Enuma Elish--- a creation liturgy

Sweet and Biter Water

The creation of place and the evolvement of humanity (a speckle in the creation of matter), have awed and puzzled the human kind. Our very existence is distinctly situated in space and time. The western thought and theory repeatedly denies the void and navigates itself in very topological interpretations.


The following is from the Enuma Elish, a creation liturgy that probably dates back to 1900 before the reign of Hammurabi (Poems of Heaven and Hell from Ancient Mesopotamia)

When there was no heaven,
no earth, no height, no depth, no name,
when Apsu was alone,
the sweet water, the first begetter; and Tiamat
the bitter water,a nd that
return to the womb, her Mummu,
When there were no gods--

When sweet and bitter
mingled together, no reed was plaited, no rushes
muddied the water,
the gods were nameless, natureless, futureless, then
from Apsu to Tiamat
in the water gods were created, in the waters
silt precipitated.....

Then Maduk considered Tiamat. He skimmed spume from the bitter sea, heaped up the clouds, sprindrift of wet and wind and cooling rain, the spittle of Tiamat.
With his own hands from the setaming mist he spread the clouds. He pressed hard down the head of water, heaping mountains over it, opening the springs to flow: Euphrates and Tigris rose from her eyes, but he closed the nostrils and held back their springhead.
He piled huge mountains on her paps and through them drove water-holes to channel the deep sources; and high pverhead he arched her tail; locked in to the wheel of heaven; the pit was under his feet, between was the crotch, the sky fulcrum. Now the earth had foundations and the sky its mantle.