Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.

Marduk

Definition: Marduk

Marduk

Noun

1. (Babylonian) the chief Babylonian god; his consort was Sarpanitu.

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
 

 

Synonyms: Marduk

Synonyms: Baal Merodach (n), Bel-Merodach (n), Merodach (n). (additional references)

Top     

Specialty Definition: Marduk

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Babylonian Marduk

Marduk is a late generation god from anceint Mesopotamia, and the patron deity of the city of Babylon.

When Babylon become the capital of Mesopotamia, the patron deity of Babylon was elevated to the level of supreme god. In order to explain how Marduk seized power, the Epic of Creation was written, which tells the story of Marduk's birth, heroic deeds, and becoming the ruler of the gods. This can be viewed as a form of Mesopotamian aplogetics.

Marduk Seizes power

In the Epic of Creation a civil war between the gods was growing to a climatic battle. The Anukki gods gathered together to find one god who could defeat the gods rising against them. Marduk, a very young god, answered the call, and was promised the position of head god.

When he killed his enemy he "Wrested from him the Tablet of Destinies, wrongfully his," and assumed his new position. Under his reign humans were created to bare the burdens of life so the gods could be at leisure.

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica Article

The following entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.

Marduk (Bibl. Merodach) was the name of the patron deity of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon permanently became the political centre of the united states of the Euphrates valley under Khammurabi (c. 2250 BC), rose to the position of the head of the Babylonian pantheon.

His original character was that of a solar deity, and he personifies more specifically the sun of the spring-time who conquers the storms of the winter season. He was thus fitted to become the god who triumphs over chaos that reigned in the beginning of time.

This earlier Marduk, however, was effaced by the reflex of the political development through which the Euphrates valley passed and which led to imbuing him with traits belonging to gods who at an earlier period were recognized as the heads of the pantheon. There are more particularly two gods--Ea and Bel--whose powers and attributes pass over to Marduk. In the case of Ea the transfer proceeds pacifically and without involving the effacement of the older god. Marduk is viewed as the son of Ea. The father voluntarily recognizes the superiority of the son and hands over to him the control of humanity. This association of Marduk and Ea, while indicating primarily the passing of the supremacy once enjoyed by Eridu to Babylon as a religious and political centre, may also reflect an early dependence of Babylon upon Eridu, not necessarily of a political character but, in view of the spread of culture in the Euphrates valley from the south to the north, the recognition of Eridu as the older centre on the part of the younger one.

At all events, traces of a cult of Marduk at Eridu are to be noted in the religious literature, and the most reasonable explanation for the existence of a god Marduk in Eridu is to assume that Babylon in this way paid its homage to the old settlement at the head of the Persian Gulf.

While the relationship between Ea and Marduk is thus marked by harmony and an amicable abdication on the part of the father in favour of his son, Marduk's absorption of the power and prerogatives of Bel of Nippur was at the expense of the latter’s prestige. After the days of Khammurabi, the cult of Marduk eclipses that of Bel, and although during the five centuries of Cassite control in Babylonia (c. 1750—1200 BC), Nippur and the cult of the older Bel enjoy a period of renaissance, when the reaction ensued it marked the definite and permanent triumph of Marduk over Bel until the end of the Babylonian empire. The only serious rival to Marduk after 1200 BC is Assur in Assyria. In the south Marduk reigns supreme, and his supremacy is indicated most significantly by making him the Bel, "the lord," par excellence.

The old myths in which Bel of Nippur was celebrated as the hero were transformed by the priests of Babylon in the interest

The hypothetical planet Marduk

Nibiru/Marduk is a hypothetical 12th planet from Sumerian astronomy, which by its collision with Tiamet (Tiamat), a planet that was between Mars and Jupiter, formed the planet Earth and the asteroid belt and comets. This is suggested in The 12th Planet by Zecharia Sitchin; this claims to be a serious theory, but is widely considered false and baseless by scientists and historians.

According to Sitchin, Nibiru/Marduk's inhabitants called Anunnaki (Ningischzida) survivied and afterward came to Earth. Sitchin says some sources speak about the same planet, possibly being a brown dwarf star and still orbiting the Sun with a perihelion passage some 3600 years ago and assumed orbital period of about 3600 to 3760 years or 3741 years. Sitchin attributes these figures to astronomers of the Maya civilization, but the supposed sources are unfamiliar to Mayanists.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Marduk."

Top     

Crosswords: Marduk

English words defined with "Marduk": Damgalnunna, DamkinaEaSarpanituZarpanit, Zirbanit. (references)

Top     

Commercial Usage: Marduk

DomainTitle

Books

  • Marduk the Mighty and Other Stories of Creation (reference)

    (more book examples)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Top     

Expression: Marduk

Hypenated Usage

Ending with "Marduk": Bel-marduk.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Top     

Frequency of Internet Keywords: Marduk

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.
 
ExpressionFrequency
per Day
ExpressionFrequency
per Day

marduk

2,264

b b cd funeral marduk metal observer review world

7

b b black marduk metal mp3

463

b b babylonian bel god marduk

7

b b black fast marduk melodic metal

231

b b marduk metaltabs.com tab

7

b b marduk

128

b b discussion marduk music

7

b b black black blackmetal.com funeral marduk metal metal mist

55

b b magazine marduk metal music musica

6

b b black by marduk metal page ravenlord

36

b b corporation holding marduk

6

b b marduk nibiru

33

b b ghostbusters.net marduk

6

b b marduk publishing

32

b b marduk massconcerts photo

6

b b babylon god marduk suite101.com

29

b b france index marduk

6

b b design marduk official site stonehard web

27

b b marduk review

6

b b connection marduk mars nimrod

26

band marduk

5

artist b b black by entertainment genre marduk metal metal music pop rock yahoo

25

marduk picture

4

b b marduk wiem

13

lyrics marduk

4

b b institute marduk

13

marduk tab

4

b b marduk purchase

13

hyperblastmetal.com lagrande.html m marduk review

4

against b b bel king marduk struggled

10

b b b b b b black marduk metal mp3

4

b b karlssons marcus marduk page

8

discography marduk

3

2 b b babylonia creation culture emergence god literature marduk part story temple world

7

babylonian god marduk

3

b b figure god goddess legendary like marduk mars medb medea mercury minerva morrigan mot mummu resource

7

division marduk panzer

3

b b babylon marduk sabbath shabatum shabbat zarpanit

7

god marduk

3

marduk shirt

3
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Top     

Anagrams: Marduk

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams

Words within the letters "a-d-k-m-r-u"

-1 letter: dumka, mudra.

-2 letters: arum, dark, dram, drum, duma, dura, mark, maud, mura, murk.

-3 letters: amu, ark, arm, auk, dak, dam, mad, mar, mud, rad, ram, rum, urd.

-4 letters: ad, am, ar, ka, ma, mu, um.

 Words containing the letters "a-d-k-m-r-u"
 

+1 letter: mudlark.

 

+2 letters: mudlarks, unmarked.

 

+3 letters: buckramed, drugmaker, muckraked.

 

+4 letters: drugmakers, unremarked.

 

+5 letters: archdukedom, unearmarked.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.

Top     

Alternative Orthography: Marduk


Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)

4D 61 72 64 75 6B

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)

American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)

=

Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)

Braille (1829, in France) (references)

Morse Code (1836) (references)

--    .-    .-.    -..    ..-    -.-

Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)

Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)

01001101 01100001 01110010 01100100 01110101 01101011

HTML Code (1990) (references)

&#77 &#97 &#114 &#100 &#117 &#107

ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)

004D 0061 0072 0064 0075 006B

British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)

Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)

476784708777

Top     

 

INDEX

1. Definition
2. Synonyms
3. Crosswords
4. Usage: Commercial
5. Expressions
6. Expressions: Internet
7. Anagrams
8. Orthography
9. Bibliography


  

Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.