THE FIGHT BETWEEN MARDUK AND TIĀMAT
Following my usual course of ending the chapter on each nation with a
legend or story, in which fish or ichthyic monsters figure as direct
or indirect agents of some important event, I subjoin the only myth in
Assyrian literature which comes within this category, _viz._ the famous
fight between Marduk and Tiāmat, the monstrous creature of the deep.
Tiāmat, with her consort Apsū, had revolted against the gods and
brought into being a brood of monsters to destroy them. So formidable
seemed her forces that all appeals by Anshar, the leader of the gods,
to Anu, and then to Ea, were made in vain. No god would “face the
music,” till Marduk was prevailed upon to become their champion. Nor
does this grand refusal seem unnatural, when we read of Tiāmat’s
dimensions.
“Fifty _Kasbu_, or more correctly _Biru_ (_i.e._ 300 miles), was her
length, one _Kasbu_ (six miles) was her breadth, half a rod was her
mouth;” and the rest of her body of proportionate bulk![992] Nor again
is it unnatural that at—
“The lashing of the water with her tail,
All the Gods in heaven were afraid.”
How pigmy in comparison with Tiāmat appears the decadent sea-dragon
mentioned by Ignatius, on whose gut, 120 feet long, in the library of
Constantinople were written in letters of gold the _Iliad_ and the
_Odyssey_!
Allied with Tiāmat in her fight were—
“Spawned sea-serpents,
Sharp of teeth and cruel of fang.”
“With poison instead of blood she has filled their bodies,
And mighty tempests, and the fishman,[993] and the ram,[994]
They bear merciless weapons without fear of the fight.”
Beowulf in his famous battle with the Dragon stands out as nobler
and braver than Marduk, inasmuch as he, a _man_, to free his country
from the Dragon’s toll of death and ravage, of his own volition seeks
out the monster. He “attacks alone, for being altogether fearless he
scorned to take an army against the foe,” whereas Marduk—the _god_—was
compelled to the duel, since he was unable to enlist a single god.
Beowulf “counted not the worm’s warring for aught,” whereas Marduk
among his preparations,
“Made a net to enclose the inward parts of Tiāmat
And the four winds he set so that nothing of her might escape.”
The protagonists (literally protagonists, for behind Marduk cowered
the shrinking gods, and behind Tiāmat her spouse and her spawned
monsters) on meeting consume time, quite in the grand Homeric manner,
by launching taunts and reproaches at each other.
Eventually Marduk, after spreading out his net to catch her, seems to
have anticipated the gassing tactics of the Huns by many millenniums,
and owing to the absence of a mask with even greater success, for—
“The evil wind, that was behind, he let loose in her face,[995]
As Tiāmat opened her mouth to its full extent.
He drove in the evil wind, while she had not yet shut her lips.
The terrible winds filled her belly,
And her courage was taken from her and her mouth she opened wide.
His spear he seized, and broke through her belly,
He severed her inward parts, he pierced her heart.”
[Illustration: THE FIGHT BETWEEN MARDUK AND TIĀMAT.]
Then for a while Marduk rested but, arising,
“He split her body up like a flat fish into two halves.
One half of her he set in place as a covering for the heavens.
He fixed a bolt, he stationed watchmen,
And bade them not to let her waters come forth.”
Finally to their hero and saviour the gods accord a
triumphant welcome, and
“Presents and gifts they brought unto him.”[996]
FOOTNOTES:
[992] The _Biru_ or _Kasbu_ represented the distance walked by an
ordinary man in one Sumerian hour, which, as they divided their whole
day into twelve, equals two of our hours. The prehistoric Sumerians,
like other nations, reckoned the year by the Moon, not by the Sun.
The historic calendar-makers endeavoured to bridge the hiatus and
correlate the solar with the lunar year by inserting an intercalary
month. They combined the decimal and the sexagesimal in their scheme
of numbers—hence, though curiously, their multiplication was always by
six, not ten. Cf. W. Zimmern, _Zeit und Raumrechnung_, who instances
the twelve—6 × 2—signs of the Zodiac, etc.
[993] Aquarius.
[994] Capricorn.
[995] Similarly in the Gigantomachy as figured on the Siphnian Treasury
at Delphi, Æolus, god of the winds, helps the deities against the
giants by deflating two bags of wind. He is represented by an Ionian
sculptor as working his wind-bags with all the concentration of a Hun
working his machine-gun. See G. Perrot—C. Chipiez, _Histoire de l’Art
dans l’antiquité_ (Paris, 1903), VIII. 368 and 375, fig. 172.
[996] Cf. _Babylonian Religion_ (_op. cit._), pp. 62-85.
JEWISH FISHING
[Illustration: TOBIAS, IN _La Madonna del Pesce_, BY RAPHAEL.
See p. 416.]
JEWISH FISHING[997]