Ancient Babylonian cylinder-seal style image showing Marduk splitting Tiamat's cosmic body

In the opening lines of the Babylonian creation epic, the Enuma Elish, Tiamat does not have a distinct physical body. Instead, she is the primordial salt ocean. She is imagined as a vast, maternal womb of water swirling in absolute darkness alongside her consort Abzu (the fresh groundwaters). Together, their waters mingled to birth the first generation of gods. At this stage, her "appearance" was simply the boundless, glistening, untamed sea. After the storm-god Marduk killed her by driving an evil wind down her throat and piercing her heart with an arrow, he dismembered her massive corpse to craft the known universe.