CHAPTER XXXVII 



THE FIGHT BETWEEN MARDUK AND TIAMAT 



Following my usual course of ending the chapter on each 

 nation with a legend or story, in which fish or ichthyic monsters 

 figure as direct or indirect agents of some important event, I 

 subjoin the only myth in Assyrian literature which comes 

 within this category, viz. the famous fight between Marduk 

 and Tiamat, the monstrous creature of the deep. 



Tiamat, with her consort Apsu, had revolted against the 

 gods and brought into being a brood of monsters to destroy 

 them. So formidable seemed her forces that all appeals by 

 Anshar, the leader of the gods, to Anu, and then to Ea, were 

 made in vain. No god would " face the music," till Marduk 

 was prevailed upon to become their champion. Nor does this 

 grand refusal seem unnatural, when we read of Tiamat's 

 dimensions. 



" Fifty Kasbu, or more correctly Biru {i.e. 300 miles), was 

 her length, one Kasbu (six miles) was her breadth, half a rod 

 was her mouth ; " and the rest of her body of proportionate 

 bulk ! 1 Nor again is it unnatural that at — 



" The lashing of the water with her tail, 

 All the Gods in heaven were afraid." 



* The Biru or Kasbu represented the distance walked by an ordinary 

 man in one Sumerian hour, which, as they divided their whole day into 

 twelve, equals two of our hours. The prehistoric Sumerians, hke other nations, 

 reckoned the year by the Moon, not by the Sun. The historic calendar- 

 makers endeavoured to bridge the hiatus and correlate the solar with the 

 lunar year by inserting an intercalary month. They combined the decimal 

 and the sexagesimal in their scheme of numbers — hence, though curiously, 

 their multiplication was always by six, not ten. Cf. W. Zimmern, Zeit und 

 Ranmyechnung, who instances the twelve — -6X2 — signs of the Zodiac, etc. 



391 



