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What is the significance of the Tiamat and Marduk myth?

Mythology of Babylon Read more from
Chapter Middle Eastern Mythologies

In the Enuma Elish, Tiamat, who as Nammu in Sumer had represented the essential feminine birthing power of the universe, becomes a female monster to be destroyed.

Her defeat and the rise of Marduk signals a basic change in the mythology of Mesopotamia and the view of reality it represented. From a system based on the necessity of fertility and female power, the balance moves to a sense of necessary patriarchal order and power centered in one city and its all-powerful deity.