The Face of the Deep

This is a remarkable piece tying the disparate myths and legends from around the world together via content and by the names used for the gods and personages in the stories.

It is remarkable how many creation myths have nearly identical beginnings. They begin with tales of a primordial chaos, and that chaos is usually symbolized by the element of water. For the Babylonians, the goddess Tiamat (“the bitter ocean”) represented the chaos which spawned all things. She took as her husband Apsu, the god of the fresh waters. This union of bitter ocean and fresh waters is certainly suggestive of a flood, and this idea is borne out by the fact that their son Ea equates with the Sumerian King Ia, who was known to history as “the Lord of the Flood.”

Read it all.