ShopDreamUp AI ArtDreamUp
Deviation Actions
Description
My first in a series for a forthcoming book onʼŌraḥ Qaḏǝmōnī, Yām is the hermaphroditic Canaanite god of Chaos and Tǝhōm (the Cosmic Sea).
Most evidence supports Yām as a distinctly West Semitic deity. The first usages of the name in recorded history come from Amorite records at Mari and Emar as dYami. These early records are scant, but texts record personal names from Mari containing dYami as a theophoric element from the mid-3rd millennium BCE and brief liturgical references to rites concerning the worship of dYami from Emar from the mid- to late-2nd millennium BCE. Beyond connections to both the physical and cosmic seas, very little is known of this Amorite deity. The Amorite dYami spread to Ugarit as Yammu, a primordial sea god of chaos and evil taking the position as one of the enemies of Baʻlu Haddu in the Ugaritic "Epic of Baal" (c. 1300 BCE), as well as into the Aramæan and Canaanite pantheons as Yām. The Greek titan Ōkeanós (”the river that encircles the world;” a serpentine god of the sea) may be derived from the Canaanite epithet ʼŌḡēn (The One Who Encircles), and the Roman god Neptūnus may derive from the epithet Nēp̄ǝṯōn -- both likely via the Phoenicians. Yām also seems to be an indirect cognate to the Akkadian Tâmtu (Tiamat).
Ink and watercolor with gold foil.
Edit: I've updated this file with some corrections to the ink to bring in more in line stylistically with the rest of the series.
Most evidence supports Yām as a distinctly West Semitic deity. The first usages of the name in recorded history come from Amorite records at Mari and Emar as dYami. These early records are scant, but texts record personal names from Mari containing dYami as a theophoric element from the mid-3rd millennium BCE and brief liturgical references to rites concerning the worship of dYami from Emar from the mid- to late-2nd millennium BCE. Beyond connections to both the physical and cosmic seas, very little is known of this Amorite deity. The Amorite dYami spread to Ugarit as Yammu, a primordial sea god of chaos and evil taking the position as one of the enemies of Baʻlu Haddu in the Ugaritic "Epic of Baal" (c. 1300 BCE), as well as into the Aramæan and Canaanite pantheons as Yām. The Greek titan Ōkeanós (”the river that encircles the world;” a serpentine god of the sea) may be derived from the Canaanite epithet ʼŌḡēn (The One Who Encircles), and the Roman god Neptūnus may derive from the epithet Nēp̄ǝṯōn -- both likely via the Phoenicians. Yām also seems to be an indirect cognate to the Akkadian Tâmtu (Tiamat).
Ink and watercolor with gold foil.
Edit: I've updated this file with some corrections to the ink to bring in more in line stylistically with the rest of the series.
Image size
2460x2700px 25.38 MB
Mature
© 2015 - 2024 MulciberVolcanus
Comments2
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Yeah Okeanos os connected to Yam, Apsu and Tiamat. In the Deception of Zeus from Illiad Book XIV, Hera describes Oceanus as the "origin of the gods", and Tethys as the "mother", many thinking it links to the account of Apsu and Tiamat as the origin of all from Enuma Elish. Tethys also pobably is ultimatelly a transformation of the name Tiamat.