The Babylonian Epic of Creation

The theme I saw from the reading was that there was a fight that took place within each new generation to top their older relative and gain power. Another important part of the reading was the creation of gods. The gods in the reading were seen as sinful men full of greed.Their main goal was to defeat their parents so that they could make the world their own palace. After reading this, I see a theme of self-righteousness that keeps taking place. Almost to the point where these gods seem to have unrealistic ideas of the world. After some research, I found that because many of these gods were known as gods of water and they all are part of the same family, that nearly the entire empire is an empire of the water.     


Two phrases came into mind after I read this. The first was when Tiamat was killed by her own flesh and blood. It describes this through saying, "He released the arrow, it tore her belly, It cut through her insides, splitting the heart. Having thus subdued her, he extinguished her life. He cast down her carcass to stand upon it...". The brutality seen in this part of the reading was so crazy to me that I honestly had to stop reading it for a minute to actually take it in. The fact that Marduk didn't have enough of a conscience to himself from committing this horrific crime was in extremely insane. But yet he still did this to a woman anyway? It's just so ridiculous that its hard taking that in. The second phrase was in the beginning when it talked about the creation of the gods. I though this was such a coincidence in comparison to the creation of the world.     


After I read this, the first thing that I thought about was how I noticed that people back in the old times had very big imaginations. I started reading this with an open mind but after completing it, I mainly realized that it was just so unrealistic and not true in nature that it had to be a fictional story about numerous gods. Another idea that came to mind was questioning how people could be so vicious to others in a new beginning like that. It was ridiculous how people in the same family could do this to one another like that.
     
Reading this makes me think about the world today and the different problems families go through these days. The number homicides within this country has increased in comparison to than the number of deaths from all the wars in U.S. history. There was a lot of focus on murders in this reading, especially within family. Another parallel seen through this is that children in today's society usually want to succeed and be more successful than their parents. These gods in the reading wanted to be wealthier, greater, and more powerful than their own parents and family. A lot of this is also still seen today.    


This reading relates to the text because they both have to do with the beginnings of civilizations. While in the reading, the creation and society of the gods were structured very differently from the book's civilization, they both branch off a group of people that tried to gain power and structure and become better. Both the reading and the text's societies attempted to adapt and grow into better people from generation to generation. Gods in the reading were a lot like the kings in the text. Both of them thought highly of themselves and thought that they were more holy and godlike and believed that they deserved more than the people of the land. In conclusion, these readings are similar in the sense of beginnings and what the people wanted to follow in their civilizations.