Creation and the Cosmos (Volume A)

• cosmogony• ex nihilo • theomachy• hierarchical structure

General Concepts

Cannibal Spell for King Unis“Unis’s privileges will not be taken from him, for he has swallowed the Perception of every god” (28).

Great Hymn to the Aten• el-Amarna• monism• Hapy• dat• etiological myths

• “when on high”• Akkadians• Tiamat (mother ocean)/ Apsu (father, fresh

water)• Marduk/ Ea • Esharra and Babylon• Qingu’s blood, human creation as “artful”• Anunna and Igigi (higher, lesser) gods

Enuma Elish

Marduk

Ziggurat

The first one should reveal themThe wise and knowledgeable should ponder

them togetherThe master should repeat, and make the

pupil understandThe “shepherd” and “herdsman” should pay

attention (38).

Sanctity of the Text

• Theogony, “birth of the gods”• Gaia / Uranus (mother earth/ father sky)• Titans• Hesiod as a shepherd “tending sheep at

the foothills of god-haunted Helikon” • invocation to the Muses

Hesiod

Nine Muses• Kleio• Euterpe• Thaleia• Melpomene• Terpsichore• Erato• Polymnia• Ourania• Kalliope

Aphrodite and the Titans

Prometheus and Hubris

Pandora

The Races of Mankind

• Thales of Miletus, water as prima materia• Heraclitus, theory of transformation• Empedocles, conjunction of the elements,

laws of attraction and repulsion• Anaxagoras, intelligence and process

Philosophers

• Epicureanism• “But if I knew nothing of atoms, of what

they were, still from the very ways of the heavens, from many other things I could name, I’d dare to assert and prove that not for us and not by gods was this world made” (55).

• “Surely the heavens and earth must also have a time of origin and a time of death” (56).

Lucretius

What do these creation myths tell us about original societies, their cultures, and their understanding of the universe?

Discussion Questions

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The Norton Anthology

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