Deity · Mesopotamian · c. 1100 BCE
Tiamat
Also called Ti'amat · also recorded as Ti'awath, Tiawath, Tiʾāmat (per Wikidata)
The saltwater ocean personified as the mother of the gods, split in two by Marduk to make heaven and earth.
Well sourced
The Enuma Elish is the founding text of the chaoskampf pattern — a young sky god kills a sea-dragon and builds the ordered world from the corpse. Tiamat breeds eleven monsters and leads them; Marduk drives the winds into her mouth, shoots an arrow into her belly, and splits her 'like a shellfish'. Genesis 1's *tehom*, 'the deep', is the same Semitic root as her name, though whether that reflects borrowing or shared inheritance is argued.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
What the name means
Akkadian *tiamtu*, 'sea'. The same Semitic root as Hebrew *tehom*, 'the deep', of Genesis 1:2 — though whether that is borrowing or shared inheritance is argued.
Where it was actually worshipped
None; a cosmological figure rather than a cult one.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- Enuma Elish · c. 1100 BCE
- Rank
- Primordial Sea
- Pantheon
- Mesopotamian
- Order
- Babylonian pantheon
- Base of operations
- None; a cosmological figure rather than a cult one.
- Era
- c. 1100 BCE
- Traditions
- Mesopotamian
- Placed in
- The Assembly of the Gods
Traits
- Domain
- Salt water, primordial chaos, creation
- Element
- Water
- Traditional form
- The sea itself; later depicted as a dragon
2 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 2 offices attributed to Tiamat, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- martial1
- malefic1
martial
malefic
2 marks
Which marks is it attached to?
A mark a figure carries and a mark used against a figure are opposite claims, so each link says which it is.
2 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Tiamat, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts spanning roughly 810 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Tiamat, Omorka (Thalatth)
Bears the gods, then makes war on them with eleven monsters; is split by Marduk to form the world.
A Babylonian priest's account of the same cosmogony, written in Greek eight centuries after the Enuma Elish and surviving only inside later authors quoting him: the female principle of the sea is split in two by Bel to make heaven and earth. It is an independent witness to the myth rather than a copy of the tablet, which is what makes it worth having.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Identified with Lotan
Parallel West and East Semitic forms of the defeated sea.
Identified with Apep
The same chaos-serpent role, but never finally defeated.
Opposed by Marduk
The founding act of the Enuma Elish.
Identified with Yam
The Sea as a defeated claimant, in West and East Semitic forms.
Identified with Nut
Primordial female bodies out of which the sky is made.
Identified with Nun
The formless water before creation, which never goes away.
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Afterwards
What did later readers make of it?
Overwhelmingly familiar now as a five-headed dragon, which is a modern gaming invention. The Enuma Elish never gives her a settled form, and the text most often reads as though she is simply the sea.
Kept in its own section on purpose. Everything above is what the cited texts say; this is what was built on top of them afterwards, and blending the two is how most popular demonology goes wrong.
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Tiamat?
Is Tiamat the same as Lotan?
What rank is Tiamat?
How else is Tiamat spelled?
What is Tiamat said to do?
How old is Tiamat?
Nearest in the corpus
If Tiamat is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Ereshkigal
Queen of the Great Below · Mesopotamian
Sovereign of the underworld who strips Ishtar of a garment at each of the seven gates and hangs her on a hook.
Ishtar
Queen of Heaven · Mesopotamian
Goddess of love, war and the planet Venus, whose descent into the underworld is among the oldest recorded narratives.
Marduk
King of the Gods · Mesopotamian
Splits Tiamat and builds the world from her body, and is voted fifty names and supreme authority for doing it.
Nergal
God of the Underworld · Mesopotamian
God of plague, war and the underworld, consort of Ereshkigal — and one of the few Mesopotamian gods the Bible names directly.
Anzu
Storm Bird · Mesopotamian
The lion-headed eagle who steals the Tablet of Destinies and is shot down for it — a rebellion against divine order predating any biblical account by a millennium.
Enki
Lord of the Sweet Waters · Mesopotamian
God of the abzu and of cunning, who repeatedly saves humanity by finding the loophole in another god's decree.
The books behind Tiamat
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Enuma Elish
Anonymous Babylonian · c. 1100 BCE · Akkadian
Read Enuma Elish in full ↗Cover: Public domain · editor Austen Henry Layard , drawing by L. Gruner · Wikimedia file page
The Babyloniaca of Berossus
Berossus, priest of Bel; surviving through Eusebius and Syncellus · c. 290 BCE · Greek
Read The Babyloniaca of Berossus in full ↗
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.