Creation Myths of the Ancient World - Website for …

1 Members of a proud but often desperately marginal sub-culture, real cowboys often have lives that are consider-ably sadder and less romantic than the mythology of cow-boy culture would suggest. Still, these real men and boys,and some women as well, write and resonate with thepoetry that idealizes their PorterfieldFurther ReadingCannon, Hal, ed. Cowboy Poetry: A Gathering. Layton, UT:Gibbs M. Smith, Inc., , Gretel. The Solace of Open Spaces. New York:Penguin Books, , Richard. Regeneration through Violence: TheMythology of the American Frontier, 1600 , CT: Wesleyan University Press, , Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West asSymbol and Myth.

2 Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1973 (1950).Stanley, David and Elaine Thatcher, eds. Cowboy Poets &Cowboy Poetry. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, also: Bison Restoration and Native AmericanTraditions; Disney Worlds at War; Manifest Myths of the Ancient WorldCreation Myths in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece gener-ally express the idea of the Creation and defense of anordered cosmos from out of primordial chaos. Manyconnections can be made among these different mythictraditions in their attempts to make sense of the naturalworld. For example, the idea of water as the primordialsource of life can be found in all of these traditions.

3 More-over, water is then used by the gods to punish and purifyin the Gilgamesh epic of Mesopotamia (ca. 2000 ), in Greek stories of Zeus (the weather-god), andeven in the Hebrew story of Genesis. Here we seemyth struggling to comprehend the moral purpose of thedestructive power of nature. There are many other connec-tions among mythic motifs, including the bull as a symbolof fertility and power, stories about the struggles of thesun-god to maintain the order of day, and stories aboutthe divine origin of the cycle of the seasons. One mustbe careful, when undertaking such a synthetic approach,however, because these mythological traditions each havetheir own integrity.

4 And even within a single traditionthere are conflicting stories and rival complexity of the mythologies of Mesopotamiareflects the linguistic and political diversity of this of the better-known and more recent texts in thistradition are the epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish(ca. 2000 1200 ), the Babylonian Creation epic. Butthere are other Creation stories, which make use of the sameor similar gods and goddesses. Older Mesopotamian cos-mogonies focused on various nature gods including: Anor Anu, the sky-god; Enlil, the wind-god who originallyseparated sky from Earth; and Ea or Enki, the creator godwho came from out of the primordial waters to createlife on land.

5 This pantheon also included the sun-god,Shamash, and the mother-goddess, Ninhursaga. Theseolder Sumerian stories tend to make the Creation event anatural occurrence in which the primordial abyss, Apsu orAbzu, was opened and the World was created accordingto principles of natural order. That these gods representedorder and justice in the cosmos is illustrated by the sun-god, Shamash, who gave Hammurabi his famous code oflaws (ca. 1700 ). A recurrent theme in these earlymyths is the struggle of the gods of order against chaoticmonsters who rise out of Apsu s abysmal depths. Thestandard interpretation traces this struggle of cosmosagainst chaos in Mesopotamian myth to the unpredict-ability of the Tigris-Euphrates river cosmogony of the Enuma Elish presents a creationstory in which this struggle against such violent destruc-tive forces predominates.

6 In this story we find the triumphof a younger god, Marduk, in his struggle against thechaotic primordial waters, the male Apsu, now represent-ing fresh water, and the female Tiamat, who represents thesalt water. The other gods arise from out of Tiamat who isimpregnated by Apsu, in a symbolic representation of thedeposition of silt in the delta. In the course of this story thenoisy and active younger gods anger the static tranquilityof Apsu and Tiamat. A cycle of violence ensues and finallyMarduk, the noisy young upstart, leads the gods in a finaldecisive battle against Tiamat. Marduk defeats Tiamat andsplits her body, creating heaven and Earth.

7 Along the wayMarduk also slays Kingu, Tiamat s champion. Mardukordains that human beings are to be created out of Kingu sblood. In one version, when Tiamat is slain, her body isopened and the waters flow out through various Tigris and Euphrates flow out of her eyes and her bodybecomes the mountains from which these waters danger of her overflowing flood is always present andreligious rituals are used to prevent this threat of moral of these Mesopotamian Myths is that thehuman being is a minor and inconsequential portion ofa much larger struggle within the natural World . Theprimeval Creation scene focuses on the coming of orderout of nothing and the struggle of order against Creation of human beings comes later.

8 Indeed, theMesopotamian Myths profess that human beings arecreated to suffer and die as servants of the gods. TheMesopotamian gods are, for the most part, indifferent tohuman suffering. When they do intervene in humanaffairs they do so for their own Myths of the Ancient World 431 Certain natural themes are ubiquitous in the Mesopo-tamian Myths . One of the most important of these themesis water. Life is said to have come from water and can see here an obvious connection with the naturalenvironment of Mesopotamia where flooding and siltdeposition were pressing concerns of early agricultural-ists. The importance of water recurs in the Gilgameshepic with the story of the flood as told to Gilgamesh by theimmortal one, Utnapishtim.

9 The gods destroyed humanityby way of the flood because the raucous noise madeby human beings on Earth was disturbing to their himself struggles through and across waters tofind the immortal one who then directs him to a medicinethat can ensure youthful longevity. This medicinal plantis found under water and is later lost by Gilgamesh whena snake comes out of a well and steals it from him. Inthe Gilgamesh, water is the important element againstwhich human beings must struggle. This struggle does notpromise a happy ending, however, as the waters them-selves seem to be poised against human success. Humaninteraction with nature is thus humans struggled before indifferent gods to subduenature in the Mesopotamian stories, in Egypt they wereseen as allies of the gods in their struggle to maintainorder before the forces of chaos.

10 Unlike the precariousand dangerous cosmos of the Mesopotamian stories, theEgyptian cosmogonies seem to hold out the hope for sta-bility and immortality. The Egyptian idea of the primordialnothingness was personified as Nun, waters which areinert and featureless. These waters are not like angryMesopotamian Tiamat. For the Egyptian, the cycle of timewas stable, as represented by the movement of the sunacross the sky and the regular cycle of the floodingNile. There was a promise of stability and permanence,even though there were dangers and monsters to Egyptian Creation stories begin when Atum or Re,the first god, comes into existence.