Enuma Elish

Mythology serves to create an explanation for why the world is the way it is. All religions have mythology in them and myths help people understand history. Myth can mean so many different things to different people. Some myths are total fiction, while others may have a hint of truth in them. But most myths are more of a symbolic and metaphoric truth, rather than a literal truth, because most of the time myths cannot be proven and people are not trying to prove that they are true. Myths become true to the people who believe in them and they use them as a sort of lens through which they see the world. They use myths to create explanations for themselves as to why the world is the way it is and they use them to help cope with the difficulties of life. Myths are a natural outgrowth of our imagination and our passions.

The Enuma Elish is a Babylonian creation story comprised of seven tablets. It was thought to be used during celebrations and ceremonies in 12th century B.C. The story focuses on many Gods, primarily Tiamat and Marduk. The title, Enuma Elish means “when on high” in old Babylonian.

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece. Modern scholars refer to, and study, the myths, in an attempt to throw light on the religious and political institutions of Ancient Greece, its civilization, and to gain understanding of the nature of myth-making itself.

Next, the appearance of water or setting is brought up by both texts. In (Genesis 1:7), “ God made the expanse, and it separated the water ….”, which gives the establishment of water in the story having water. While in the (Creation of Hymn: line 1,3) water is given a description as “... bottomlessly deep?” and water was also described as “ The life force was covered with emptiness, all this was water….”. Both articles, give statements where water is mystical, deep and empty.

     Mythology is a way that the ancient societies explained why things are the way they are and how they came to being. Two ancient societies are infamous for their mythology. These societies are Greece and Rome. Great authors were made be the mythological works they wrote. Homer was a famous author who is best known for his epics. It is from these epics that most of the gods and actual myths well known. I am writing of two of these gods in particular, Saturn and Dionsysus.

The Creation is a poem about how God created the earth. This poem suggests a different perspective of the story of creation, in a way that even a young kid would know how God created this earth and human beings. The reason of creation is to eliminate God’s loneliness which gives an invigorating and appealing aura to the poem.

In the Laws of Manu, Ishvara is the lord who created this various creatures of the universe from his own body. Similar to Genesis, the water is pre-existent matter. Through thought and concentration, he first created the waters which is Devi, the goddess, and put his seed into them. It is like the concept of the spider which creates the web from within itself. The seed that was planted became the golden egg was like the sun, and from that cosmos, in other words the universe was born. From that egg, Brahma (the lesser god) was born and was known as the first creation. Ishvara in the Laws on Manu was the first cause, the efficient cause and the material cause. By Ishvara, the god, planting his seed in the goddess, Devi, the cosmic egg was created which was Brahma who was the creator within cosmos. He represents the symbol of creation and destruction as he is the creator, destroyer and the preserver. Ishvara is both transcendent and immanent, for he is independent from and exists within our universe. In Hindi theism, it is believed that god is greater than the universe, in

Both tales contain a single, omnipotent, all-powerful deity that keeps himself entirely separate from the humans, and requires their worship of his greatness. In this version, the almighty created humans to bear the burden of the gods (Norton Anthology, 158.) The Enuma Elish addresses the omnipotence of the gods by labeling divine knowledge as “the entirety of all of everything” (Norton Anthology, 24).

Most creation myths are mostly stories about the creation of the world. Also a lot of these creation stories are engraved and written within the paramids making them “Pyramid Texts.” Lastly, These Myths involves some type of god or gods that created the earth and what it is today. These two are similar to Enuma Elish because they both have something to do with the creation of the world and how the world has come to be as we know it.

The Mesopotamian creation myth incorporated many characteristics that define to most myths in general. One of the characteristics incorporated in the creation myth is that it takes place in the distant past, or in this case the beginning or pre-history. This characteristic is initially described in the opening passage of the Enuma Elish, “when on high [enuma elish] heaven and earth had not yet been named” (Leeming 19), and further codified by describing how the gods Apsu and Tiamat created “the silt deposits Lahmu and Lahamu, which we call ‘land’” (Leeming 19). A second characteristic of myths portrayed in this creation story is that it is a tale of supernatural beings, goddesses, or gods. Besides, Apsu, freshwater, and Tiamat, great saltwater

In Greek Mythology, perhaps one of the most rudimental yet one of the most important elements are the Greek Gods and Goddesses. The ancient Greeks created the stories about the lives and journeys of the Greek Gods, known as myths, simply as an endeavor to elucidate nature and all phenomena which were difficult to explain using modern science and logic. These myths about the Gods were spread around the world by explorers and storytellers, and later merged with Greek religion. To this day, numerous myths survived through many writings and through much art. Each of these myths is very unique, and moreover, tells us much about the Greek Gods. The Greek myths in particular convey to us that Greek Gods and Goddesses looked and acted like humans,

"A myth is a collective term denoting a symbolic narrative in religion, as distinguished from symbolic behavior (cult, ritual) and symbolic places or objects (temples, icons)". (The New Encyclopedia Britannica. Vol. 24)Mythology is a collection of myths meant to explain the universe. Mythological stories were told in many different cultures and civilizations. The existence of myths is known in every society. Many different myths were conceived to explain occurrences that happened in nature.

“And God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry ground ‘land,’ and the gathered waters He called ‘seas.’ And God saw that it was good” Genesis 1:9-10.6

In many of tradition, a myth carries within it a sense of sacred tradition and primordial relation. These myths are also serving as model for chosen tradition. Myths are extremely complex cultural reality that can be approached and interpreted from various viewpoints. These viewpoints are often related to the whole of

Mythos, the Greek word for myth means story, appertain to colorful tales that enlightens about the origins of humans and the universe. Myths, as amazing as it sounds, is also a cause for birth of new religions, where and how they originated. Many cultures have myths about how the gods and goddesses came to be, even elucidating the origin of humanity and its traditions. Even ideas about how this world of ours came to existence have many myths, creation myths behind it, disparate in every culture and society, which demonstrates a view on its role in the world. Mythology is simply the study of the myth. There are many psychological theories and meanings that explicate mythology. The most recurrent belief about the psychological value of myth is that myths emblematize contrasting elements of our own psyches or souls. The psychoanalytical frames of reference on myths have indisputably been ineluctable. Myths were and still are progressively seen as expressions of desideratum in the human psyche. But the big question is, what is the beneficence of mythology towards the amelioration of society? If there are myths to decipher or exhibit certain things, character or situations, there also are science and technology, which accommodate every explanation needed to understand each of those things. Many go to science for such interpretation, which conveys the impression of taking care of the signification behind all those natural phenomena,