingship in Heaven

• In this Mesopotamian succession myth, the god
  Kumarbi attains the kingship by biting off the
  genitals of his father Anu. This myth was current
  at the time of Hesiod. Compare the common
  thematic patterns.

38
Theogony Structure

• Invocation of the Muses (source of creativity)
• Introduction of narrator his abilities
  (god-given)
• Account of creation from the beginning
• Chaos a yawning
• Gaia (earth) Eros (sexual love, principle of
  attraction)
• Creation by asexual and sexual reproduction
  incest
• Succession of generations, struggles for power
• Motifs tricky females, violent males

39
First Generation of Gods
40
Earth Sky Reproduce
41
Conflict Between Generations I

• Ouranos (Sky) prevents his offspring from being
  born (he hides them in Gaia, Earth).
• Gaia makes a sickle and asks her children to
  castrate their father, so they can be born.
• Kronos volunteers and accomplishes her plan.
• Blood and genitals are productive from them come
  the Furies, the Giants, and the goddess of
  sexuality, Aphrodite, among others.

42
Conflict Between Generations, II

• Kronos marries his sister Rhea.
• Kronos eats his children when they are born. Rhea
  tricks him into eating a swaddled stone instead
  of baby Zeus.
• Adult Zeus forces his father to regurgitate his
  siblings, the Olympians.
• Titanomachy war between the Titans and the
  younger, Olympian gods.

43
Zeus kills Typhoeus (son of Gaia) in Titanomachy