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The black dwarfs were parasites on Ymir’s body, as human beings were parasites on the body of Pʼan Ku.
It may be that the idea of a primeval giant like Pʼan Ku, or Ymir, was derived from the conception of Osiris as a world-god, which obtained in Egypt as far back as the Empire period. Erman translates a hymn in which it is said of the god: “The soil is on thy arm, its corners are upon thee as far as the four pillars of the sky. When thou movest, the earth trembles.…[7] The Nile comes from the sweat of thy hands. Thou spewest out the wind that is in thy throat into the nostrils of men, and that whereon men live is divine. It is[8] [alike in] in thy nostrils, the tree and its verdure, reeds, plants, barley, wheat, and the tree of life.” Everything constructed on earth lies on the “back” of Osiris. “Thou art the father and mother of men, they live on thy breath, they eat of the flesh of thy body. The ‘Primæval’ is thy name.”[9]
The body of Osiris was cut into pieces by Set. As the bones of Pʼan Ku and Ymir are the rocks, so are the bones of Set the iron found in the earth, but no myth survives of the cutting up of Set’s body. The black soil on the Nile banks is the body of Osiris, and vegetation springs from it.
It may be, however, that it was in consequence of the fusion in some cultural centre of the Babylonian myth regarding the cutting up of the dragon Tiamat and the cutting up of the body of Osiris that the northern Europeans came to hear of an Ymir and the Chinese of a Pʼan Ku from the early traders in amber, jade, and metals. [[265]]
When Tiamat was slain, Marduk “smashed her skull”.
He cut the channels of her blood,
He made the North Wind bear it away into secret places.…
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
He split her up like a flat fish into two halves,