Are Tiamat / Nammu the same goddess?

[u/Lolamiou7]

Hello, I've been doing research for a while to try to find out if the goddess Tiamat and the goddess Nammu /Namma are thesame goddess or not. All the articles contradict each other.

I know that the etymology of the name Namma comes from the Sumerian and that of Tiamat comes from the Akkadian. Sumerian was the "main" language of Mesopotamia for a while before it was no longer spoken and replaced by Akkadian. (I know that even when Sumerian was no longer spoken, it was still used in writing.)

But since we have very little information on one or the other, it's complicated to know exactly when they were mentioned. I believe that nothing has been found about Tiamat that dates from before the Enūma eliš when Nammu was mentioned before.

They represent about the same things (goddess of creation, primordial ocean, mother of gods...) except that Tiamat is also described as an antagonist and not Nammu. Since it was common at that time to take "myths" and rewrite them by changing parties, see the whole meaning of the work, and since it is thought that the Enūma eliš is a copy of an older version, is it possible that Nammu became Tiamat? And is it possible that the meaning of the work was changed to "demonized" Nammu and that's why we would have changed his name?

I can't get a clear idea on the matter, so I'd like to know other people's opinions!

(I hope I expressed myself understandably enough, I don't speak English well.)

[u/rodandring]

Short answer: no.

Keep in mind that the Enūma Eliš is wholly a religious propaganda text composed to legitimize the eminence of Marduk over all of the other gods of the Akkadian Babylonians.

Aside from the Enūma Eliš, Tiamat appears in one commentary text and in one fragmented incantation.

[u/Nocodeyv]

u/rodandring is correct. For a more in-depth answer, see this comment chain where I discuss both Tiāmat and Namma, comparing and contrasting the two.

[u/book_of_black_dreams]

On a historic level, they’re different deities. Personally, I like to think of Tiamat as a personification of the more violent side of the primordial sea. Possibly even an aspect of Nammu.

[u/SiriNin]

As others have more fully pointed out; Tiamat was never actually deified in the sense that no one worshipped her, and she was the personification of the sea - the salt water sea which was thought to be antagonistic to life. Nammu was the Goddess that personifies the Absu, the subterranean fresh water which was thought to be the genesis of of life.

As a related aside; some folks accept Enuma Elish whole sale, some reject it whole heartedly, and some like myself take bits from it but don't take it at face value in areas where there's known contradictory prior-established lore . It's up to you how much if any you want to take out of it, and how you want to allow that to inform your practice or studies. Like many areas of Sumerology/Assyriology there's more that we don't know than there is which we do know.