Page 87
4
The Logic of Cosmogony
WALTER BURKERT
It has often been assumed that cosmogonic myth, i.e. tales about the origin of the universe, are the
very centre or even the essence of mythology. Take the definition of myth in the recent
Encyclopedia of Religion:1 'A myth is an expression of the sacred in words; it reports realities and
events from the origin of the world that remain valid for the basis and purpose of all there is.'
'Origin of the world', in relation to 'all there is': these are the central concepts of cosmogony,
which would thus become the general matrix of myth as such. I, for one, would leave the notion
'sacred' out of the definition of myth, and would rather take 'traditional tale' as a starting point:
myths are traditional tales with special relevance, traditional tales with a secondary but important
reference.2 For illustration we may refer to collections such as Hesiod's Theogony and
Catalogues, Apollodorus' Library, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. In these corpora, however,
cosmogonical myths make up only a very small section of the whole—for example, only 84 lines
out of the 15 books of the Metamorphoses. Other topics are far more common: myths about
genealogies, migrations, foundations of cities, the establishment of culture, and the origins of
rituals, especially initiation and sacrifice. This is a rough enumeration of the themes of myth with
regard to the tales' reference, the signifié; if we try to make distinctions by the signifiant, the tale
types, we shall find the great favourite to be the quest, taken as the form of narrative by Vladimir
Propp and his followers. Its most thrilling variety is the combat tale; in addition, there are tales
about sex and progeny, tales of deceit and deception, 'trickster' stories; migration tales too may be
a separate type.3 What is the status of cosmogony
1 Kees W. Bolle, 'Myth: An Overview', in Eliade et al. (1987), 261-73, at 261.
2 Burkert (1979), 1-34.
3 On tale types, see Burkert (1996), 56-79.

Page 88
in this context? It is evidently not a tale type in its own right, rather an assemblage of different
tale types, complete or fragmentary, held together by the greatest subject, 'everything' or 'all there
is', which is itself a problem rather than something definite.
In fact one might doubt whether it is possible to define cosmogony at a general, transcultural
level. 'Kosmos' is an artificial concept which we see evolving at the beginning of Greek
philosophy.4 Archaic languages do not usually have a word for 'world'; it remains to enumerate
the basic constituents, above all 'heaven and earth',5 or else 'gods and men', 'gods, men, animals,
and plants'. There will still be a concept of 'all', 'everything', 'universe', which we may take to
constitute 'cosmology', but we must be aware that this is a logical concept, not mythical intuition.
If this is combined with the notion of 'first', of 'beginning', a hybrid of logical postulate and
mythical determination takes the lead. Still, cosmogonical myth is not the basis, but rather a
problem for myth as such. It is true that there is a psychological approach which makes 'kosmos' a
metaphor for the inner world, the self-experience of the individual, and hence makes 'cosmogony'
a mirror of psychic development from embryo to adult.6 This would provide a natural basis and
direct source for cosmogonic myth. But this is still not a general theory of myth, rather a very
special and selective one.
It is easy to see where the preference for cosmogonic myth, among the many varieties of
traditional tales, comes from: it was, first, philosophy which focused on the problem of arche,
and, later, Christianity which insisted on the one creator god. Plato, in his Sophist (242c), refers to
his predecessors, whom we call Presocratics, with the words: 'Each of them appears to be telling a
myth (muthos) to us, as if we were children ...' (muthon tina hekastos phainetai moi diegeisthai
paisin hos ousin hemin), and he presents his own cosmology, his Timaeus, as a cosmogonic myth,
eikos muthos or logos. Aristotle, in the famous résumé of arche-philosophy given at Metaphysics
A, mentions 'very old theologians' anticipating the theory of Thales (983b27); the reference is
4 On the development of the Greek term , see Kerschensteiner (1962).
5 See Burkert (1992), 91 with n. 8, 93f.
6 See Bischof (1996).

Page 89
to Oceanus and Tethys in Homer.7 In another famous context, in the argument of Metaphysics L,
Aristotle has Orpheus, who 'generates from Night', and Anaxagoras side by side.8 Damascius, last
head of the Neoplatonic Academy at Athens, includes in his treatise On Principles a vast survey
of mythical cosmogonies, including Orphic and Phoenician texts and even the Babylonian Enuma
elish.9 Pagan defence of myth as against Christian attacks would concentrate on the interpretation
of Timaeus.10 In other words, wherever there is interest in myth, it is cosmogonical myth. As
philosophy turned Christian, it was a lasting challenge to correlate Timaeus to Genesis; the
problem grew to unprecedented dimensions with the advance of modem science which made it
impossible to accept the literal sense of the Genesis text. But there was also the practical work of
Christian missionaries to whom the seminal reports on so-called primitives are due. They found it
an easy starting point for preaching Christianity to ask their hearers: Do you know who made this
world?—imprinting, as it were, the gospel of the one creator god on the pre-existing
conglomerate of native traditions. The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya was written by a convert,
'amid the preaching of God, in Christendom now', as the introduction says;11 the Gylfaginning in
the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson begins with the quotation of Genesis 1: 1.12
It would be in the post-modern spirit to conclude that cosmogony is a Western-Christian
construct. But we may happily state that there are texts which are older and independent of these
tendencies. If we leave out, for reasons of competence, the Old Indian texts—which anyhow are
farther removed from antiquity—there may be agreement by now that there is a family of texts
from the Near East, from Israel, and from Greece which should be considered together, since they
are connected not only by similarity of structure and motifs but also, no doubt, by mutual
influences; see the chapter of Damascius mentioned already. Classicists had difficulty in realizing
the great advances in the
7 Cf. Burkert (1992), 91-3.
8 Arist. Metaph. 1071b27.
9 Damasc. Princ. 123-5 (=i. 316-24 Ruelle), partly deriving from Eudemus, fr. 150 Wehrli.
10 A basic work is Proclus, In Timaeum; cf. Baltes (1976-8).
11 Tedlock (1985), 71.
12 Lorenz (1984), 43, 46, 50.

study of antiquity which occurred in the nineteenth century thanks to the decipherment of

hieroglyphs and cuneiform, advances which have added to our cultural memory about 2,000 years

of recorded history. Gradual change has come with the new discoveries made in the twentieth

century, especially with the publication of the Hittite texts Kingship in Heaven (1946) and

Ullikummi (1952). Their closeness to Hesiod was undeniable.13

It may be helpful to give a short survey of the relevant texts. The paradigm of oriental cosmogony

is represented by the Babylonian text Enuma elish.14 The date of composition has not been

established definitely, but seems to lie in the second part of the second millennium; it was well

known in the first millennium, when it was recited at the Babylonian New Year festival. There are

other comparable Akkadian texts, but also much older Sumerian 'myths of origin'; these, however,

usually concern special details, not 'everything', not the universe as such. In Egypt we do not find

one representative text, in fact not even narrative texts in the full sense, but rather a system of

notions about stages of 'creation', developed in the Old and Middle kingdoms, integrated in

priestly theology;15 how this state of the Egyptian evidence can be reconciled with the general

concept of 'myth' is a problem which cannot be discussed here. In Hittite, we have the Kumarbi

text, Kingship in Heaven, which is especially close to Hesiod in the sequence of the ruling gods

and in the motif of the castration of 'Heaven'. In addition, there are the much longer, but lacunose,

Ullikummi text and the Illuyankash text, both of which have relations to the Greek Typhoeus

myths.16 Ugaritic myth has generations and conflicts of gods, but not so far cosmogony in the full

sense.17 Phoenician cosmogonies, however, are referred to in various Greek sources, especially in

the book of Philon of Byblos.18 This is not to forget the beginning of our Bible, where, as is well

known, cosmogony occurs in double form, Genesis chapters I and 2-3. The central Greek text is

Hesiod's Theogony, but this is not unique; there are cosmogonical

13 Cf. n. 16 below; Burkert (1991), 155-81.

14 Cuneiform text: Lambert and Parker (1967). Translations: Heidel (1951), 18-60; Bottéro and Kramer

15 Cf. Sauneron and Yoyotte (1959); Assmann (1977); Bickel (1994).

16 ANET 120f., 121-5, 125f.; Hoffner and Beckman (1991), 40-3, 52-61, 10-14.

17 See de Moor (1987); cf. n. 59 below.

18 FGrHist 790; Baumgarten (1981); cf. West (1994).

Page 91
allusions in the Iliad, especially in the context of the 'Deception of Zeus' (book 14),19 and there
are fragments of various parallel or competing texts, beginning with an epic Titanomachia.20
Important details have become known from the theogony of Orpheus, in particular, through the
Derveni papyrus.21 In addition, the varying statements about the 'beginning' by the socalled
Presocratic philosophers largely belong still to the same family.
All cosmogonic texts use the form of narrative in a naive matter-of-fact way: these are typical
'just-so stories'—a term playfully introduced by Rudyard Kipling for children's stories and turned
into a term of scorn for anthropologists by Evans-Pritchard.22 The basic form is just a statement of
sequence: 'In the beginning there was ... then came ... and then'—just so. Even the Presocratics
did not disdain this form: 'Together were all the things,' Anaxagoras began, and then Nous began
to move.23 'The earth was without form and void,' Genesis relates; ... 'And God said: ''Let there be
light.''' (I: 2-3). It is this form of narrative which makes cosmogony a myth—as stated already by
Plato in the above-mentioned passage of the Sophist.
A speculative achievement still lingers in the concept of 'first', of 'beginning'. This is not the
normal beginning of a tale, which is, 'Once upon a time, there was'. In Greek, this is en pote or en
chronos;24 in Akkadian, a tale just begins with 'When ...'.25 Thus the normal tale creates its own
time; myth usually takes what has happened once as a model for what is now. Beyond this, in a
more pointed way, cosmogony insists on a time which was the 'first' of all, the one beginning
from which everything else is about to rise. 'In the beginning', bereshit, is the first word of the
Bible; using the same word root, Enuma elish calls Apsu, the
19 See Burkert (1992), 91-3.
20 Davies (1988), 16-20.
21 ZPE 47 (1982), appendix; West (1983).
22 Evans-Pritchard (1965), 42, referring to Freud's Totem and Taboo; R. Kipling, Just-So Stories for Little
Children (London, first pub. 1902).
23 Anazag. B 1 DK.
24 Attested in Critias, TrGF 43 F 19, 1; Pl. Prt. 320c; Moschion, TrGF 97 F 6, 3; cf. Amor and Psyche,
Apuleius, Met. 4. 28. 1; compare German 'es war einmal'.
25 Enuma elish means 'when above'; same beginning in Atrahasis—and in Hammurapi's Laws, too. Gilgamesh
and Huwawa (D. O. Edzard, 'Gilgames und Huwawa A', Zeitschrift filr Assyriologie, 80 (1990), 165-203, and
81 (1991), 165-233) starts: 'Do you know, how ...'

Page 92
watery Deep, 'the first one', reshtu;26 later, the Presocratics spoke of arche, and changed the
meaning of the word in the process, from 'beginning' to 'principle'.27 Hesiod asks, 'Which of these
came into being first?' and then starts: 'First of all ...'28 A dialectic of 'one' and 'many' is thus
implicit from the start; but this is not at all made explicit in every exemplar of the family.
Further achievements of speculation are reversal and antithesis, a basic logical function. If you
start to tell the tale about 'the beginning' of 'everything', you must first delete 'everything' from
your mental view, i.e. our whole world of heaven and earth, sea and mountains, plants, animals,
and humans: all this has to go. Thus the typical beginning of cosmogonic myth is performed by
subtraction: there is a great and resounding 'Not Yet'. Enuma elish begins: 'When above skies
were not named, nor earth below pronounced by name ... (when nobody) had formed pastures nor
discovered reed-beds, when no gods were manifest, nor names pronounced, nor destinies
decreed ...'29 An Egyptian Pyramid Text says: 'When heaven had not yet been constructed, when
earth had not yet come into being, when nothing yet had been constructed ...'30—what was there
then? 'Darkness brooding over the face of the abyss', the Bible tells us; or a yawning gap, chaos,
as Hesiod has it; Night, the theogony of Orpheus said; the Infinite, Anaximander seems to have
written. 'Together were all the things', we read in Anaxagoras (B 1 DK). An alternative answer is:
there was god—as we read in Egypt.
The most common response, though, is: in the beginning there was Water. This is not limited to
the ancient world: it is also reported from America, e.g. the Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya.31 The
Egyptians developed water-cosmogonies in diverse variants, having the yearly flood of the Nile
before their eyes; but Enuma elish too has ground water and salt water, Apsu the begetter and
Tiamat who bore them all, as the first parents of everything. Surprisingly enough, this recurs in
the midst of Homer's Iliad with Oceanus and Tethys, 'begetting of everything'; this may be direct
influence. (It was William Ewart Gladstone, better known
26 Enuma elish I 3 (Dalley (1989), 233).
27 Lumpe (1955).
28 Hes. Th. 115f.
29 Enuma elish I 1-8 (Dalley (1989), 233).
30 Pyramid Text 1040 a-d, cf. 1466 b—d, Sauneron and Yoyotte (1959), 46.
31 Tedlock (1985), 64.

Page 93
as British Prime Minister, who first saw this connection.)32 The Bible has the spirit of God
hovering on the waters, and Thales, the archegetes of arche-philosophy according to Aristotle,33
posited water as his first principle.
The primeval role of water has attracted the theories of psychologists who try to translate myth
into their own systems of interpretation. The more realistic variants recall the embryo floating in
uterine water; Jungians find worlds emerging from 'the Unconscious' tout court; others try to
imagine the newborn's world as an indistinct 'oceanic' whole in which 'everything' is diluted and
merging, to take shape later.34 I find it difficult to verify any of these interpretations. In the whole
family of cosmogonic myths, 'water' appears to be just one option among others. 'Night' should be
granted equal status, with parallel opportunities for interpretation—be it uterine night, or the
Unconscious; combinations of the two will do just as well: 'darkness' and 'water', as they appear in
Genesis. The 'yawning gap' of Hesiod does not fit so well, nor the Egyptian 'god'. At any rate,
each of these formulas appears already embedded in a contextual system which is spelt out
linguistically in the respective texts. Neither 'the Unconscious' nor 'oceanic feelings' produce texts
by themselves. But they may be factors favouring the selection and conservation of particular
versions amidst a richer palette of possibilities.
Togetherness is bound to dissolve: differentiation must come out of the one beginning. Every
cosmogonical tale is bound to proceed on these lines. The most grandiose idea is that heaven was
lifted from earth at a secondary stage of creation, that the world qua 'heaven and earth' came into
being by splitting apart. Even this idea is not a speciality of the ancient world: parallels have been
adduced from Africa, Polynesia, and Japan.35 The Hittites and Hesiod have the violent myth of
the castration of Heaven. There are even two versions in Hittite: according to the Ullikummi text,
it was done with an 'ancient bronze knife', whereas Kingship in Heaven introduces the much more
primitive proceedings of castration by biting and
32 Burkert (1992), 93 with n. 14.
33 Thal. A 12 DK=Arist. Metaph. 983b20. Cf. Hölscher (1953), revised and expanded in Hölscher (1968), 9-
89.
34 See Bischof (1996).
35 Staudacher (1942).

Page 94
swallowing.36 Egyptians, though, have quite a peaceful development, as Shu, 'Air', lifts up the
goddess of heaven, Nut, from earth, Geb.37 According to Anaximander, a sphere of fire grew
around the centre, which was apparently a form of slime; the sphere then burst into pieces, which
formed into wheels, carrying openings of flames around the earth. This is still the separation of
heaven and earth, which also lingers on in the atomistic cosmogony of Leucippus.38
In Hesiod—but not in the Hittite version—the castration of Heaven is made an act in a family
drama: Cronos, son of Ouranos, rebels against the oppressive sexual power of his father, helped
by his mother Gaia, Earth. It has been said that this is the gist of Oedipal wish-fulfilment;39 we
are back to interpretations on the basis of developmental psychology: separation of father and
mother, discovery of the sex differentiation, the Oedipal phase which means the end of indistinct
'oceanic' experience. But it is difficult to impose this interpretation on all the variants of heaven—
earth separation. Note that heaven is female in Egypt; and there is no trace of father -son
antagonism in the oldest text, the Hittite Kingship in Heaven, where no family relationship is
stated between Alalu, Anu, and Kumarbi, who are kings in heaven in this sequence. Note also the
reference to cultural evolution in Hesiod—Earth produces iron; and to ritual—Cronos throws the
severed parts behind his back in Hesiod's text; this does not come from developmental
psychology. There are other myths which seem to insist on a 'Freudian' perspective, implementing
Oedipal motifs, especially one strange Akkadian text, now called the Theogony of Dunnu.40 Into a
primeval sequence of gods or powers this text routinely introduces father-killing and mother—son
incest: 'The Cattle-god married Earth his mother, and killed Plough his father ...' and so on. The
motif is repeated about five times; this is beyond developmental psychology.
For further developments in cosmogony, there are two narrative options, two models: one might
be called biomorphic, the other technomorphic. The biomorphic model introduces couples
36 Ullikummi: ANET 125; Hoffner and Beckman (1991), 59. Kumarbi: ANET 120; Hoffner and Beckman
(1991), 40; cf. West (1966), 20-2; 211-13.
37 Sauneron and Yoyotte (1959), 47 § 9.
38 Anaximand. A 10 DK; Leucipp. A 1 § 32 DK.
39 Hes. Th. 154-81; Dodds (1951), 61.
40 ANET 517f.; Dalley (1989), 277-81.

Page 95
of different sex, insemination, and birth; the technomorphic model presents a creator in the role of
the clever craftsman. The first one follows the model of genealogical myth; the second means
description rather than tale.
It is tempting to call the biomorphic model the Greek one, the technomorphic model the biblical
one. It is true that Hesiod has fully opted for the biomorphic version, whereas Genesis is the 'book
of creation': 'And God made ...' and he carves Eve from a rib. Things are more complicated none
the less: the second chapter of Genesis (2: 4) introduces the title toledoth, which means 'actions of
birth', whereas Hesiod does resort to the technical process when Pandora the woman is fashioned.
Creation is in fact more rational, giving the author an opportunity to present objects in detail;
description takes over, as against a dramatic tale. Listen to Enuma elish: Marduk
made the crescent of the moon appear, entrusted night to it ... 'Go forth every month without fail in a
corona, at the beginning of the month, to glow over the land; you shine with horns to mark out six days; on
the seventh day the crown is half. The fifteenth day shall always be the mid-point, the half of each month.
When Shamash looks at you from the horizon, gradually shed your visibility and begin to wane ...'41
The Old Testament is much more cursory: Elohim 'made the two great lights, the greater to
govern the day and the lesser to govern the night, and with them he made the stars.' 42 Least
precise is Hesiod: 'Theia gave birth to great Helios and resplendent Selene, and also to Eos who
shines for all on earth, overcome in love by Hyperion; ... and Eos, mated to Astraios, ... gave birth
to the Morning Star, and to the brilliant stars.'43 Nobody would say Hesiod is more rational than
the orientals; he just gives names to the concepts of 'divine'—Theia—and 'walking above',
Hyperion; he is absolutely Unsystematic in separating the Morning Star from the other stars, and
it is just tautology to make Astraios father of the stars. What can be expressed in both models is
the feeling of 'wonder' at the complicated beauty of the cosmos: Marduk 'created marvels'
according to Enuma elish; Elohim, looking at his creation, found that 'everything was very
41 Enuma elish IV/V (Dalley (1989), 254ff.).
42 Gen. 1: 16.
43 Hes. Th. 371-82.

Page 96
good' (Gen. 1: 31). Hesiod introduces Thaumas, bearing 'wonder' in his name, as father of Iris, the
rainbow (Th. 265). If philosophy arises from thaumazein, as Aristotle holds, its roots are present
in cosmogonic myth, though less in Hesiod than at Babylon.
There are also combinations of both models, of procreation and creation. This is characteristic of
Enuma elish, and also of the Orphic cosmogony as known from the Derveni papyrus. In Enuma
elish, we first get a sequence of generations, with a palace being built above the watery deep in
the third generation, and storms arising to disturb the olden Sea with Marduk, the young god of
the fourth generation; later, after slaying Tiamat, 'the Sea', Marduk builds our world in all its
wonderful details, 'creating marvels'. In the Orphic cosmogony, we learn about Night and Aither
first, and the deed of Cronos, castration and separation of Heaven from Earth. Later Zeus, who
has become 'the only one', is seen to create everything from himself, to fashion the world with
Oceanus, Rivers, Moon, and Stars through powerful 'planning'; emesato ('planned', 'devised') is
the interesting term.44 Thus in both texts genesis dominates the first part, and technical
construction the second. Evidently this means a kind of progress: the sequence could not be
reversed. I would not insist on direct dependence, but rather on the availability of both models,
and their essential difference.
The concept of 'creator of the world' is explicitly rejected by Heraclitus: 'This world order ... no
one of gods or men has made'; he evidently presupposes the concept he is rejecting,45 The
statement that Zeus 'created' cosmic arrangements is common in Archaic Greece, usually
expressed by the root the-: 'He created three seasons'—Alcman (20, 1 PMG); he created honey—
Xenophanes (B 38 DK). Thus the- even becomes the foundation of an etymology of theos, as in
Herodotus (2. 52. 1). Heraclitus, for one, seems to develop the 'biomorphic' model into a
'phytomorphic' model, the principle of growing according to inner laws, as plants do; this is
phusis, which likes to hide (phusis kruptesthai philei, B 123 DK). And yet hardly any of
Heraclitus' successors can do without the concept of creator: Parmenides
44 Pap. Derveni (n. 21 above) col. 19 [new numeration: 23].
45 Heraclit. B 30 DK.

Page 97
introduces a female daimon who 'governs everything', and creates divine powers such as Eros;46
Anaxagoras gives a similar function to Nous, 'Mind', the leading power for all differentiation;
Empedocles has 'Love' constructing organs and organisms in her workshop; it was only
Democritus who, criticizing Anaxagoras,47 tried to exclude 'mind' from the shaping of macrocosm
and microcosm. The reaction came with Plato and Aristotle: Plato's Timaeus finally established
the term 'creator', demiourgos.
The rival option, genesis in the biomorphic model, leads to a sequence of genealogies. It thus
mirrors a form of tradition which is of basic importance in quite different societies for constituting
identity and rank through memory, with all the opportunities for continuity and conflict as known
from history. There are 'histories' of families and tribes, usually a mixture of name lists and
memorable events, which normally concern certain claims in the very real world and preserve
continuity by recalling past conflicts.
In cosmogony, the sequence of generations takes a more compact form with the so-called
'succession myth'. This has three or four generations of gods, and ends with the establishment of
the lasting power of the ruling god, in contrast to 'ancient gods', who thus become 'fettered gods'.
The succession myth is evidenced from Enuma elish, from the Hittite text Kingship in Heaven,
from Phoenician myth as transmitted by Philon of Byblos, and finally by Hesiod and Orpheus.48
There is no doubt that these versions are related to each other, developing as they do in adjacent
cultures with many interconnections; there must have been intermediate versions which are lost to
us. Characteristic is the role of 'Heaven' as a predecessor of the ruling god, and a problematic or
even mischievous god in between. In the Hittite text Kumarbi swallows the phallus of Anu,
'Heaven', and becomes pregnant with rivers and the Weather-god; in the cosmogony of Orpheus,
according to the Derveni text, it is Zeus who swallows a phallus, probably the phallus of Ouranos,
'Heaven', and becomes fertile in consequence, with gods, rivers, and everything else;49 in the later
Orphic version Zeus swallows Phanes, an enigmatic first and
46 Parm. B 12/13 DK.
47 Democr. A 1 DK=Diog. Laert. 9. 35.
48 Steiner (1959).
49 Pap. Derveni col. 9 [13] and 12 [16]; contradicted by West (1983: 85f.), who combines col. 4
[8], 2 with col. 9 [13], 4; this is against the Derveni author's interpretation not only of , but also of
, which he connects with twice in his paraphrase, col. 5 [9] 4; 10. See also W.
(footnote continued on next page.)

Page 98
universal god, and produces 'everything' out of his belly,50 The interpretation of the Derveni text
has been called into question by Martin West and others; the very similarity to the Hittite version
may seem suspicious; but it is the Derveni author himself, not the modern interpreter, who
understands the mythical events in this way, and I trust he had the integral text before his eyes. If
this is accepted, we are dealing with a model case of both continuity and change in the
transmission of myth, both across cultural barriers and through long periods of time. There is
transmission even of single motif, but there is also reinterpretation and change, important
modifications going on still within the Greek 'Orphic' tradition.
Within the theme of genealogies, a more general, nay a favourite tale type invades cosmogonic
myth, beyond the problems of castration: the combat tale.51 The combat tale needs a champion
and an antagonist. The antagonist must be both imposing and disagreeable to provide the foil for
the champion's triumph—and the hearer's identification with him. The ideal impersonation of the
negative role is the snake, the dragon, feared and hated, devouring and poisoning, to be
unfailingly overcome by the hero. Thus the god fighting the dragon gets an important part within
cosmogonic myth.
The theme of the dragon fight seems to be present in Sumerian mythology by the middle of the
third millennium, with the special image of the seven-headed snake being slain by the champion;
but we have only the images, no text from this period,52 Later there is an Akkadian myth about a
gigantic snake threatening humanity, to be overcome by gods; yet the text is still hopelessly
fragmentary.53 The seven-headed snake reappears in Ugaritic myth, with Baal slaying Lotan the
serpent of seven heads, a text which has left its trace even in the Old Testament, with Jahwe
slaying Leviathan, even if the seven heads have been eliminated there.54 In Hittite there is the
battle of the Storm-god
(Footnote continued from previous page)
Burkert, 'Oriental and Greek Mythology: The Meeting of Parallels', in Bremmer (1987), 10-40, at 22 with
n. 57.
50 Kern (1922), fr. 168.
51 Cf. Burkert (1979), 18-20.
52 Burkert in Bremmer (1987), 18 with n. 35.
53 Bottéro and Kramer (1989), no. 27.
54 ANET 138, de Moor (1987), 69; Isaiah 27: 1; Burkert in Bremmer (1987), 18. From the Indo-European
side, see Watkins (1995).

Page 99
with the dragon Illuyankas, in close relation to a special festival called Purulli; this myth in turn
seems to have influenced or even created the Greek myth of Zeus fighting Typhon the snakemonster
in Cilicia, a myth of which there are several variants, more or less Hittitizing.55 A
comparatively late seal from Mesopotamia offers the most impressive example of a god fighting
the cosmic monster—one head only, in this case.56 Later still is Pherecydes, who has Cronos
pressing Ophioneus the Dragon into the ocean, Ogenos.57
Yet scholars must beware of the fable convenue. It has been common to speak of 'the dragon of
chaos', Chaosdrache, since Hermann Gunkel's book Schöpfung und Chaos.58 The god slaying the
dragon would thus strive to eliminate chaos and to establish the world as a place of order, a
'kosmos'. It is largely correct, of course, to say that the snake represents the 'below', the 'chthonic'
aspect as against the heavenly splendour of the god. Snakes are also constantly associated with
water. The great event in Enuma elish is Marduk slaying Tiamat, 'the Sea', as Ugaritic Baal too
fights Yam, 'the Sea'.59 Yet it is not at all clear that Tiamat, Marduk's antagonist, should be
imagined in the form of a snake or 'dragon', although there are monsters with snake characteristics
in her retinue. Yet the original water snakes mentioned in the first lines of Enuma elish, Lahmu
and Lahamu, are not molested at all by Marduk. The Babylonian seal mentioned above most
probably depicts a cosmic struggle, since the six dots in the picture seem to allude to
constellations; as a matter of curiosity it may be noted that the picture was reused in Greece to
depict Perseus and Andromeda fighting the ketos (sea monster) with stones.60 But even Leviathan
in Hebrew tradition is not expressis verbis a Chaosdrache; he may even be an edible fish.61 The
Hittite story of
55 Cf. Burkert (1979), 7-9; ANET 125f., Hoffner and Beckman (1991), 10-14; Apollod Bibl. 1. 6. 3;
Nonnus 1. 154-2. 29. These texts have elements in common with the Hittite version that are missing in
Hesiod; the same situation stems to obtain in relation to the phallus motif, n. 49 above. See also Hansen
(1995).
56 Burkert in Bremmer (1987), fig. 2. 7, with n. 79; reproduced also in West (1971), pl. II a.
57 Pherecyd. 7 B 4 DK; cf. Schibli (1990).
58 Gunkel (1895). Note that the very word 'dragon' was established through Revelation 12f.; 20: 2.
59 See Baal III in de Moor (1987), 29-44; cf. ANET 130f.
60 Burkert in Bremmer (1987), fig. 2.7/2.8.
61 Syriac Apocalypsis of Baruch 29: 4; Kautzsch (1900), 423.

Page 100
Illuyankas is not set in a cosmic context, although it presents an interruption and grievous threat
to the supreme god's rule, and ends with the god's reinstallation. The same is true of the Greek
Typhoeus story—leaving aside the problem of whether it originally belonged to Hesiod's
Theogony.62 It is a sequel, not an integral part of the cosmogony proper. In short, not every
cosmogony needs a dragon fight, nor does every dragon represent the original chaos. In Egypt,
the aboriginal combat tale is the fight of Horus against Seth;63 Seth may well be said to stand for
chaos, but he never becomes a snake. In other words, the speculative energy of cosmogony and
the narrative energy of the combat tale are not identical; they may meet but also separate again.
We spoke of two options: creation on the one side, procreation leading to generations in conflict
on the other. It must be added that there is a strange meeting of both narrative lines in the idea of
creation by killing. To repeat Enuma elish: 'The Lord rested and inspected her corpse: he divided
the monstrous shape and created marvels ...'64 It is from mortification, from the corpse, that the
new and stable structure takes its beginning. It is killing that transforms a living and potentially
dangerous partner into objective material, to be used for construction. The Vedic myth about
Purusha, the 'Man' who is sacrificed and cut up to form the cosmos, and the tale of Ymir in the
Snorra Edda, the giant out of whom the universe is made, have long been compared.65
Creation by killing is especially prominent, and troubling, in anthropogony. In Atrahasis, Enuma
elish, and other Akkadian texts, in order to create humans from clay a god has to be killed, 'that
the god's blood be thoroughly mixed with the clay'.66 Life comes from killing. Less drastic is
Adam's narcosis when Eve is carved from his rib; yet it still means cutting up a living body.
Orpheus once more seems to be especially close to the oriental parallels, if the myth about the
origin of men out of the Titans,
62 Hes. Th. 820-80, still athetized by F. Solmsen (Oxford text, 1970; 3rd edn. 1990); cf. the discussion in
West (2966), 379-83.
63 Griffiths (1960); te Velde (1967).
64 Enuma elish IV 135f. (Dalley (1989), 254f.).
65 Olerud (1951).
66 Atrahasis I 208-17; Dalley (1989), 15. The interpretation of the passage is controversial; see Chiodi (1994).

Page 101
killed and burnt by Zeus after they have killed and eaten Dionysus, is accepted as an old tradition;
I am still inclined to take it as such, in spite of the recent article by Luc Brisson. 67 Myths of this
form remain puzzling; there is no simple tale pattern to account for them, and definitely not the
sequence of individual psychological development, but rather uneasiness and feelings of conflict
in view of the condition humaine, making use of cultural patterns such as magic or sacrificial
ritual in order to deal with such uneasiness.
At any rate, the appearance of man must be the final and decisive part of any cosmogony told by
humans. It is a strange omission in Hesiod that anthropogony is missing, although it seems to be
announced.68 There were various possibilities to account for the creation of man, even if one was
not content with the simple statement 'and god made', or 'Zeus made ...', as Hesiod was in the
myth of the Races. Once more it is impossible to assume one basic form: there is no single myth
of anthropogony, but a large variety illustrating this or that aspect, problem, or interest in the
human situation.69
So what finally is the message contained in cosmogonic myth? What is the raison d'être of this
strange assemblage of motifs and micro-myths along the thread of a comprehensive just-so tale?
It is difficult to say what the Sitz im Leben of Hesiod's Theogony was; the question is no more
simple for, say, the book of Anaximander.
The answer is clearer if we keep to the Eastern paradigm, Enuma elish. In this poem the skopos
evidently is the success and the power of Marduk, the supreme god of Babylon. The whole of the
last tablet is filed with Marduk's inauguration, with fifty names proclaimed for him on the
occasion: this is the creation of a cosmos of meaningful names, the authoritative Sprachregelung
for a world in which a zoon logikon will have to dwell. Practically all
67 Olymp. in Phd. 1. 3, p. 41 Westerink=Kem (1922), fr. 220, cf. Xenocr. fr. 219 Isnardi Parente=Damasc.
in Phd. 1. 2, p. 29 Westerink; Burkert (1985), 298; Brisson (1992/1995) argues for a late alchemical
context for the famous passage in Olympiodorus. But while he cannot explain (484 n. 13) why this text has
'four monarchies', as against six in the Orphic Rhapsodies, this very detail agrees with the Derveni
theogony. This is an argument in favour of the point that Olympiodorus is preserving an old tradition; note
also the reference to Xenocrates in Damascius.
68 Hes. Th. 50; cf. WD 108 as another misleading announcement.
69 See Luginbühl (1992).