Mummu
| Fertile Crescent myth series |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Mesopotamian | |
| Levantine | |
| Arabian | |
| Mesopotamia | |
| 7 gods who decree | |
| The great gods | |
| Demigods & heroes | |
| Spirits & monsters | |
| Tales from Babylon | |
| Primordial Beings | |
Mummu vizier of primeval gods Apsu, the fresh water, and Tiamat, the salt water.[1] An ancient Sumero-Babylonian craftsman-god, and personification of technical skill. Mummu is also referred to as "the deep" several times in Mythological Texts.
In ancient Sumerian, the word mummu translates to "the one who has awoken".
Deity ruler of "The Ancients", Mesopotamian purveyors of technical knowledge, mathematics and abstract concepts.
Mummu is a Mesopotamian deity present in the Babylonian creation myth. Sometimes referred to as 'the son of Apsu and Tiamat', Mummu is the third god in the primordial cosmogenous divine trinity. As the third of the first gods Mummu symbolizes the mental world, or logos. Mummu appears also the Sumerian Myth of Zu where Imdugud, whose name is translated as 'flashing wind', steals the Tablets of Destiny but in turn is defeated by Ningirsu. In their battle an arrow in midair is ordered to return to its 'mummu', which in this case meant the shaft's return to the living reed from which it was cut, the guts return to the animal's rump and finally the feathers to the bird's wings. Therefore in a larger magnitude, mummu is detransformation, the return to chaos, demanifacturing. Through the Second law of thermodynamics, the dissipation of energy from matter and its 'return' to its simplest common denominator, mummu can be understood as Entropy. Towards the middle of the Babylonian creation myth, Ea (a more powerful deity) locks Mummu and Apsu away, reversing the process of degeneration and thus creating the physical world.
Mummu is also one of the names, given to Marduk (34-th name in Enuma Elish).
[edit] In popular culture
In popular writing, Mummu is mentioned in Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! Trilogy as 'The Spirit of Pure Chaos'.[2]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Liebowitz Knapp, Bettina (1997). Women in myth. SUNY Press. pp. 270. http://books.google.com/books?id=sey1EqCW4WMC&pg=PA27&dq=Mummu&lr=&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&as_brr=3. Retrieved 17/June/2009.
- ^ Shea, Robert; Robert Anton Wilson (1983). The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Dell. pp. 805. http://books.google.com/books?q=In+the+beginning+of+all+things+was+Mummu+shea&btnG=Search+Books.
[edit] References
- Sandars, N. K. Poems of Heaven and Hell from Ancient Mesopotamia. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971. Print.
