Click on this for your life's purpose!

I am terribly fascinated by the Babylonian creation story. It basically explains the creation story of the Earth to be but an after effect of this great battle between Gods. The creation of the Earth was not something that these Gods had planned all along but was just a sort of victory show off thing that this Marduk did with Tiamat's corpse to prove what a badass he was:

"He turned back to where Tiamat lay bound, he straddled the legs and smashed her skull ( for the mace was merciless), he severed the arteries and the blood streamed down the north wind to the unknown ends of the world.

When the gods saw all this they laughed out loud, and they sent him presents. They sent him their thankful tributes.

The lord rested; he gazed at the huge body, pondering how to use it, what to create from the dead carcass. He split it apart like a cockle-shell; with the upper half he constructed the arc of sky, he pulled down the bar and set a watch on the waters, so they should never escape.

He crossed the sky to survey the infinite distance; he station himself above apsu, that apsu built by Nudimmud over the old abyss which now he surveyed, measuring out and marking in.

He stretched the immensity of the firmament, he made Esharra, the Great Palace, to be its earthly image, and Anu and Enlil and Ea had each their right stations."

...What a maniac! Of course, after all this blood shed, he went on to take credit for the stars, the moon, the sun, the calendar, etc., and of course he could not be finished without making servants for the gods:

"'Blood to blood
I join,
blood to bone
I form
an original thing,
its name is MAN,
aboriginal man
is mine in making.

'All his occupations
are faithful service,
the gods that fell
have rest,
I will subtly alter
their operations,
divided companies
equally blest.'"

And so on and so forth.

As we all know, the contemporary Judeo-Christian tale of creation is a lot less fantastic and simpler. Everything was created in peace and harmony and in God's image as a sort of whimsical (perhaps whimsical is not the right adjective but that's what comes to my mind) thing that God wanted to do.

The only similarity I see involves the role of man vs. God(s) in which we were put on Earth as tools of God. The Babylonian myth describes us as servants, flat out, and while the Christian version (God forbid I say 'myth') doesn't exactly say we are God's servants in Genesis1, many Christians believe we are put on this Earth to do God's will and in that way so we are servants.

How fascinating! That was fun.