Identify Literary Devices of Enuma Elish and explain the use of literary devices such as symbolism, irony, foreshadowing, or metaphor.

Metaphor:

The climax of the story is the death of Tiamat. In many—but oddly, not all—translations of the text, her gruesome death is explicitly situated into the metaphor of a fish. Those translations which leave this detail out are particularly questionable since Tiamat is strongly associated with the unpredictability—the femininity—of the salty oceans within the world of patriarchal symbolism:

“He split her up like a flat fish into two halves;

One half of her established as a covering for heaven.”

The story begins with opening lines that metaphorically suggest procreation with the offspring being gods. The context here is of an epoch before the beginning of the beginning; a universe absent terrestrial turf and instead occupied only fresh and salty water. Mixing those together usually creates unpleasant brackish mixture…and that holds true in this story:

“When skies above were not yet named

Nor earth below pronounced by name

Apsu, the first one, their begetter

And maker Tiamat, who bore them all,

Had mixed their waters together.”

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Allegory:

This story is centered around a religious allegory which heralds the fire god for killing the oceanic goddess. This is a metaphor for order being born from disorder, establishing systems and natural forces that allow this reality to exist. The allegory also involves the destruction of a serpent, which has moralistic implications in the near-eastern world.

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Symbolism:

The god who is responsible for the creation of the world is Marduk, and the manner by which he rises to power is by electrifying the waters of the great sea serpent, Tiamat. This is a symbolic representation of energy creating life from nothing. In the Sumerian world, fire is the element responsible for reality. (They understood lightning to be a fiery device)