Tiamat is part of the mythology of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, and Babylonian peoples, who believe in many gods, demons, and spirits that represent the natural forces in the world, making her a well-known deity in the various anthologies of these cultures.
Who is Tiamat?
This mythical character is the symbol associated with chaos and the creation of the earth. She is also presented as a beautiful, feminine woman, a shining being like the disorder of the emergence of creation.
On the other hand, she is recognized as the main goddess of the ocean, thus being the one who gave birth to Apsu, god of fresh water, who produced the lesser deities. However, there are different versions of this story that point in different directions:
- Initially, it is thought that she was born through a sacred marriage between fresh water and salt water, which created the cosmos through successive generations.
- They are considered to be the very personification of the struggle against chaos and are therefore classified as the main monsters of chaos.
What does this mythical being look like?
Modern writers generally describe her as a snake or dragon, these features taking on greater significance because the Enuma Elish claims that Tiamat had dragons and snakes as children, although these appear in a larger and more general list of monsters, pointing out that they could even be scorpion men and mermen, indicating that none of them resembled their mother or were merely sea creatures.
Likewise, it characterizes her as a woman who is only heart, arteries, and blood on the inside, but on the outside she has a tail, thighs, belly, udders, ribs, neck, head, skull, eyes, nostrils, a mouth, and lips.
It should be noted that in 1970, this character became popular as a multi-headed dragon that is part of the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.
Goddess in Culture
Tiamat appears as a symbol in culture, one of which is a five-headed dragon in the animated series Dracónica, in which she is a neutral threat and the danger to the protagonists, as well as the opponent of Venge, the primordial enemy.
On the other hand, her name is also used by a Swedish band founded in 1988 by Johan Edlund.
Finally, she appears in the Final Fantasy saga as a boss who appears when summoned, and her number of heads changes depending on the installment.
Tiamat in mythology
In Babylonian mythology, this monster goddess continues to be the controller of chaos and creation. Her important role is recounted in the epic poem Enûma Elish, which tells how the world came into being.
According to the story, this character existed before the sky and the earth, as she was the goddess of salt water and the mother of all that exists, which is why the sea is presented as one of the great powers of chaos.
Likewise, the legend written in 1,200 BC by this character on some tablets recounts how Tiamat married Apsu, the male being who controls fresh water. Together they created the rest of the gods and animals, but their overwhelmed father decided to destroy them.
However, Ea, the god of magic, discovered his plan and intervened, putting him into a deep sleep and then killing him. But this minor deity was no match for Tiamat, who, furious at the death of her husband, created an army of demons and placed them under the control of Kingu, her current husband and one of her sons, to fight against the gods.
Marduk was the representative of these lesser gods, but his only condition was that they name him “prince of the gods or supreme god.” They granted him their powers, and when Kingu saw him arrive, he was paralyzed, and Tiamat, with her mouth open, was killed.
Finally, Kingu’s blood, after his death, was responsible for creating humans when it was scattered.
For its part, it was Tiamat’s body that, when separated, created the sky from its upper part and the earth from its lower part, as well as the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, places where the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations lived seven thousand years ago.
