Introduction
Tiamat is the primordial goddess of the salt sea, whose mingling waters with Apsu produced the first generation of gods in the Enuma Elish.
Family
War and Cosmic Creation
After Ea killed her husband Apsu, Tiamat, provoked further by the younger gods, raised a monstrous army and took the god Kingu as her new consort and general, giving him the Tablet of Destinies to command her forces. The gods, unable to face her, turned to Marduk, who agreed to fight her only if granted supreme kingship in return. Marduk killed Tiamat in single combat and split her enormous body in two, using one half to form the sky and the other the earth — the Enuma Elish's central act of cosmic creation, with the ordered world built literally from the defeated goddess of primeval chaos.
Mesopotamian religion spans Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian sources composed and recopied across nearly three thousand years, so names, genealogies, and even a deity's role often shift between traditions (Sumerian An/Enki/Inanna alongside their Akkadian/Babylonian forms Anu/Ea/Ishtar); the account above follows the most widely attested version, usually as consolidated in the Babylonian Enuma Elish or the standard Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh.