The Babylonian Mythology Collection

Myths of Babylonia and Assyria, Enuma Elish, The Dynastic Tablets and Chronicles of the Babylonians, The Babylonian Story of the Creation According to the Tradition, & The Babylonian Legends of Creation

By: Donald A. Mackenzie, L.W. King, A.H. Sayce, E.A. Wallis Budge

Narrated by: Museum Audiobooks Cast

The word mythology is derived from the Greek words mythos, which means story, and logos, which means speech. Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Some of the oldest narratives in world history come from Babylon mythology. The Babylonian Mythology Collection includes:

Book 1: Myths of Babylonia and Assyria by Donald A. Mackenzie takes a look at the ancient history and mythology of Mesopotamia, that are the foundation of all later Western myths. The book examines the myths and legends of Babylonia and Assyria and how these ancient tales reflect the beliefs and development of early civilization. The book begins with the early Sumerian Age and concludes 30 centuries later with the Greek Empire.

Book 2: Enuma Elish is the Mesopotamian epic of creation, translated by Leonard William King. The Enuma Elish is the earliest written creation myth, in which the God Marduk battles the goddess of chaos and her evil minions. is the Babylonian creation myth, named after its opening words. It was recovered by English archaeologist Austen Henry Layard in 1849 (in fragmentary form) in the ruined Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (Mosul, Iraq). The words "Enuma Elish" mean "When on high".

Book 3: The Dynastic Tablets and Babylonian Chronicle records events in ancient Babylon dating from about 750 BC to 280 BC, including Nebuchadnezzar II's campaigns in the west, the defeat of the Assyrians, the fall of the Assyrian Empire, and the rising threat of Egypt. It records the Battle of Carchemish, where Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon defeated Pharaoh Necho of Egypt in 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar's rise to power, the removal of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, and the insertion of Zedekiah as king in his place as recorded in Scripture.

Book 4: The Babylonian Story of the Creation According to the Tradition by A.H. Sayce contains the story of the creation in a series of successive acts, and the fragments of two tablets containing another legend of the Creation which varied considerably. The tablets belonged to the library of Assur-bani-pal at Nineveh, but the colophon informs us that they had been copied from older documents which came from the library of Cutha in Babylonia. The Cuthæan legend, it will be observed, knows nothing of a creation in successive acts. Chaos is a period when as yet writing was unknown. The earth existed, and was inhabited by the chaotic brood of Tiamat. They were destroyed by Nergal, the patron-deity of Cutha, who is identified with Nerra, the god of pestilence, and Ner, the mythical monarch of Babylonia who reigned before the Deluge. The words of the poem are put into the mouth of Nergal, and the poem itself was written for his great temple at Cutha.

Book 5: Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge was an English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient Near East. He made numerous trips to Egypt and the Sudan on behalf of the British Museum to buy antiquities, and helped it build its collection of cuneiform tablets, manuscripts, and papyri. In this creation legend, it was the goddess Aruru who created Enkidu (Eabani) from a piece of clay moistened with spittle. And in the bilingual version of the legend, this goddess assisted Marduk as an equal in the work of creating the seed of mankind.

Public Domain (P)2021 Museum Audiobooks

Excellent

What people experience and how many times history repeats itself.
Extends the mystery of the Bible as well.

Where did our planet earth really come from. Of all the ancient texts I’ve read this is one of the best descriptions of beginning of planet earth.
That’s just one part of the book.

Worst narration I’ve ever heard.

I’m unsure if this was a person or an AI. This was the single most awful narration I’ve heard in any audiobook. Do not buy this book

Terrible narrator

If one is narrating a book of mythology, it is advisable to learn to pronounce difficult names and words. This narrator did not do so. Words she mispronounces: Semitic, Aegean, Ganges, Uruk, Marduk…
The list goes on and on. It’s like fingernails on a blackboard

Awesome bundle of Ancient texts with Interpretation

I have been doing a lot of reading and listening on the ancient near-East. I almost didn’t buy this book because of the one other person who has left a review. Glad I didn’t listen to them. For the price of one book, you get several, to include the straight readings of the ancient tablets. The reader wasn’t that bad. The other review said she might have been AI. Nope, just a real person who could use a breathe between sentences every now and again.
The thing I really liked about this set was the scholarly comparisons between ancient mythologies (Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian, etc.). It was very apparent the author was an expert in the field. I also like the speculation as to the origins of both people groups and myths. Hearing all of the similarities, I couldn’t agree more that it would seem the Romans stole from the Greeks, who stole from the Assyrians, who stole from the Babylonians, who stole from the Akkadians and Sumerians and Egyptians, who most likely got their original content from an even earlier community of people. Fascinating.
My one critique was that because the first (and longest) book was organized by categories, sometimes the timelines went back and forth and I lost track of who was from when and what dynasties.
But overall, very good. Waaaay better than the 4-5 hour ancient near East audiobook by Captivating history, which I listened to before this one.

Worst narration ever

OMG, the droning on of her voice makes me want to put a bullet in my head! This the worst narration I’ve ever herd in my life! I want my credit back!

The author should have a new narration done.

The voice and cadence of the narrator is so bad I couldn’t tolerate listening to the book. I wish I could get my money back.

Please Avoid

It’s hard to politely review this narration without drifting into the realm of insult to the narrator. Let us content ourselves to say that I hope she finds success in other endeavors, and I pray that no publisher enlists her confounding pronunciations (and not of difficult words of ancient languages but of modern English), her insipid cadence, and if you will suffer me to repeat myself, her all too frequent and disorienting pronunciation of words.

BAD Do not buy!

Worst narrator. Is a machine. Bad everything. I don’t know such an important topic was made like this.