An un-original tale: Utopia denied in Enuma Elish.
If only Ernst Bloch had read Enuma Elish as part of his grand Principle of Hope. (1) But he didn't, preferring the Bible and Faustus as his great inspirations, and there is simply no sustained political reading of this myth. So I offer here precisely such a reading, for two distinct reasons: firstly, biblical and ancient Near Eastern scholars have asserted time and again that Enuma Elish is a political myth, but they have not offered any reading that might justify such an assertion. Secondly, it allows me to test a hypothesis concerning political myth; namely, that such myth operates by means of a denial of Utopia. In other words, political myth systematically blocks other political possibilities. But there is a catch: the very act of airing and exhibiting these alternatives energizes them, giving them a new burst of life. In what follows I will tease out this catch.Perhaps a few facts are in order before I proceed. Written sometime in the early second millennium BCE, Enuma Elish was discovered in the ruins of Ashurbanipal's palace in Nineveh (Assyrian Empire) in the middle of the 19th century. It is written in cuneiform script on seven clay tablets, most of which are very well preserved, and its name comes from the opening words, 'Enuma Elish', 'when on high'. The text is preserved in Akkadian, an old Babylonian dialect, but seems to be based on older Sumerian myths from Mesopotamia. After its discovery, translation and publication soon followed, the first being George Smith's The Chaldean Genesis in 1876. From then on it has been re-translated regularly. The reason? Parallels and echoes were immediately seen with the creation story of the Bible, so we find a thicket of interpretation, debate and encounter. But that relationship has also ensured, out of the host of Ancient Near Eastern texts and artefacts, that Enuma Elish has paradigmatic status, albeit somewhat submerged. As for content, Enuma Elish moves from the creation of the gods, through the primal conflict between Tiamat and Marduk that results in the creation of the heavens and earth, the establishment of Babylon, the creation of human beings, and ends with a list of the names of the gods and their roles. In other words, we have here a comprehensive myth for which the creation of the state is on a continuum with the creation of gods, heavens, earth and human beings. (2)
The Fear of Rebellion
Let me begin with a standard psychoanalytic point, namely repetition. For we pass over on a rapid first reading one of the more intriguing elements of this text: there are no fewer than four descriptions of Tiamat's preparations for the primal battle to the death with Marduk. Tiamat is of course the primal mother of our text, 'she who bore them all' (I:4), who is finally roused to avenge the death of her consort Apsu and wipe out the younger gods who have disturbed the heavens. The first description is in direct narrative form: I:124 to II:3 (40 lines) lists the various forces Tiamat marshals for her attack, gods, monsters and a new consort (Kingu). But then almost immediately after this, the god Ea reports Tiamat's preparations to his father Anshar (II:11-48). This is not the place for a detailed reading of the variations between these two versions, except to point out that we have now moved to reported speech. The narrator has had his turn and is happy to let the word run on in other mouths. And so it does, for Anshar promptly dispatches his vizier, Gaga, with almost exactly the same message he has just heard from Ea (III:14-52), which Gaga then repeats (III:72-110) before the older gods Lahmu and Lahamu.
What we have, then, is four descriptions of Tiamat's threat and her preparations to wipe out the remaining gods. Such repetition is by no means uncommon in ancient literature, but we tend to forget its material force. If computers have made the hard labour of repeating or copying a text redundant, even a pen or quill is relatively easy going compared with the effort required to press a stylus into wet clay and then bake the tablet in a kiln. One hundred and fifty-six lines, a whole tablet of clay out of seven, are devoted to the four repetitions of Tiamat's preparations. This is a sizeable effort.
But apart from literary convention, is it not also a prime instance of Freud's point concerning repetition: that it marks an unresolved trauma? Without resolution, one is doomed to repeat such narratives that circle around the trauma without actually getting to the nub of the problem. Do I dare risk naming the trauma? We might be tempted to identify it as the fear of the primal mother: she can just as easily destroy those whom she brought to life. I will return to this below, but it seems to me that it is a component of a much stronger trauma: the fear of rebellion. Enuma Elish is fundamentally a text that deals with the problem of revolt and how that might be dealt with. Not merely a conflict among the gods, it is in fact a poetic text that traces the intricacies of insurrection and how it might be contained. Onto this basic schema attach the themes of familial and generational quarrel, and creation itself. Indeed, the depth of the problem shows up most clearly in that it leads to the creation of the world: rebellion, if you will, is for Enuma Elish the creative act par excellence.
Yet, if it is a poem of revolution, it seems at first sight that the revolution is eminently successful. In the intrigue of Tablets I to III, the very repetition of Tiamat's threat from one mouth to another ensures that eventually the oldest gods apart from Tiamat herself--her first children Lahmu and Lahamu--are party to it. The rebellion swells by working its way back into yet earlier and older generations. Once everyone is enlisted against Tiamat, all her offspring in fact, Marduk their champion vanquishes Tiamat and the insurrection is complete ... But not quite, for I want to suggest that the gods who are cast in terms of the successful rebels are in fact the upholders of order.
This is where the first of a series of reversals comes to the fore: even though it looks as though the insurrection comes from the younger gods with Marduk as their champion, the actual threat comes from Tiamat--there are after all four descriptions of that threat. In the hands of the poet storyteller, the forces of order and control are in fact Marduk and his cohorts, but what they have done is usurp the role of insurrection in the name of order. In other words, while they appear as the youthful and vigorous force for change, they are in fact desperately concerned with maintaining the status quo. And what better way to do that than to say, 'You may wish for change for the better, but we in fact represent your deepest desires for such change'--thereby diffusing any real rebellion.
The Marduk Complex
But I have run on slightly here, flagging one of the subtle ideological moves of Enuma Elish that I will consider further below. However, what interests me now are the modes of representing such an agenda for social and political order. Three items stand out: class, ruling ideology and the connection between them, namely, the 'Marduk complex'. In fact, let me begin with this complex. If Freud had read Enuma Elish, or more to the point, if Europe had been as saturated by Mesopotamia as it was and still is by ancient Greece, then he would certainly have coined the 'Marduk Complex' rather than the 'Oedipus Complex'. So rather than try to fit Enuma Elish into the template of the Oedipus Complex--cutting off a corner here, squashing in a bulge there--I will allow this text to reshape Freud's theory.
In this light I am intrigued by Ilana Pardes' comment that the more primary loss in the Hebrew Bible is not the father, as Freud argues, but the mother. (3) Murder is perhaps the better term, along with systematic dismemberment. For Pardes, the lost mother in the Hebrew Bible is Egypt, who is oppressive, rejected and mourned for in the desert. But in Enuma Elish we need not search so hard, for we have Tiamat before us. Not only do we have the four repetitions of her preparations, but the actual conflict takes up 533 lines (I:112 to V:65), or over half the total length of the myth if we include the preparations for battle and the careful carving up of Tiamat by Marduk as he creates the universe.
The other murders fall into place beside this one: thus the first murder, at least as far as the temporal progression of the poem is concerned, is that of the primal father. In fact there are two murders of the father. The first is the killing of Apsu by Ea (I:59-69), and the second the slaughter of Kingu by Marduk (VI:1-34). In both cases they are consorts of Tiamat, and their deaths are relatively minor matters, one before the killing of Tiamat and one after. As for the first, we do in fact have a murder of the father by the son: Ea kills his father or grandfather (it is not clear), Apsu, although it is in retaliation to Apsu's plot to kill the younger gods (I:48-9). Even more, there is a direct usurpation of the father's role and place--Ea and his consort Damkina live in a place called 'Apsu'. And yet, all of this plays a minor role, or rather functions as a supporting act for the murder of Tiamat. So also on the other side of the great conflict do we find the second murder of the father, or rather stepfather, if you will. Kingu, appointed by Tiamat as a replacement for Apsu and falsely accused of inciting Tiamat by the other gods, finds himself carved up in order to create human beings. As the afterthought of creation in Enuma Elish, human beings do not rank highly, and nor indeed does this second murder of the father. Two fathers killed, both framing the central death of Tiamat.
The father's murder, then, so crucial for Freud, especially in his Moses and Monotheism, is for Enuma Elish a sideshow for the main act--Tiamat's murder. Now one could of course argue that the murder of the father, doubled and demoted, is in fact the repressed motif of this story; that, in other words, their sidelining is a mark of their importance. But such a line of argument assumes that the murder of mother or father is the primary bedrock to which we must work our way. The use of terms such as 'primal' or 'primary' --into which I have fallen--and the search for a more original enabling cause all fall prey to a search for origins. The game then becomes one of finding some ever more hidden kernel that explains the other: I could cite Irigaray or Kristeva's insistence on the repression of the mother, maternal function and mother--daughter relationship, or indeed Judith Butler's argument for a primary repression of the homosexual. And once we have found that point of origin, we have the interpretive key.
The problem to my mind is the assumption that the family scene is basic, no matter how extended such a family might be. And so we get a family saga, with the old parents, Tiamat and Apsu, standing at the beginning of a long line that ends with the invocation of fifty gods at the close of the poem. Not only is Marduk a member of this extended family, but the conflict turns out to be nothing more than a family squabble. One can--especially if one has ever had, or even spent some time in, a house full of rowdy children or partying teenagers--imagine the scene:
The divine brothers banded together, They disturbed Tiamat as they surged back and forth, Yes, they troubled the mood of Tiamat By their hilarity in the Abode of Heaven. Apsu could not lessen their clamor And Tiamat was speechless at their ways. Their doings were loathsome unto ... Unsavory were their ways; they were overbearing (I:20-7)
The conflict begins, then, with nothing more or less than the response of parents at the antics of teenagers and young adults and their loathsome ways ... While Tiamat expresses horror at the thought of doing away with her offspring and urges that they be dealt with kindly (I:40-5), Mummu, Apsu's vizier, gives the old man some more lethal advice. But before they can quietly dispose of the rowdy children, Ea manages to dispense with Apsu, the primal father, and Mummu his vizier. Eventually Tiamat overcomes her caution, the gods appoint an arrogant and vigorous Marduk and we have the death of the mother usurping this earlier death of the father.
But this is where we run out of steam, even with our reworked Oedipus-cum-Marduk Complex. For it is not merely the murder of the primal mother that is at issue here; or rather, to point this out is only the beginning of analysis rather than its triumphant conclusion. Here an old adage is worth repeating: the domestic is political. Precisely what that means in regard to Tiamat I will leave until a little later, for she will turn out to be the subversive threat to the forces of control in this text. But what of the son, Marduk, the one who kills his old great-grandmother?
Creating a Crisis: Ruling Ideology
Marduk of course comes through as the saviour of the world, the only one who can face the threat of chaos and overcome it. And in the process he manages to create the earth and heavens, organize the gods, establish the cult and, as an afterthought, create human beings. But if we look a little more closely at the rise of Marduk, he takes on the features of the infamous 'oriental despot'. And his path to power has some chilling echoes with the so-called war on terror that characterizes international foreign policy in the early years of the 21st century.
In order to deal with the crisis, one that disconcerted even the great Anu (I:78-81), Marduk demands absolute power. His first words, when requested to stand up to Tiamat, are ominous:
If I indeed, as your avenger, Am to vanquish Tiamat and save your lives, Set up the Assembly, proclaim my destiny to be supreme! When jointly in Ubshukinna you have sat down rejoicing, Let my word, instead of you, determine the fates. What I may bring into being shall be unalterable; The command of my lips shall be neither recalled nor changed. (II:122-8)
The gods hesitate, send messengers back and forth. But finally they gather in assembly, suck sweet wine up their drinking tubes, swell in drunkenness, become languid and give Marduk his heart's desire (III:134-7). As the next four tablets progress, Marduk acquires absolute power over the gods, his creative word is all powerful and unimpeachable over the gods, who from this day forward must do as he decrees. He even has the power of destruction and creation, as the little episode of the images shows (III:20-8): Marduk can make them appear and disappear.
But let us pause for a moment and see what has happened here. Marduk's initial request for absolute power is tied quite specifically to the threat of Tiamat: he requires these powers in order to carry out his task. Or at least that is the impression gained from the poem. Repetition comes into play again, for in the third and forth repetitions of the threat of Tiamat that I discussed earlier--those reported in the mouths of Ea to his vizier, Gaga, and then by Gaga to the ancient gods Lahmu and Lahamu--we now find tacked onto the end a repetition of Marduk's request for power (III:57-65; 115-123). That is, the request for power follows immediately on from Tiamat's threat. Even more, it is put forward as a necessary and natural step: she is a threat, Marduk will take her on, but he needs these extra powers to do so.
But the question is whether it is such a necessary step after all? Do the other gods really need to give up their powers to Marduk in order to ensure their own survival? On one level they are necessary, since the implication is that Marduk will not go to battle without his requests being met. But at another level these powers are not necessary, for the request for absolute power is not commensurate with the threat of Tiamat. In other words, Marduk uses the situation in order to gather power for himself. What we have here is an early and rather clear instance of the workings of reactionary power in crisis: the crisis is used as a means of bringing about a range of measures that would normally be unacceptable. For instance, we have in Australia the establishment of a second stream of juridical procedures for those even suspected of 'terrorism' in the current geopolitical climate, a stream that dispenses with all the assumptions of innocence, legal representation, detention, arrest and so on. Under such a regime, a citizen may now be detained for seven days, renewable for another seven with the approval of a magistrate. The suspect--under suspicion of carrying out or having material evidence about the carrying out of a 'terrorist' act--may be interrogated and released with no trial, and no one may report or announce it. It is an obvious point, but it is not that these measures are necessary to counter terrorism, nor even that the crisis becomes an excuse for repressive measures, but that the crisis of global 'terrorism' is constructed--however unwittingly and however much it is believed that such 'terrorism' is a real threat--so that such measures may be enacted. Of course, those measures themselves perpetuate and redefine the crisis. This last point raises a second dimension of reactionary power, for if we go back to Enuma Elish, it is not merely the crisis that gives Marduk the opportunity for gaining absolute power, but that the crisis is manufactured in order to provide such an opportunity. Or rather, the text constructs such a crisis in its narrative in order to provide ideological justification for Marduk's, that is, the king's, power.
How do the other gods respond to such a situation? They cry aloud and wail (III:124-5), although it is not clear whether they wail over Tiamat's challenge or Marduk's extravagant demands in response. But they, the older gods, or Igigi, must hand over the fates, decrees or destinies to Marduk. But they wail, I suggest, since they realize they are trapped: refuse Marduk's request and they are at Tiamat's mercy; accept it and they are at his mercy. It is no wonder they get drunk before they hand over the destinies.
By the beginning of Tablet IV Marduk begins to wield this absolute power. And what does such power mean? He meets his obligation and defeats Tiamat, although this now becomes a favour on his part rather than any duty; he creates the world, establishes ritual and sanctuary for the gods, appoints them their places, builds a city and gets Ea to create human beings in order to serve the gods. And then, at the close we find a small paean to Marduk, the one who has anger and sympathy for sinners, is all-seeing and all-knowing, whose decrees are binding, but above all whose name must be passed from mouth to mouth.
All of this begins to look very much like a solid piece of ruling-class ideology, replete with convoluted justifications for the attainment of absolute power. But before taking it as a seamless effort at propaganda, I want to invoke the old point, derived from Claude Levi-Strauss and Fredric Jameson, that such an ideological effort is an imaginary resolution of real social and political contradictions. Further, these contradictions will show up at various points in the text, often at a formal level and in misplaced tensions. Indeed, precisely such a tension has already shown itself with the attempt to locate Tiamat as the threat to social order and then the crisis generated by such a move to justify Marduk's claim to power. However, it shows up more sharply with the question of class.
Class
An initial reading in terms of class, here as a literary trope, would take the creation of human beings at the beginning of Tablet V as a signal moment. Initially Marduk conceives a plan for the relief of the gods, suggesting the creation of a savage with the name of 'man', but Ea suggests they make man from one of the captives. Marduk inquires of the gathered gods as to who was responsible for Tiamat's rebellion and with one voice they lay the blame on Kingu, Tiamat's appointed consort. Kingu is the classic scapegoat, for he is in no way responsible for Tiamat's 'rebellion'--and this purely in terms of the text itself. Nowhere does Kingu take the initiative, for that belongs to Tiamat. He just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ea, the father of Marduk, then turns on the hapless Kingu:
They bound him, holding him before Ea. They imposed on him his guilt and severed his blood vessels. Out of his blood they fashioned mankind. He imposed the service and let free the gods. After Ea, the wise, had created mankind, Had imposed upon it the service of the gods (VI:30-35)
To all appearances the gods now have underlings who will do all the work while the gods can do no work and repose in ease--a classic image of the extraction of surplus value from those who labour by those who do not. It is but a small step to see the human beings, the 'savages' and 'black-headed ones' as slaves in a slave-based mode of production--a position that long held sway in Soviet Ancient Near Eastern studies. Human beings are indeed peons in Enuma Elish, an afterthought in the whole narrative of conflict and creation, a solution to the problem as to who would actually maintain and clean the new city and its sanctuaries.
But we move too quickly if we make such an identification. For the primary difference in this text is not between the gods and the human beings. Even in Tablet VI, Marduk, who does not even get involved in creating the humans, moves on to divide the gods into two groups, those who were to be above and those below. This is but the first hint of other divisions: the gods pledge that 'we will be the workers' (V:155) when Marduk has established Babylon. Yet both of these are but glimpses of the major distinction in the text. Enuma Elish is after all a theocentric text, and so the major class division shows up between the gods themselves. And that is none other than the one between the older and younger gods that we find in the first lines. Indeed, Tiamat and Marduk function as markers of this division, one that leads to the major conflict between them and the ideological effort I traced above to cast Tiamat as rebel and aggressor. The text works its way back, as I argue, to enlist everyone but Tiamat herself and her entourage among the ranks of the younger gods. Even Lahmu and Lahamu, the first children of Tiamat and Apsu end up supporting Marduk.
Now all of this might simply be read as a palace intrigue, one strata of the theocratic ruling class ousting another, with those exploited left entirely out of the picture. The fact that Tiamat is cast as a rebel and as the mother of the gods, that it requires a fundamental struggle to kill her, that the result of such a murder is the creation of the universe--all of these point to the primary class division as falling along these lines. Tiamat, then, takes on a very different role in this text, one of class opposition to the ruling class, of a rage at the usurpation of absolute power by Marduk.
But before I consider Tiamat more closely, it is time to pick up the objections of Adorno and psychoanalysis to myth. Quite simply, Adorno's point is that myth involves the first, brutal laying down of order, law and the organization of society--in relation to class, gender and race. Indeed, law and social organization are but the objectifications of domination. (4) For psychoanalysis, the argument differs but the point is similar: myth involves the construction of fantasy, which is itself an effort to deal with and perpetuate the never-named and inaccessible fantasmatic kernel. (5) Not only does such a process cement in the kernel as an unresolved problem, but it also means that any rebellion will succumb to an excess that undermines it, turning it into the very thing it sought to overcome. Myth is, in other words, an oppressive genre, one that rationalizes absolute power, repressive social organization, and lays down the law. And any effort to overthrow such an order merely replicates it in a wearying fashion.
Enuma Elish seems to be a prime example of such ruling-class ideology. 'Rebellion' is suppressed, the state emerges, the universe is ordered, the stars and planets follow their appointed paths without wavering, society is organized and the relations between the sexes established. All of which is part of what might be called the temple-city complex. Babylon is nothing other than 'The Sanctuary' (VI:58) for the gods, especially Marduk, and not the people. In fact, the fingerprints of priestly scribes are all over this text: Babylon is for the gods and human beings are there to minister to them, feed them, clean and maintain their sanctuaries (VI:110-19).
Rebel Tiamat
But I need to ask myself--in response to a reading that seems to reinforce the objections of Adorno and psychoanalysis--what has happened to the cunning of myth, to the denied moment of Utopia in this tale? Has it all simply been suppressed in what comes through as a piece of hierocratic propaganda?
In response, let me return to the question of reversal, something I already traced in relation to the appropriation of insurrection by those concerned to suppress it (Marduk and Co.). In other words, the younger gods with Marduk at their head become in this text the forces of innovation, energy and rebellion, thereby removing the ground from underneath the feet of any genuine rebellion. But there is a second reversal, one that involves Tiamat directly. Here things become interesting, for she occupies two positions: she is both the initial ground of existence, the mother of all living like Eve in the Hebrew Bible, but she is also the threat to existence and social order. And Marduk is both rebel and representative of order. All of which begins to look like an ideological mess. The reason, I would suggest, is that Marduk occupies all the desirable ideological positions, thereby denying Tiamat any stable place in this text. He is both innovator and bastion of order, rebel and all-powerful despot. Tiamat has nowhere to go, except into the ideological wasteland. In other words, she messes things up considerably. So let us read backwards and see where Tiamat comes.
So, to begin with, what does the text do with Tiamat? It places her in a primordial position, for in the first lines of this text we find her:
When on high the heaven had not been named, Firm ground below had not been called by name, Naught but primordial Apsu, their begetter, And Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all. (I:1-4)
As I have already suggested, Tiamat is for this text the primal mother. With Apsu she gives birth first to Lahmu and Lahamu and then a series of other gods before she is destroyed and cut up by Marduk. The temptation here is to invoke a series of readings from J. J. Bachofen onwards: Tiamat then embodies 'mother-right', a prior matriarchy or at least goddess religion that is overcome in that crucial mythical moment when men took power. Enuma Elish then becomes one piece of evidence in such a hypothesis. But by now my suspicions have been raised by this text and I want to ask why Tiamat is in fact the first.
A premature feminist response would be to argue that the text unwittingly acknowledges the primal trauma, namely that myths of creation attempt to deal with and avoid the brutal truth that all of us are born of women. It is, if you like, an attempt by men--here priestly scribes--to appropriate such a truth. Tiamat's characterization seems to suit such an analysis. She is after all water, commingling in one body with Apsu. But then, later in the conflict with Marduk, she has various recognizable features such as mouth, lips, belly and heart (IV:96-102). All of these internal features that may be read as codes for the reproductive female--labia, vagina and womb. So we have a watery female, one whose main identification is as a reproductive vehicle: 'she who bore them all' (I:4). But we also find that she is both caught with a net (IV:40, 94) and Marduk cuts her up 'like a shellfish' (IV:136). A watery, cloacal, sea-creature who is perhaps best summed up as 'monster' (IV:135).
But I am suspicious, since I want to ask why the text does in fact put Tiamat in such a position. The text goes so far as to make her the defender of those to whom she has given birth: she responds to Apsu's plan, suggested to him by Mummu, to destroy the younger gods with the words, 'Should we destroy that which we have built?' (I:44). Eventually and reluctantly she is persuaded to attempt the destruction of those to whom she has given birth. But why is she the primal mother? Why is she the source of all that is living? I would suggest that this is part of the ideological apparatus of this text. And it is an ideological apparatus that has caught Bachofen and company in its net. By placing Tiamat at the source of life the text conveniently denies her the role of rebel. There is, in other words, no prior role for women here, no claim to creative priority--except in the hands of the scribes who penned the poem in the first place.
So we have Tiamat as the monster mother, the one who is located in the opening lines of the text as the primary base of life, and then the one who seeks to destroy the life she has brought into being. Thus far I have leaned heavily on certain elements from feminism and psychoanalysis, particularly the work of Kristeva on the maternal function and Irigaray's point that the primary repression is that of the mother. But this gets us only so far, as I have already indicated. And in order to get to the next step, let me draw on a central category from marxism, namely differentiation.
For marxism the question takes the form of asking how differentiation first emerged, although it is usually cast as a historical question, rather than, say, a logical or theoretical question. Given that we have the various differentiations of class, how did class first emerge? The answer lies with the division of labour, and for Marx and Engels the first real division was between mental and physical labour, although they leave an ambiguous space for division according to gender, which is historically first but not an actual division of labour. From here we follow a slippery path to the distinction between exploiters and exploited: exploitation is, quite basically, the process of extracting surplus labour and value from those who work for the benefit of those who do not. Exploiters therefore need to ensure the appropriation of such surplus value in order to live, indeed to grow wealthy and thereby expand exploitation. And we find this narrative time and again, from Marx to Henri Lefebvre to Perry Anderson: a primitive community develops exploiters and exploited, thereby generating class and then a state.
Enuma Elish does not deal with differentiation in such a way. But differentiation runs through the text from beginning to end. Thus, at the end we have not merely the separation between the gods who live above and those below on earth, but most notably the list of fifty names of the gods. Apart from the epilogue to Marduk it is a curious way to close this poem--a long ritual litany of the names of the gods and their tasks and attributes that covers one seventh of the entire text (VI:121 to VII:143). Like the conflict between Tiamat and Marduk, the sheer space--let alone the time to punch this text into soft clay before firing it--points to its significance. This is a highly differentiated close, so as I have done a few times now, let me read backwards.
On our way back through the text, we come across what I have already argued is the basic distinction in this text, namely the opposition between Tiamat and the gods who gather around Marduk. This is an earlier form of the later distinction between the gods above and those below--in this case the annihilation of Tiamat's threat enables a rearrangement of differentiation between the gods. Or at least the gods all the way back to the second pair of Lahmu and Lahamu appoint Marduk as their champion and cede all of their powers to him. But Ea is also a crucial player: the father of Marduk, he takes the initiative in dealing with the threat from Tiamat, and he carves up Kingu, her second consort, to make human beings. I have suggested that this opposition and the conflict to the death between the two champions may well be a cipher for class in Enuma Elish: Marduk represents the ruling class and Tiamat the opposition to this ruling class. That the text quite clearly takes the side of Marduk, and that Tiamat is systematically marginalized suggests a class dynamic. Of course, we need to be wary about using terminology developed in a much later and very different economic system--capitalism--to one that is so different from it. So I will take 'class' as a place holder for now, one that I can easily dispense with should the need arise.
But if Tiamat is a mark of class in this text, what kind of class is it? What precisely is the threat that she poses? Here we need to read back further, especially to the first verses, which I will now complete from the quotation above:
When on high the heaven had not been named, Firm ground below had not been called by name, Naught but primordial Apsu, their begetter, And Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all, Their waters commingling as a single body; No reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared, When no gods whatever had been brought into being, Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined. (I:1-8)
The overwhelming impression of these lines is of a lack of differentiation. A series of negatives, a little like apophatic mythology, sets the scene. There is a lack of names, although in the very act of citing what is not named--heaven, earth, gods--they are named through the back door. And a lack of destinies, a feature that will become important as the text proceeds. There is no reed hut, no marsh lands. All that we find are Apsu and Tiamat, each with an epithet--'their begetter' and 'she who bore them all'. But just when we think we have an initial differentiation--for Marx and Engels the pseudo-primary distinction according to sex--our hopes are dashed, for they are one watery mass: 'Their waters commingling as a single body' (I:5).
I would suggest that another narrative begins to emerge in Enuma Elish: from an initial undifferentiated state we have a gradual process of differentiation until the stratified list of fifty names of the gods at the close of this text. In fact, each stage becomes one further step of differentiation. First the gods Lahmu and Lahamu are born, and then Anshar and Kishar, and then Anu and Nudimmud, and so on. The creation of the universe from Tiamat's body becomes yet another stage in which the heavens and the earth are allocated their various features and roles. And then of course the final division of gods into those above and below and their fifty names, all of them with specific functions. It is, if you like, a mythical version of a fundamental marxist narrative--how does differentiation begin and what are its stages and features?
But what of Tiamat? Although she begins the process with Apsu, she occupies the place of undifferentiation, the only place left to her. And this is her threat. She is undifferentiated, a woman; she is watery chaos, lacking distinction and order. At this level the conflict between Marduk and Tiamat is one between differentiation and its lack. It is not for nothing that Tiamat must not only be killed, but cut in two to make heaven and earth, and then her various body parts become features such as rivers, oceans and mountains. Tiamat's threat is nullified by differentiating her and keeping her various parts within bounds. Her spittle becomes the clouds, her head and udder the mountains, her eyes the sources of the Tigris and Eurphrates, and so on. Not only must Marduk bind Tiamat (IV:127), but he must set the bounds of all that he creates from her body (V:65). Nothing of this leaking, undifferentiated state that she embodied before the conflict must remain.
But it is not merely Tiamat who is undifferentiated, for the forces she draws around her for battle--made by the enigmatic 'mother Hubur'--lack definition. Or rather, they are not defined according to expected categories. Miscegenated, mutant, blending into one another, they are a continuation of Tiamat's threat of dissolution and undifferentiation. So we find monster-serpents, the Sphinx, Scorpion-Man, lion-demons, Dragon-Fly and Centaur (I:31-44). They number eleven, a number that does not fit any of the so-called perfect or holy numbers. And this description lies at the heart of the fourfold repetition of Tiamat's threat. Of course, 'Mother Hubur' is none other than Tiamat herself, for Mother Hubur's epithet is 'she who fashions all things'.
But all this cries out for a more political reading: in marxism the undifferentiated state is of course primitive communism. Now I elsewhere argue that primitive communism continues to haunt biblical studies, but with Enuma Elish we find primitive communism lurking within the text itself. For primitive communism is that state from which the long process of differentiation, of the division of labour and class, begins. It plays that role here, but it actually functions more as a threat, a danger to social and political order, precisely because it is the moment of origin.
Conclusion
I have in fact been reading Enuma Elish in terms of Bloch's cunning of myth--the way myth brings out subversive voices in the very act of suppressing them. And this text, at some surprise to me, shows that the threat is not a past rebellion, one that has been successfully put down, but rather one that remains and has a potential to break out again. Let me come clean by what I mean here: where does Tiamat end up? She becomes heaven and earth and all that is between them--rivers, mountains, clouds and so on. However much Marduk tries to set boundaries to her, she becomes even more enveloping. The text in the end cannot suppress her. And here we cannot but help invoke Badiou's notion of forcing a truth that is so beautifully expressed in the future perfect: a truth will have been. (6) Or, as I would prefer, myth itself may shift the future perfect to an event: this political event, like the truth that speaks of it, will have been. It seems to me that Tiamat's undifferentiated threat, that shows up unexpectedly in her final presence and envelopment of everything created, is an excellent instance of the future perfect of myth. In Enuma Elish then, the truth of primitive communism emerges through the very cunning of myth itself.
Or, as Bloch has shown us, we must seek that which is suppressed. Myth may seem to close things down, to function as the ideological justification of organization and regulation, but in doing so it also notes the challenge to that organization. In other words, myth is not merely about locking things into place, for the process of doing so brings into relief the problems such a process wishes to deal with. Myth, in other words, allows a great deal of room for the tensions that render a social and economic order unviable. It airs such contradictions in order to close them down, but it gives them plenty of free play before it does so.
(1.) E. Bloch, Principle of Hope, trans. N. Plaice, S. Plaice and P. Knight, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1995.
(2.) See a full translation at <www.cantrell.org.uk/david/religion/babylon/enuma-elish.html>.
(3.) I. Pardes, The Biography of Ancient Israel: National Narratives in the Bible, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 2000, p. 64.
(4.) See M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, (1944), trans. J. Cumming, New York, Continuum, 1999.
(5.) See S. Zizek, The Plague of Fantasies, London, Verso, 1997.
(6.) A. Badiou, Theoretical Writings, trans. R. Brassier and A. Toscano, London, Continuum, 2004, pp. 127-8.
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| Title Annotation: | Part II: The Politics of Utopia |
|---|---|
| Author: | Boer, Roland |
| Publication: | Arena Journal |
| Article Type: | Critical essay |
| Date: | Jan 1, 2006 |
| Words: | 6975 |
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