Anšar, “host of heaven,” and Kišar, “host of earth,” are, it will be remembered, given in the Semitic Babylonian account of the Creation as the names of the powers that succeeded Laḫmu and Laḫamu, according to Damascius, the second progeny of the sea and the deep (Tiamtu and Apsū). The Greek forms, Assoros and Kisaré, imply that Damascius understood the former to be masculine and the latter feminine, though there is no hint of gender in the wedge-written records. That the Babylonians regarded them as being of different genders, however, is conceivable enough. The Greek form of the first, Assoros, moreover, implies that, in course of time, the n of Anšar became assimilated with the š (as was usual in Semitic Babylonian), and on account of this, the etymology that connects Anšar with the name [pg 066] of the Assyrian national god Aššur, is not without justification, though whether it be preferable to that of Delitzsch which makes Aššur to be really Ašur, and connects it with ašaru, meaning “holy,” is doubtful. In favour of Delitzsch, however, is the fact that the Assyrians would more probably have given their chief divinity the name of “the Holy one” than that of one of the links in the chain of divinities which culminated in the rise of the god Merodach to the highest place in the kingdom of heaven.
The question naturally arises: Who were these deities, “the host of heaven” and “the host of earth”? and this is a question to which we do not get a very complete answer from the inscriptions. According to the explanatory lists of gods (as distinct from the mythological texts proper) Kišar is explained as the “host of heaven and earth” and also as Anu and Antum, in other words, as the male and female personifications of the heavens. Strange to say, this is just the explanation given in the inscriptions of the names Laḫmu and Laḫamu, for though they are not “the host of heaven and earth,” they are the same, according to the lists of gods, as the deities Anu and his consort Antum. This probably arises from the worship of Anu, the god of the heavens, and his consort, at some period preceding that of the worship of Merodach, or even that of his father Aa or Ea, whose cult, as we have seen, was in early times abandoned for that of the patron god of the city of Babylon. Concerning this portion of the legend of the Creation, however, much more light is required.
Besides the simple form Kišar, there occurs in the lists of gods also Kišaragala, which is likewise explained as a manifestation of Anu and Antum, and described moreover as “Anu, who is the host (kiššat) of heaven and earth.” In addition to Anšar and [pg 067] Kišar, the deities Enšara and Ninšara are mentioned. These names are apparently to be translated “lord of the host” and “lady of the host” respectively, and are doubtless both closely connected with, or the same as, the Anšar and Kišar of the Babylonian story of the Creation, in close connection with which they are, in fact, mentioned. En-kišara is given, in W.A.I., III., pl. 68, as one of the three mu-gala (apparently “great names”) of Anu, the god of the heavens. Another Nin-šara (the second element written with a different character) is given as the equivalent of both Antum and Ištar, the latter being the well-known goddess of love and war, Venus.
Tiamat.
Tiamat is the common transcription of a name generally and more correctly read as Tiamtu. The meaning of this word is “the sea,” and its later and more decayed pronunciation is tâmtu or tâmdu, the feminine t having changed into d after the nasal m, a phenomenon that also meets us in other words having a nasal before the dental. As this word is the Tauthé of the Greek writer Damascius, it is clear that in his time the m was pronounced as w (this peculiarity is common to the Semitic Babylonian and Akkadian languages, and finds its converse illustration in the provincialism of mir for wir, “we,” in German), though the decayed word tâmtu evidently kept its labial unchanged, for it is difficult to imagine w changing t into d, unless it were pronounced in a way to which wee are not accustomed. We have here, then, an example of a differentiation by which one and the same word, by a change of pronunciation, forms two “vocables,” the one used as a proper noun and the other—a more decayed form—as a common one.
Tiamtu (from the above it may be supposed that the real pronunciation was as indicated by the Greek form, namely, Tiauthu), meaning originally “the sea,” [pg 068] became then the personification of the watery deep as the producer of teeming animal life such as we find in the waters everywhere. Dominating and covering at first the whole earth, it was she who was the first producer of living things, but when the land appeared, and creatures of higher organization and intelligence began, under the fostering care of the higher divinities, to make their appearance, she saw, so the Babylonians seem to have thought, that with the advent of man, whom the gods purposed forming, her power and importance would, in a short time, disappear, and rebellion on her part was the result. How, in the Babylonian legends, this conflict ended, the reader of the foregoing pages knows, and after her downfall and destruction or subjugation, she retained her productive power under the immediate control and direction of the gods under whose dominion she had fallen.
Tiamtu is represented in the Old Testament by tehôm, which occurs in Gen. i. 2, where both the Authorised and Revised Versions translate “the deep.” The Hebrew form of the word, however, is not quite the same, the Assyrian feminine ending being absent.
To all appearance the legend of Tiamtu was well known all over Western Asia. As Gunkel and Zimmern have shown, there is a reference thereto in Ps. lxxxix. 10, where Rahab, who was broken in pieces, is referred to, and under the same name she appears also in Isaiah li. 9, with the additional statement that she is the dragon who was pierced; likewise in Job xxvi. 12 and ix. 13, where her followers are said to be referred to; in Ps. lxxiv. 14 the dragon whose heads (a plural probably typifying the diverse forms under which Nature's creative power appears) are spoken of. Tiamtu, as Rahab and the dragon, therefore played a part in Hebrew legends of old as great, perhaps, as in the mythology of Babylonia, where she seems to have originated.