Mesopotamian Mythology

Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia and Assyria · c. 3000 BCE – 1st c. CE

The literature of the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates survives because its people wrote on clay and clay does not burn. Sumerian scribes, and the Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian writers who inherited their script, left the earliest sustained mythology in any language.

Its preoccupations are civic. Gods hold offices — Anu the sky, Enlil the storm and the assembly, Enki the fresh water and the wit — and the world is administered rather than merely inhabited. Enuma Elish is a constitutional document as much as a creation story: Marduk is granted supremacy by a vote, and he earns it by killing Tiamat and building the sky out of her. The Epic of Gilgamesh asks what a king is for once he understands he will die.

Nothing here is complete. Tablets break, columns are lost, and a scholar’s brackets stand where a line should be. Read it knowing that the gaps are part of the text.

A broken Babylonian limestone monument carved with a long-necked dragon facing Marduk's spade emblem on a raised stand. — Plate I · Marduk’s dragon
A mushhushshu dragon and Marduk’s spade emblem on a Babylonian *kudurru*, a stone monument recording a land grant. About 1156 to 1025 BCE. This is not a depiction of Tiamat.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985.45. Rogers Fund, 1985. Image: The Met, public domain. Museum record · Full image

I.1The tablets1 written
Clay, scribes, broken copies, and how we learn to read them again.
- The tabletsBefore we meet the gods, we meet the people who wrote them down. A chapter about clay, scribal schools, broken books, and the work of reading them again.
I.2Before the world1 written
Apsu, Tiamat, and a cosmos made out of a corpse.
- Before the worldApsu wants silence. Tiamat raises an army. Marduk asks for a crown. How a war among the gods becomes the ground beneath our feet, and why Babylon stands at the centre of the story.
I.3The assembly of the gods1 written
Anu, Enlil, Enki, Marduk — divinity as an office with duties.
- The assembly of the godsA throne is not enough. Anu grants rank, Enlil gives commands, Enki assigns the work, and Marduk asks the gods to recognise his rule. Inside a divine order that is never quite as settled as it claims.
I.4Inanna and Ishtar1 written
The one who goes down, and what she has to leave behind to come back.
- Inanna and IshtarSeven gates take away a goddess's clothes and power. Someone above remembers her. Someone below must let her go. The descent of Inanna, the different story of Ishtar, and the people who pay for a return.
I.5Gilgamesh1 written
Kingship, friendship, and the first sustained argument about death.
- GilgameshA king finds someone strong enough to stop him. Together they win fame that costs more than they know. Then one of them dies, and the survivor leaves his city to ask whether a human life has to end.

Contents