MESOPOTAMIA; ACTION & INACTION

The slaying of Tiamat, from an 8th century BC cylinder seal

Having now arrived at this curious state of all-or-nothing uncertainty, we may want to work back towards something a little more firm; back from existence or non-existence, through "potentiality" and "non-potentiality," to our last position of somewhat stable footing: action versus inaction. And here, as it happens, we encounter a third strain of sky-god/serpent tandems which should, by now, have occurred to any reader with even a passing knowledge of Near Eastern mythology. Set geographically between the Egyptian Hrwyfy/Apep, and the Indo-European Indra/Vritra, we find the Babylonian clash of Marduk and Tiamat. Yet this antagonistic duo falls in between still another pair of pairs as part of a broader tradition of Mesopotamian creation tales — the beginnings of which, as the esteemed Harvard professor of Assyriology, Thorkild Jacobsen, suggests in his 1976 book The Treasures Of Darkness, "lie in a theomachy, a prolonged conflict between representatives of two opposed principles: the forces of motion and activity (the gods), and the forces of inertia and rest (the older generation of powers)."

In terms of mythic chronology, the story goes something as follows: All beings emanate from the initial intercourse of Tiamat (Akkadian for "sea" or "abyss"; described by Lurker as "the personification of salt water ... the primeval dragon-like monster of original chaos"), and the previously addressed Apsû (meaning "deep water"; "personification of the sweet-water ocean lying under the earth"). This mingling of salt and fresh water produces the first gods, Lahmu and Lahamu, whose names Jacobsen relates to water-born silt, explaining that "the speculations by which the ancient Mesopotamian sought to penetrate the mystery of origins were based, apparently, on observations of how new land came into being. Mesopotamia is alluvial, formed by silt brought down by the rivers." From them descend all further generations of gods until, as we read in the Babylonian Enûma Elish, their numbers and raucous doings begin to irritate Apsû no end:

Their ways have become noisome to me!
I am allowed no rest by day;
by night no sleep
Let me abolish, yea, let me smash to bits their ways
that peace may reign (again) and we may sleep.

As Jacobsen contends, "with the birth of the gods, a new principle — movement, activity — has come into the world. The new powers, the gods, contrast sharply with the older ones who stand for rest and inactivity." It is for this reason that Apsû plots to kill-off the gods, but one of this new breed, Ea/Enki (whom we met earlier, with Apsû, in relation to the "alluvial" Port Lands site), gets wind of these plans and strikes first by means of his own magic waters (Lurker notes, with respect to his Babylonian name, "Ea," "it has been suggested that the name means 'water-house', but this is not generally accepted by scholars." The earlier Sumerian "Enki," meanwhile, allegedly translates as "lord of the earth" or "lord of the nether-regions"). As Jacobsen then writes, "while Apsû, succumbing to the magic, lay asleep, Ea took from him his crown and cloak of fiery rays, killed him, and established his own abode above him." This is the E-abzu temple at Eridhu, as mentioned before in relation to Eridanus, Canopus, Babel, and the cosmic mill (being, perhaps, the retroactive source of Ea's name, as well). Additional to this, the taking of the cloak and crown, as described, suggests some transfer of solar properties (the deposing of one "red king" by another), leaving Ea now with the powers of water, sky, and earth. So ends the first chapter in this trilogy of cosmogonic warfare.

The second chapter, of course, involves Tiamat and Marduk, as the former now too becomes annoyed with the gods' constant stirrings. Deprived of sleep (her belly "roiled"), and with the added incentive of venging her husband's murder, she seeks to finish what Apsû began. But once again Ea learns of these plans, as does his ambitious son, the storm-god Marduk (from the Sumerian Amar-utuk, meaning "calf of the sun-god"), who offers to vanquish Tiamat himself on the condition that he is made king of the gods. This being agreed to, Marduk slays primordial Tiamat, along with her chief general, the demon Kingu (with the aid, it should be noted, of what is described as a mysterious "red paste" or "potion"). Out of Tiamat's lifeless body, Marduk fashions the current terrestrial heavens and earth (with her tail becoming the Milky Way), after which he "heaped a mountain over Tiamat's head, pierced her eyes to form the sources of the Euphrates and the Tigris," with Jacobsen further explaining "the Akkadians have but one word for 'eye' and 'source,' inu, and presumably considered them in some way the same thing." Then, from Kingu's blood, he creates human beings in order that they might build him a capital called "Babylon" — "gate of the gods," from the Akkadian bāb + ilani. Here we could loiter some time and re-expound upon all the interconnected implications of gateways, solar/storm-gods, occular water sources, and Luciferian kings of Babylon. But let us first proceed to the last chapter of our tale.

With the advent of humanity, we now come to the third and final battle of these motion/inertia wars (although, historically speaking, this legend likely predates the previous two, being first recorded in the Sumero-Akkadian Epic of Atrahasis). With the ancient forces of Apsû and Tiamat now laid to permanent rest, it is time for the gods themselves to be kept awake by the movements of some new species. Specifically, it is the weather-god Enlil (Sumerian "lord of the wind"), brother of Ea, who is most perturbed by these bothersome pests. As Jacobsen tells it:

Man multiplied so rapidly that after 1,200 years the din of the ever-increasing human population had grown to such proportions that Enlil could get no sleep: 'the land was bellowing like a bull.' Enlil, thoroughly vexed, had the gods agree to send a plague, hoping thereby to diminish the number of humans and thus the noise.

Ea, however, intervenes once more, and, with the help of his servant Atrahasis, convinces the human multitudes to lessen their noise, and increase their worship, before the gods firmly commit to their scheme. This satisfies Enlil, for the time being, until another 1,200 years pass and the whole problem begins anew. This time Enlil threatens a drought. Ea, again, has the humans repent, but eventually the cycle revolves back to noise. Enlil, now thoroughly fed-up, unleashes a flood that envelops the whole human realm. Only Atrahasis, forewarned by Ea through the reed walls of his hut, is spared (and, now, think back to our "submerged" and "reed-thatched" Thackeray), along with his family and livestock who all escape in a great boat. From this tale, of course, descend those of Utnapishtim in the Gilgamesh epic, Noah in the Bible, Deucalion of Greek legend, and another Hellenized interpretation in which Atrahasis is known as Xisuthros (and Ea, interestingly enough, is likened to the familiar Cronos). Yet this tale, itself, may descend from an even older account wherein Enlil sends not a flood, but a giant monster named Labbu, whom Lurker describes as "possibly in the form of a snake, and associated with the Milky Way" — and whom we must then associate, at least in part, with Tiamat, Airavata, Apep, and the rest (perhaps especially so with that "whirlwind" Typhon, recalling Enlil's very own name).

Cuneiform tablet of the Atrahasis epic

Having thus outlined Mesopotamia's "theomachy of opposed principles," what further meaning might we read into it's overall symbology? Jacobsen, in his structural analysis of the Enûma Elish, sees these episodes as a great political allegory representing the historical evolution from original anarchy, through primitive democracy, to a stable, paternalistic monarchy whereby the youthful, active gods overthrow the inactive, older gods who no longer possess governmental initiative and, thus, stand "in subtle ways, for the dead hand of a powerful old cultural tradition." We may further observe that the recurring cycles of destruction (or attempted destruction) are highly reminiscent of the theoretical "world era" cataclysms of our cosmic mill precession. Their specific formulation as one generation continually warring against the next would also seem to touch upon a universal theme, presaging such later, more well known narratives as the Greek hostilities of Uranus, Cronos, and Zeus (although Jacobsen identifies this parricidal sub-plot as symbolizing the gradual Babylonian conquest of its "parent civilizations," Sumer and Akkad).

Above all, however, we would seem to have in these myths a fertile source for the prevailing sky-god/water-dragon correlation that we've been symbolically transposing into the figure of a potential "red king." But, of course, long before any of our cursory studies, this particular archetype (or some variant thereof) had been identified and well documented by numerous other students of art, history, and religion; generally being brought under the heading of Chaoskampf (the "struggle with chaos"), following the lead of various late 19th century German scholars working in these fields.

Indeed, this archetype has even come to the attention of psychology, having been, perhaps, most fully elaborated within the writings of Erich Neumann, a direct disciple of Jung, for whom the serpent (specifically in the form of the self-consuming ouroboros) is the mytho-symbolic Alpha and Omega of both individual and collective consciousness; the slaying of which represents a universal stage in the progression from an undifferentiated unconscious, through a feminine/maternal and masculine/paternal psychic hierarchy, into a final unified, transcendent self-awareness. In short, one defeats the sleeping dragon to become the woken dragon himself — and, while Neumann, in his landmark The Origins and History of Consciousness, does not specifically touch on the sleep symbolism of these particular Mesopotamian myths, it (and very much more that we've skirted thus far) seems more than merely implied in passages such as these:

One has no need to desire to remain unconscious; one is primarily unconscious and can at most conquer the original situation in which man drowses in the world, drowses in the unconscious, contained in the infinite like a fish in the environing sea ... So long as the infantile ego consciousness is weak and feels the strain of its own existence as heavy and oppressive, while drowsiness and sleep are felt as delicious pleasure, it has not yet discovered its own reality and differentness. So long as this continues, the uroboros reigns on as the great whirling wheel of life, where everything not yet individual is submerged in the union of opposites, passing away and willing to pass away.

Parallelling Jacobsen, though one stratum deeper, Neumann recognizes that before one can slay the serpent of chaotic anarchy and take on the burden of political rule, one must first slay the serpent of unconscious chaos and take on the burden of psychic control. Yet this task is no small feat, and never quite accomplished, for the serpent always lies in wait for another chance to strike — its death is but a sleep, and any slaying but a dream. In this way, the serpent is immortal because the serpent is primordial. It is from the serpent that we emerge, and it is to the serpent that we return; pulled back into its underworld lair whenever a lapse in order (either social or individual) occurs. Indeed, it is to the serpent that we rightly belong. As Neumann puts it, while waking consciousness is literally the "desired" state — a heroic "reality" spurred-on by a mysterious "counteracting force ... a veritable instinct impelling man in this direction" — this state, at least at the universal level, is not a "natural" one. Our "instinct" runs contrary to the inherent slumbering unconscious of which "one has no need to desire." Further towards this end:

Even today we can see from primitives that the law of gravity, the inertia of the psyche, the desire to remain unconscious, is a fundamental human trait. Yet even this is a false formulation, since it starts from consciousness as though that were the natural and self-evident thing. But fixation in unconsciousness, the downward drag of its specific gravity, cannot be called a desire to remain unconscious; on the contrary, that is the natural thing ... The ascent toward consciousness is the “unnatural” thing in nature; it is specific of the species Man ...The struggle between the specifically human and the universally natural constitutes the history of man’s conscious development. 
 
Here, it would seem, our very existence comes into conflict with the natural order of things. Yet, as children and subjects of nature itself, how can we, or anything we do, be any less "natural" than anything else? It is interesting to note, in the formulation of this paradox, Neumann's use of such physical terms as "gravity," "drag," and "inertia." Terms which, wittingly or unwittingly (consciously or unconsciously), relate back to our initial conflict of action versus inaction — though not necessarily in the mere sense of waking versus sleeping minds, but, perhaps, in that even earlier sense of potentiality. One wonders, in fact, if this conflict is so deeply felt, so ingrained in the being of consciousness itself, that it harkens to a stage preceeding the very possibilities of consciousness or unconsciousness — beyond any potential desire, will, or instinct — down to the physical basis for any such development, to the point of animacy itself; where conceivable life vies with the eternally dead; where the swirling chaos of unconsciousness confronts the state which resists any swirling at all.

A dragon and the solar-god in his sky chariot; detail from the Spledor Solis

What, then, might we say of this newly acknowledged conflict? Well, first we might note that it appears very old — and almost strangely so. While today it is commonplace to view the world in terms of animate (living or sentient, dynamic or motile) and inanimate (non-living, insentient, static, immotile) objects, given the animistic tendencies of so much primitive culture, wherein even a stone may be imbued with spiritual life, it is by no means obvious that our earliest ancestors should have seen things in this fashion. It is somewhat remarkable, then, that perhaps the oldest written language on record, Sumerian (crucible for all of our dragon-slaying mythology), seemingly divided the world in just this way by categorizing its nouns into animate and inanimate gender classes. Indeed, only one fourth of all the world's known languages employ grammatical genders at all, and of them, just a tiny handful delineate along lines of animacy. Intriguingly, elements of such animacy are found mostly within obscure-to-isolate language groups such as Basque, Elamite, Japanese (by verb tense), and certain Kartvelian branches like Georgian (tellingly, perhaps, of the "land of St. George") — as well as various Native American vocabularies, including the Anishaanabe of our local Mississaugas.

In the days when Sumerian was still in use, the nearby ancient Afro-Semitic languages of Egyptian, Akkadian, and Hebrew employed the more typical masculine vs. feminine dichotomy, wherein the animacy of all things (to some abstract extent) is taken for granted. Of course, many of the current Indo-European tongues employ this dichotomy, as well. It is thought, however, that the earliest Proto-Indo-European languages initially began as animate/inanimate, for we see this found among the ancient Anatolian dialects (Hittite being the most prominent of these). Presumably the animate class later subdivided into masculine and feminine genders, with the inanimate either disappearing or morphing into a neuter gender, as is seen in the major classical languages of Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit (and as lingers even within our English he/she/it complex of pronouns). One, then, wonders how this gender division and transformation might have been reflected in the subsequent tripartite organization of the Aryans; in the threefold nature of such mythical masculine/feminine/indeterminate amalgams as Indra/Sachi/Airavata; and even in our binary-to-trinary partition of positive, negative, and neutral opposites — all as detailed above.

Whatever the case, it would seem to demonstrate that any purely animate/inanimate bifurcation is not usually long in sustaining itself once ensconced in a sufficiently mature system of language. We might also say, looking at this situation from the other end, that certain "immature" notions of animism are not long in re-establishing themselves, even within the constructs of an inhospitable linguistic system. Our "unnatural instinct" towards consciousness would seem to eventually have us impose it on everything else. Yet, conceptually, the initial distinction of animate vs. inanimate clearly remains, and thus we might expect some early expressions of this distinction to have survived, in spite of it all — perhaps even through some "animation of the inanimate." What, after all, could be more natural for the ancient, animating mind than to embody the essence of inert matter in the figure of a sleeping god, or god of sleep; a slumbering dragon, or some other such character — the inscrutable, indifferent representation of absolute static (non)potential?

Apsû, Tiamat, and Enlil, of course, would all seem to fit this bill. Then, beyond the Mesopotamian template, we might cite such exemplars as the Greek Hypnos or the Roman Somnus, the Egyptian Tutu, and the Irish Caer Ibormeith — a goddess who's name translates as "yew berry" (as seen related to York), who alternates life between a maiden and a swan (shades of the Dioscuri and the Northumbrian King's Daughter), and who resides in the waters of Loch Bel Dracon ("Lake of the Dragon's Mouth"). Add to these the dormant Hindu giant Kumbhakarna, the dozing Norse giant Skrýmir, and even the mytho-geological "Sleeping Giant," a rock formation sacred to the Anishaanabe Ojibwe, found roughly one day's drive north of Toronto, at the evocatively named Thunder Bay (recalling our previous storm-gods).

Moreover, there are certain recurring artistic icons that would seem to expand on this ancient motif — Sleeping Eros, Sleeping Ariadne, Sleeping Beauty, and even the mysterious "Sleeping Lady" statuettes found throughout the neolithic Maltese hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni. We may also find this sentiment invested in the countless tales told around the world of a sleeping hero-king (typically lying in wait for some auspicious return); be him mythic or semi-fictitious, like our "red king" Arthur at rest on Avalon, or be him a real historical monarch, with the most famous example likely being that of the beloved 12th century Holy Roman emperor Frederick I — known otherwise as Rotbart or Barbarossa, German and Italian for "red beard," respectively — ‭who died by drowning and is said to lie beneath a certain mountain so long as ravens (see Roxborough) fly above it.

Barbarossa, in this medieval manuscript, rides to his watery fate
in a Turkish river, en route to the Third Crusade

Even stiller than those at sleep, however, are those who pertain to death — and already we've encountered a myriad of these in the form of various underworld/afterworld deities. We may simply make some further note of the Greek Thanatos — brother of Hypnos, significantly enough — as well as the aforementioned Tutu who served a dual role as the protective god of both sleep and of tombs. In like manner, Apsû and Tiamat are, perhaps, also doubled in functional power by way of being dead (murdered) gods of restless sleep. Their seminal part in creation also speaks to the familiar implication that all things somehow arise from the inertia of sleep or death. Just think to the slain body of Tiamat and the blood of Kingu, then to all the dead and dying gods catalogued so famously by Frazer; to the blood sacrifices needed to perpetuate their gifts, and the blood sacrifices needed to urge their eventual resurrection. Now think again to the deadly sleep imposed by Ea on Apsû, to the pre-temporal "Dreamtime" of the Australian Aborigines, or to the cosmogenic dreams of sleeping Vishnu, reposed on the great serpent Adisheṣa who, in turn, floats upon the ocean of infinity.

Here we also find another image often linked with primal nascency; that of water. Of course, as a fundamental source of nourishment for all living things, this identification is not to be puzzled over too strenuously. That this substance should likewise be seen as composing some universal environment of birth and incubation is also not terribly surprising, showing obvious uterine qualities from an individual perspective, while possibly suggesting to our ancient ancestors vague hints of a distant evolutionary past — echoes of some profound genetic memory, stirred at the collective, biological level. All would seem to contribute in part to the biblical "darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," not to mention all of its various cognates found in legion around the globe. Why such a vital, and typically active (literally fluid) element should relate to a case for inanimacy, though, is not so readily apparent. Nevertheless, it seemingly does. Just compare the previous quote from Genesis 1 to these opening lines of a Central American creation myth recorded in the Mayan Popol Vuh:

Lo, all was in suspense, all was calm and silent; all was motionless ... The face of the earth was not yet to be seen; only the peaceful sea and the expanse of the heavens ... there was not a rustle, not a sound beneath the sky. There was naught that stood upright; there were only the quiet waters of the sea, solitary within its bounds; for as yet naught existed. There were only immobility and silence in the darkness and in the night.

Water, when completely unaffected by gravity, weather, or inhabitation can, of course, remain quite still — and, as the old proverb reminds us, still waters will often run deep (creational waters, presumably, running "deepest" of all). Such unaffected water is the exception, however, and generally associated with stagnancy and death. Water is also still when frozen, again precluding the entrance of life — though also having the ability to preserve life in stasis, to hold life unmoving while awaiting a thaw. Such "dead waters," then (recalling "Mortimer" here), require an animating force — "the Spirit of God," Neumann's "unnatural instinct," or (dare we say it?) our mysterious "red king" — some fire to melt the ice, or a "churning of the ocean"; a milling which, in turn, propels the great millwheel and begets all of being as a vast perpetual motion machine.

We will also notice in these origin tales (and, perhaps, somewhat predictably) a recurrence of primary nocturnal darkness, and hence an equating of life and movement with light and day. Again, not a surprising notion with most of life requiring sunlight, and much of our movement being aided by vision via light. A rather more interesting correlation between night, darkness, and some immediately preceeding topics, however, might be drawn on certain symbolic grounds, for our mythic brothers Hypnos ("sleep") and Thanatos ("death") were, in fact, spawns of the god Erebos ("darkness") and the goddess Nyx ("night"). What is more, if we deign to tread some slightly precarious linguistic terrain, we will first notice a compelling similarity between "Erebos" and Neumann's "uroboros," the circular serpent first found depicted in such Egyptian texts as The Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld or The Book of Hidden Chambers, and thought to represent the underworld deity Mehen who protects the sun-god Ra during his travels through the darkness of night.

An amorphous black-figure Nyx blends seamlessly
into her ambiguous night chariot; c.500 BC

Compelling, yet coincidental one might say, with "ouroboros" traditionally coming from οὐρά ("tail") + βόρος ("eating"), and "Erebos" (Eρεβος) having only various hypothetical etymologies — though interestingly, Klein, in his Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary, has it coming from the Hebrew érebh, meaning "sunset," whereas Lemprière notes, in his Classical Dictionary, this word was often used by the poets "to signify the nether world itself." Now consider Nyx (Νύξ) and her phonological affinity to a particular breed of Northern European water serpents/spirits: the Norse nykr, the German nixe, the Old English nicor, and the modern English nixie. These, and countless more (with the term in its numerous Scandinavian guises usually referring to a type of "water horse") are thought to arrive by the PIE root *neigw- meaning "to wash" or "bathe." This also happens to be the source of the Old Irish nig-, whence the prefix necht-, of which the Dictionary of the Irish Language gives two possible meanings — the first being "a grand-daughter (? niece)," and the second, "clean, pure; white" — and which Mallory then has relating to the Indo-European *nepots-, writing:

Certainly one of the more intriguing examples is the comparison of the Indic (and Avestan) Apam Napat 'grandson/nephew of water' with Latin Neptunus and the Irish Nechtain. The latter two preserve only the element *nepots 'grandson or nephew' but were still closely associated with water, the Latin god as the Roman equivalent of Poseidon, the god of waters, and the Irish figure Nechtain who maintained a sacred well.

Poseidon, we'll recall, was sire of the white "water horse" Pegasus (foal, as well, of the serpent-haired Medusa). Meanwhile, this Irish well-keeper Nechtain recalls another Irish well-keeper, Dian Cecht, whom we previously met healing an eye of the underworld deity Midir. Perhaps Dian Cecht's most famous feat, though, is the slaying of three serpents found within the body of Meichi, son of the raven-goddess Morrigan, who's corpses he condemned to the River Barrow, causing its waters to boil (or "whirl," or "churn"), thus lending the river its name (from the Old Irish bhearú meaning "to boil" or "bubble"). We will also note in "Dian" Cecht's own name (thought to mean something along the lines of "quick power") a resemblance to such Greek figures as "Diana," the "Dioscuri," and "Dionysos" — each ultimately from the PIE root *dyeu-, meaning "to shine." Our Irish Dictionary, however, gives "dian" in its more recent sense to mean: "swift, rapid ... sudden ... with the added sense of eager, impetuous, forceful or vehement, both in good and bad sense. Of animals and natural objects: generally implying motion ... Of persons: active."

By way of this circuitous and, admittedly, speculative route, we would now seem to have completed a symbolic journey from the inanimacy of sleep and death, through the darkness of night and the underworld, to a realm of mythical waters in which we encounter a serpent, spirit, or other deity, and from which we finally enter into the white light of animacy. Yet we need not travel so far as all that to collect the pieces of a story which we've already found. Indeed, it's high time we return somewhere closer to home; to start working back from our base in Sumer to the ruins we left in Toronto, now so long ago. To get there, however, we must take one more detour, through the lands of those last Indo-Europeans to speak the cause of animacy by name: the Hittites.