[Mesopotamian] In Babylonian myths, Tiamat is a huge, bloated female dragon that personifies the saltwater ocean, the water of Chaos. She is also the primordial mother of all that exists, including the gods themselves. Her consort is Apsu, the personification of the freshwater abyss that lies beneath the Earth. From their union, saltwater with freshwater, the first pair of gods were born. They are Lachmu and Lachamu, parents of Ansar and Kisar, grandparents of Anu and Ea. In the creation epic Enuma elish, written around 2000 BCE, their descendants started to irritate Tiamat and Apsu so they decided to kill their offspring. Ea discovered their plans and he managed to kill Apsu while the latter was asleep. Tiamat flew into a rage when she learned about Apsu's death and wanted to avenge her husband. She created an army of monstrous creatures, which was to be led by her new consort Kingu, who is also her son. Eventually, Tiamat was defeated by the young god Marduk, who was born in the deep freshwater ...
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Tiamat (Chaldean) Chaldean serpent, slain by Bel, the chief deity. The tale is repeated in the later Babylonian account, with the exception that Marduk or Merodach (producer of the world) replaces Bel. The mythologic serpent, described as the imbodiment of evil both physical and moral, was enormous (300 miles long), it moved in undulations 6 miles in height. When Marduk finally slew Tiamat he split the monster into two halves, using one as a covering of the heavens, so that the upper waters would not come down. Tiamat is cognate with the Babylonian tiamtu, tamtu, "the ocean," rendered Thalatth by Berosus in his Chaldean cosmogony. There is here likewise the reference to the waters of wisdom, the divine wisdom and the lower wisdom of manifestation.
Blavatsky explains that the serpent Tiamat is the great mother, "the living principle of chaos" (TG 334). "The struggle of Bel and then of Merodach, the Sun-god, with
Tiamat, the Sea and its Dragon, a 'war' which ended in the defeat of the latter, has a purely cosmic and geological meaning, as well as an historical one. It is a page torn out of the History of the Secret and Sacred Sciences, their evolution, growth and death --
for the profane masses. It relates (
a) to the systematic and gradual drying up of immense territories by the fierce Sun at a certain pre-historic period; one of the terrible droughts which ended by a gradual transformation of once fertile lands abundantly watered into the sandy deserts which they are now; and (
b) to the as systematic persecution of the Prophets of the Right Path by those of the Left" (SD 2:503).
See also TAMTI
