A particular narrative pattern appears in the traditions of archaic societies with an almost universal frequency. This myth pitted a warrior storm god against a watery, serpentine beast at the beginning of the world. The monster of chaos threatened disorder and destruction, but was vanquished by the storm god, who creates an ordered world out of its body. This myth pattern has variants in Sumer, Assyria, Babylon, India, Anatolia, Greece, Phoenicia, and in ancient Israel, where the Bible depicts Jehovah subduing the chaos monsters Leviathan/Rahab and Behemoth. In all cases, the story represents the triumph of order over chaos, life over death, and good over evil.

Psalm 74:12-14: Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the earth. You divided Sea by your might; you shattered the heads of Dragons in the Waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for people in the wilderness.

Psalm 89:9-11: You rule the raging of the Sea; when its waves rise, you still them. You crushed Rahab like a carcass; you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm. The heavens are yours, the earth is also yours; the world and all that is in it—you have founded them.

Versions of this myth are attested throughout the ancient Near East in Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Ugaritic, Hurro-Hittite, Assyrian, and Israelite texts. To the west, its variations appear in such Greek tales as the battle of Zeus with Typhon, and Apollo with Python; further east, it underlies the Indian tale of Indra’s battle with Vritra. This attestation across such vast expanses of geography, time, and culture suggests that, to many ancient peoples, the myth maintained a considerable importance.

Once one appreciates this fundamental concern with the establishment of order, the combat myth’s specific relationship to 1) agricultural, 2) cultic, 3) political, and 4) philosophical/theological aspects of life in the ancient Near East becomes more clear. Examining these diverse yet interrelated realms of experience reveals an equally complex set of semantic interrelationships, all of which bear heavily on the present study:

1) Agricultural. An interpretation with nearly universal acceptance among scholars holds that most combat myths reflect the transitions of the agricultural calendar, its narrative progression mirroring seasonal changes and their effect on fertility. In this sense, the divine warrior is principally the god of the storm and rainfall, and thus the bringer of fertility, sustenance, and life itself. Conversely, the enemy of the divine warrior represents sterility and death: the forces of destruction and Chaos embodied as a monstrous creature such as a dragon or serpentine beast. Every year these cosmic forces—fertility/sterility, the growing season/the barren summer—battle for supremacy. The lack of rain and relative dearth of summer signaled the temporary victory of the chaos-monster, but fall rejuvenation heralded the ultimate success of the storm-god, whose autumnal rains then came to revive the land yet again.

This agricultural interpretation provides perhaps the most basic and obvious sense of the combat myth—one whose universal significance would in itself justify the broad popularity of the narrative in the ancient world. The order of the seasons—so important to agricultural societies—is explained, its origin made clear, and assurance given that, even in the harsh dearth of the barren season, life will spring again; such is the order of things.

2) Cultic. Linking the mythic narrative to agricultural realities allows us to appreciate the actual material contexts of the myths themselves, since most seem to have had a cultic Sitz im Leben at a (usually springtime) New Year festival. As a celebration of new life and the return of fertility, it is not surprising that such a setting occasioned the myth’s chief cultic realization (given the basic agricultural interpretation just considered).

Yet the relationship of the combat myth to the New Year is still more fundamental. Indeed, because the combat myth is essentially about order and the imposition of order onto Chaos, the creative act lies at the heart of the myth. For this reason, the combat myth is often a cosmogony, the victory of the divine warrior resulting in the actual Creation of the world. Since Creation provided the paradigmatic model for the New Year festival—the “Beginning” as archetype for the new beginning—the role of the combat myth at the festival is further elucidated.

However, to say that Creation provided the archetype for the New Year is not to suggest that the first was a kind of metaphor for the second, or that the New Year was somehow “modeled” on Creation. Rather, the New Year was Creation: each New Year was a new Creation. As Mircea Eliade has shown, ritual activity in ancient religious cult did not merely recall sacred deeds of the primordial past—it re-created them. Thus, ancient Near Eastern New Year festivals were celebrated as a return to the beginning of time itself; indeed, each New Year was a re-Creation of the cosmos. This “eternal return” helps to explain one chief concern of ancient New Year ceremonies: purification. Eliade writes:

Since the New Year is a reactualization of the cosmogony, it implies starting time over again at its beginning, that is, restoration of the primordial time, the “pure” time, that existed at the moment of Creation. This is why the New Year is the occasion for “purifications,” for the expulsion of sins, of demons, or merely of a scapegoat. For it is not a matter merely of a certain temporal interval coming to its end and the beginning of another (as a modern man, for example, thinks); it is also a matter of abolishing the past year and past time. Indeed, this is the meaning of ritual purifications…[1]

This semantic association of the New Year with renewal, re-purification, forgiveness of sins, and ablution is critical, and I shall note particular examples as they appear. In terms of specific rites, however, the notion that these festivals were fundamentally re-creations and not simply recollections or commemorations elucidates why the combat itself is thought to have been ritually reenacted at such New Year festivals, as well as why the texts of these myths were recited as part of the celebrations. Through these enactments, participants in the cult actually helped facilitate the new Creation.

Eliade’s notion of eternal return may also shed light on the key cultic activity of these ancient Near Eastern New Year festivals. For central to all was the festal procession of the storm-god’s idol, which was taken from its temple and ceremonially paraded with majestic pomp and fanfare before the people as it traveled to some different cultic site(s). Since sheltered for the rest of the year within its holy precincts, out of sight, this was the god’s chief presentation before the people—that is, his chief epiphany. The New Year was the time when the god revealed himself in all his glory. So Eliade:

Symbolically, man became contemporary with the cosmogony, he was present at the creation of the world. In the ancient Near East, he even participated actively in its creation (cf. the two opposed groups, representing the god and the marine monster). It is easy to understand why the memory of that marvelous time haunted religious man, why he periodically sought to return to it. In illo tempore the gods had displayed their greatest powers. The cosmogony is the supreme divine manifestation, the paradigmatic act of strength, superabundance, and creativity.[2]

The presentation of the deity concluded, the god returned through the city gates to his great temple in the main city. With the reinstallation of the idol, the cultic rites of the New Year festival were essentially concluded.

In the interaction of myth and ritual, the orderly cycle of Nature’s seasonal changes has its counterpart in the human realm of religious rite, each one dialectally informing the other: myths about order are actively embodied as actions which give a sense of order to human life. Patterned behavior and religious time impose order on the bewildering Chaos of personal experience and, as players in the cosmic drama, human beings themselves help facilitate rejuvenation of the cosmos through ritual.

3) Political. On the level of human communities, social hierarchy and institutions were structural givens of ancient life in need of explanation as much as those of the natural world. In practical terms, the maintenance of social order required strong political leadership, and in the ancient Near East it was the king who filled this vital role—a position of immense social, cultic, and even philosophical importance.  For this reason kingship is a central concern in nearly all combat myths. The divine warrior, consequent to his mighty deeds, is granted kingship over the cosmos, and a palace is built for him (the palace of the god being in fact his temple: the god’s abode on earth).

Though, since divine kingship was itself a reflection of earthly practices and perceptions of kingship, historical/political realities also played a role in various combat myths. As the god’s representative on earth, the human king was also associated with the storm-god’s battles against the negative forces of Chaos and destruction. The king’s battles with his earthly enemies mirrored the god’s battles with his supernatural enemies. On this level, then, combat myths had clear political and historical overtones; myth and history informed one another.