The Birth of the Gods
The story begins with opening lines that metaphorically suggest procreation with the offspring being gods. The context here is of an epoch before the beginning of the beginning; a universe absent terrestrial turf and instead occupied only fresh and salty water. Mixing those together usually creates unpleasant brackish mixture…and that holds true in this story:
“When skies above were not yet named
Nor earth below pronounced by name
Apsu, the first one, their begetter
And maker Tiamat, who bore them all,
Had mixed their waters together.”
Lousy Stinking Kids
Apsu and Tiamat have created some little kiddie gods and, as often happens, the offspring grows unruly. Apsu is ready to deal with parenting with extreme prejudice, but Tiamat is aghast at the idea and her emotions are so strong they attain the metaphoric levels:
“She was furious and shouted at her lover;
She shouted dreadfully and was beside herself with rage,
But then suppressed the evil in her belly.”
Metonymic Metaphor
Metonymic references pervade the text. The reference to hearts in this passage is directed not merely toward the literal heart of the rebellious gods, but is a symbolic connection of the image of the heart as shorthand for all emotions. This type of metaphor recurs throughout the story.
“The gods, unable to rest, had to suffer . . .
They plotted evil in their hearts”
Serious Recurrence
Seriously, the metonymic metaphor is a type that this verse is utterly dependent upon. It is the foundation of its figurative language almost. Just how often pervasive is this recurrence? Consider that the following is not a typo, but how the lines are intended to appear in the text:
“Ansar, vour son, hath sent me,
The purpose of his heart he hath made known unto me.
The purpose of his heart he hath made known unto me.
He saith that Tiamat our mother hath conceived a hatred for us”
Death of Tiamat
The climax of the story is the death of Tiamat. In many—but oddly, not all—translations of the text, her gruesome death is explicitly situated into the metaphor of a fish. Those translations which leave this detail out are particularly questionable since Tiamat is strongly associated with the unpredictability—the femininity—of the salty oceans within the world of patriarchal symbolism:
“He split her up like a flat fish into two halves;
One half of her established as a covering for heaven.”
