Enuma Elish: The Babylonian Epic of Creation

This open access book is the first in a groundbreaking series making Babylonian literature accessible. It presents Enuma Elish in transcription and translation, with an introduction for non-specialist readers and essays from leading scholars in the field.

Acting as a companion to the poem, the book provides readers with the tools they need to explore Enuma Elish in greater depth. Essays cover important historical and contextual information, offer discussions of key topics and explanations of technical terms, as well as suggestions of relevant further reading. The book’s interpretive and reflective approach, which pays special attention to questions of poetic style, intertextual resonance, and literary and cultural significance, encourages a greater understanding of the poem as a work of literature while remaining grounded in philology.

The critical essays examine Enuma Elish and the following themes: the poem’s rhythm and style; its modern receptions, issues of gender, motherhood and masculinity; Marduk’s rise to power; Babylonian astronomy; intertextuality and the poem as counter myth.

Enuma Elish and the Library of Babylonian Literature series will be an indispensable companion for anyone interested in the literature, culture and religion of ancient Assyria.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by LMU Munich and Princeton University.

Johannes Haubold is Professor of Classics at Princeton University, USA
Sophus Helle is Postdoctoral Fellow at The Free University of Berlin, Germany and Oxford University, UK
Enrique Jiménez is Chair of Ancient Near Eastern Literatures at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany
Selena Wisnom is Lecturer in the Heritage of the Middle East, University of Leicester, UK