Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Enuma Elish, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Order, Civilization, and Religion
The Sovereignty of Marduk
Chaos vs. Council
Feminine Power and Subjugation
Summary
Analysis
Tablet VII consists entirely of the recitation of Marduk’s fifty titles and attributes by the assembly of the gods. Among these, Marduk is the “producer of vegetation,” the one “whose farmland makes a surplus for the country,” “the inspiration of his people,” “who created mankind to set them free,” “director of justice,” “lord of abundance and the luxuriance of great grain-piles,” the one “who waded into the broad Sea-Tiamat in his fury,” and who “[shepherds] all the gods like sheep.” With these and dozens of other names the gods exult Marduk. The tablet and the epic conclude with an exhortation to humanity to call upon Marduk’s name and remember his defeat of Tiamat and the kingship he won.
The epic’s final tablet is generally not considered to be essential to the overall story of the Enuma Elish. However, even a cursory survey of the names, titles, and attributes listed in this section gives an apt summary of Marduk’s role as it was understood within agrarian Babylonian society and his sovereign position among the Babylonian pantheon. This tablet, with the gods themselves enumerating Marduk’s praiseworthy traits, models the view that Babylonian worshipers are expected to hold regarding Marduk and the form their religious ritual should take.
Themes
