Creation Myths of Babylon, Egypt, and Genesis
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Creation myths of Babylon, Egypt, and Genesis
There are many similarities in the Babylonian, Egyptian, and Genesis stories. In all the stories one god creates man and explains how all things on earth come to being. They also set up their calendars and show examples of evil within each story to set up moral rules for man to live by. How do these elements compare between each of these stories?
In the Babylonian myth the God Marduk creates man from the blood of another god Kingu. “Blood will I compose, bring a skeleton into being, Produce a lowly, primitive creature, Man shall be his name.” In Egyptian myth the God Rae creates man and takes this form. In the Genesis story there is only one God, he creates man in the image of himself. In the Babylonian and Egyptian stories, the major difference is they have many Gods. Also, in the Genesis story God creates man in his likeness, this might be the case with the Babylonian story, but that is not clear. The major similarity is that all three of the stories only have one God that creates mankind.
All the stories show how things came onto the Earth and how it was made; they also set up their calendars at the same time. In the Babylonian story, Marduk is granted the power of speaking something and it will come to being and if he spoke it again it would come out of being. Marduk becomes king, greater than all the Gods, after slaying the God Tiamat. Then later the defeat and capture of Tiamats army and commander Kingu. “He made the stars, star-groups and constellations and determined the year, marked out its divisions, for each of the twelve months appointed three stars as he traced lines for the mighty Gods.” In doing this he set up the astrological seasons for a calendar. After cutting the body of Tiamat in two, he made the Earth having the sun and moon come in and out of her ribs. Her head he made a mountain and out of her eyes flowed the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Then he disposed her eleven monster-serpents, which include a snake, and made them into the signs of the Zodiac. In the Egyptian story Rae names things and they come into being and creates man last. He then takes the form of a man and becomes Pharaoh or the “God King.” Similarly, in Genesis, God creates the Earth from a formless void into geophysical features, as we know it. Then he creates all the plants and animals and last creates man, then on the seventh day he rested. In having God take seven days to make everything it sets up a weekly calendar, where as on the seventh day everyone rests. The one difference in the stories is that he let man name and have dominion over all things he created. This shows how all things came into being in all three stories and even sets up the political environment of the Babylonian and Egyptian cultures. There are other parallels in the