Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

—CHAPTER XXXVIITHE FIGHT BETWEEN MARDUK AND TIAMATFollowing my usual course of ending the chapter on eachnation with a legend or story, in which fish or ichthyic monstersfigure as direct or indirect agents of some important event, Isubjoin the only myth in Assyrian literature which comeswithin this category, viz. the famous fight between Mardukand Tiamat, the monstrous creature of the deep.Tiamat, with her consort ApsQ, had revolted against thegods and brought into being a brood of monsters to destroythem. So formidable seemed her forces that all appeals byAnshar, the leader of the gods, to Anu, and then to Ea, weremade in vain. No god would " face the music," till Mardukwas prevailed upon to become their champion. Nor does thisgrand refusal seem unnatural, when we read of Tiamat'sdimensions." Fifty Kasbu, or more correctly Biru {i.e. 300 miles), washer length, one Kasbu (six miles) was her breadth, half a rodwas her mouth " ; and the rest of her body of proportionatebulk 1 ! Nor again is it unnatural that at" The lashing of the water with her tail,All the Gods in heaven were afraid."^ The Biru or Kasbu represented the distance walked by an ordinaryman in one Sumerian hour, which, as they divided their whole day intotwelve, equals two of our hours. The prehistoric Sumerians, like other nations,reckoned the year by the Moon, not by the Sun. The historic calendarmakersendeavoured to bridge the hiatus and correlate the solar with thelunar year by inserting an intercalary month. They combined the decimaland the sexagesimal in their scheme of numbers— 'hence, though curiously,their multiplication was always by six, not ten. Cf. W. Zimmern, Zeit undRaumvechnung, who instances the twelve—6 x 2—signs of the Zodiac, etc.391