Tutu as Aga-azag may mankind fourthly magnify!
"The Lord of the Pure Incantation", "the Quickener of the Dead ",
"Who had mercy upon the captive gods",
"Who removed the yoke from upon the gods his enemies".
"For their forgiveness did he create mankind",
"The Merciful One, with whom it is to bestow life!"
May his deeds endure, may they never be forgotten
In the mouth of mankind whom his hands have made.
_King's Translation._[165]
Apparently the Babylonian doctrine set forth that mankind was created
not only to worship the gods, but also to bring about the redemption
of the fallen gods who followed Tiamat.
Those rebel angels (_ili_ gods) He prohibited return;
He stopped their service; He removed them unto the gods (_ili_) who
were His enemies.
In their room he created mankind.[166]
Tiamat, the chaos dragon, is the Great Mother. She has a dual
character. As the origin of good she is the creatrix of the gods. Her
beneficent form survived as the Sumerian goddess Bau, who was
obviously identical with the Phoenician Baau, mother of the first man.
Another name of Bau was Ma, and Nintu, "a form of the goddess Ma", was
half a woman and half a serpent, and was depicted with "a babe
suckling her breast" (Chapter IV). The Egyptian goddesses Neheb-kau
and Uazit were serpents, and the goddesses Isis and Nepthys had also
serpent forms. The serpent was a symbol of fertility, and as a mother
was a protector. Vishnu, the Preserver of the Hindu Trinity, sleeps on
the world-serpent's body. Serpent charms are protective and fertility
charms.
As the origin of evil Tiamat personified the deep and tempests. In
this character she was the enemy of order and good, and strove to
destroy the world.
I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam
To be exalted with the threatening clouds.[167]
Tiamat was the dragon of the sea, and therefore the serpent or
leviathan. The word "dragon" is derived from the Greek "drakon", the
serpent known as "the seeing one" or "looking one", whose glance was
the lightning. The Anglo-Saxon "fire drake" ("draca", Latin "draco")
is identical with the "flying dragon".
In various countries the serpent or worm is a destroyer which swallows
the dead. "The worm shall eat them like wool", exclaimed Isaiah in
symbolic language.[168] It lies in the ocean which surrounds the world
in Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, Teutonic, Indian, and other
mythologies. The Irish call it "morúach", and give it a mermaid form
like the Babylonian Nintu. In a Scottish Gaelic poem Tiamat figures as
"The Yellow Muilearteach", who is slain by Finn-mac-Coul, assisted by
his warrior band.
There was seen coming on the top of the waves
The crooked, clamouring, shivering brave ...
Her face was blue black of the lustre of coal,
And her bone-tufted tooth was like rusted bone.[169]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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