Similarities Between Enuma Elish and Metamorphoses

The passages Enuma Elish and Metamorphoses are similar in a few ways…

#1  Verse form is used in both passages

Because these stories were passed down from generation to generation, they were told in verse form to make it easier for the narrators of the story to remember the sequence of events in the account.  

#2  Both passages open with chaos

For instance, Enuma Elish begins with: “When the skies above were not yet named nor earth below pronounced by name…”  The phrase “not yet named” creates a feeling of disorder and confusion in the universe.

Another example is the statement in Metamorphoses describing the world before creation: “Before the ocean was, or earth, or heaven, nature was all alike, a shapeless, chaos, so-called, all rude and lumpy matter…”  The turmoil and disarray described in this account shows the state that the universe was in before creation.

#3  The chaos in both passages results in creation

For example, in Enuma Elish Marduke defeats Tiamat, and uses her body to create the world.  “He divided the monstrous shape and created marvels (from it). ... Half of her he put up to roof the sky, drew a bolt across and made a guard to hold it.  Her waters he arranged so that they could not escape.”

And then after the gods swear their allegiance to him, Marduke makes man.  Marduke said, “Let me put blood together, and make bones too.  Let me set up primeval man: Man shall be his name.  Let me create a primeval man.  The work of the gods shall be imposed (on him), and so they shall be at leisure.”

In Metamorphoses, the “giants attached the very throne of Heaven, piled Pelion on Ossa, mountain on mountain up to the very stars.  Jove struck them down with thunderbolts, and the bulk of those huge bodies lay on the earth, and bled, and Mother Earth made pregnant by that blood, brought forth new bodies, and gave them, to recall her older offspring, the forms of men.”  Thus through disorder, man is created.

As one can see these passages, although very different, have some striking similarities.