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 Apsi, 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 (t.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.” 
1 The Biyu 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 ourhours. The prehistoric Sumerians, like 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 
Raumvrechnung, who instances the twelve—6 x 2—signs of the Zodiac, etc. 
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