Zagmuk is a Mesopotamian festival celebrated around the spring equinox, which literally means "beginning of the year." It celebrates the triumph of Marduk, the patron deity of Babylon, on the forces of chaos, later symbolized by Tiamet. The battle between Marduk and chaos lasts 12 days, as does the festival of Zagmuk. In Uruk, the festival was associated with the god An, the Sumerian god of the night sky. Both are essentially equivalent in all respects to the Akkadian festival "akitu". In some variations, Marduk is killed by Tiamet and resurrected on the spring equinox.
Zagmuk, Marduk's Triumph over Chaos
In Babylon, the battle took place in the royal court with the king playing Marduk, and his rescuer-son as Nabu, the god of writing. Once freed from the powers of the underworld, the king would enact the sacred marriage rite on the 10th day of the ceremony. During this rite, the king (or En, as he was called in Sumer) would have sexual intercourse with his bride, normally a high priestess who had been chosen from the naditum, a special class of priestesses who had taken a vow not of celibacy specifically, but of a refusal to bear children.
The high priestess was known as an entu, and her ritual act of sexual intercourse with the king was believed to regenerate the cosmos through a reenactment of the primordial mating of the cosmic parents An and Ki, who had created the world at the dawn of Time. If a solar eclipse fell on any of the 12 days of the ceremony, a substitute king was placed in his place, as it was believed that any harm that might have befallen the king would fall to the substitute instead.
On the last day of the festival, the king was killed so that he could fight alongside Marduk. To spare their king, the Mesopotamians often used a false king, played by a criminal who had been anointed king before the start of Zagmuk and killed on the last day. In addition to the prisoner who was killed, it was traditional for a prisoner to be released during this ceremony to ensure balance.
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On this day, the Mesopotamian peoples of Babylon celebrated Zagmuk. The beginning of the year marked the victory of the protective god Marduk over chaos after 12 days of struggle. #mythology #myth #legend #calendar #December 21 #marduk #zagmuk
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