Anybody remember Dungeons and Dragons from the 1980s? It was a controversial role-playing game much vilified by the ultra-conservative right for its imaginative play involving monsters, magic, pagan gods and violence. The game first found popularity among college students before gradually working its way into younger audiences with fertile imaginations, who made war (or pacts) with all manner of creatures — Kobolds, orca, and even dragons, foremost among whom was the dragon #Tiamat.
Tiamat was one of the Arch-villains in the game as well as in the really interesting cartoon serial that came out after TSR’s game took off in the 1980s. The inspiration for the creature came from ancient #Mesopotamian religion, in the #Akkadian and #Babylonian languages, both Semitic tongues using the writing system called cuneiform that was shared by the earlier #Sumerian civilization.
Tiamat was a primordial creatrix or creator goddess paired with her consort Apsu. While she embodied saltwater, Apsu (or Absu—The Abyss) was the anthropomorphized freshwater from mountains, streams, rivers, lakes and underground springs. Where the two joined, the first gods came into being. We call the joining of waters #river #deltas.
In the Mesopotamian mythological cycles, Enki, sometimes his descendant #Marduk, was credited with slaying #Quingu / #Kingu, a rebellious younger god from whose body parts the servile human race was created. This sparked a war between the gods, Tiamat’s children and Apsu. Enki subdued Apsu, invoking Tiamat’s wrath, who, as the world-encircling serpent, the network of oceans, made war with the younger gods, her children and grandchildren. She in turn was slain, and her body carved up to form both the heavens and the earth.
This is possibly a metaphor for the tendency for highly advanced and wealthy civilizations to spring up around river deltas and alongside rivers inland. Such civilizations capitalized on the agricultural bounty of periodic alluvial deposits from riverine flooding along river banks and irrigation. Further, maritime trade extended the availability of diverse material, cultural and intellectual capital and promoted faster growth through synergistic intercourse with other maritime civilizations. Compared to nomadic, terrestrial Paleolithic tribes, the riverine and maritime civilizations quickly outpaced them, becoming mighty, wise and fierce.
Egyptian, Hindu Kushite, Mesopotamian, and Mesoamerican civilizations all exemplified this tendency. By there ancient examples, we observe how water access—water as an element—expedites the pace of advancement of civilizations.
Tiamat in the myth was the mother and her brother and mate Apsu the father flowing down from heaven and up from the depths of the earth. First, riverine civilizations sprang up, then with the knowledge of river and freshwater navigation, mankind heartened by their mastery of strong currents, ventured forth into the sea, first following the course of coastlines, then growing braver, mastering the winds and pushing out into the Abyss, the Apsu, the ZU.AB (𒍪𒀊)—separating land and heaven, pushing up the sky as “pillars” (𒀜) by making habitation upon mountains and oceanic mountains — #islands (𒆳). Tiamat’s and Apsu’s names, in the context of the myths, reveal this to us.
TIA.AMA (𒀭𒋾𒊩𒆳) or TI.AMA.AD (𒀭𒋾𒂼𒀜)
𒀭 (AN / DINGIR) : “sky”; a silent determiner for “divine”, “god”
𒋾 (TI) : “live”
𒊩 (MUNUS) : a silent determiner for “female”
𒆳 (KUR / TUR / TUA / MA) : “earth”, “Land”, “Mountain”, “underworld”
𒂼 (AMA) : “mother”
𒀜 (AD / AT) : “binding” / “pillar”
𒀊 (AB) : “father”, “from”
𒍪 (ZU) : “Deep”
Both of these names have parallel corresponding etymology with the Polynesian languages of the Pacific. Perhaps this helps to localize this ancient prehistoric mythological account of wars in heaven to the Pacific Ocean.
APA : “to engage in sexual intercourse”; “coitus” (i.e. “to father”)
SU : “to be wet”
TI / KI : “to spring up”, a plant widely relied on throughout Polynesia for material cultural crafts and as a subsistence food under dire famine conditions
A : “to descend from”
AMA : “outrigger”; metaphor for “mother”
MA’A : “rock” (“land”)
ATA / AKA : “image”, “shadow”, “hero”, “reflection”, “dreaded one”, as in ATA.LAGA AKALANA the Supporter of Heaven, one of the Māui ancestors; an oblique reference to “pillar”
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