Summary
The Tablet of Destinies is a tablet in Babylonian and Sumerian myth on which the fates of gods and people are written, and whoever wears it on his breast gives orders that cannot be undone. In the stories it passes from hand to hand: whoever wants power over the gods seeks it, and whoever wins takes it. Its Akkadian name is ṭuppi šīmāti, "tablet of destinies".
It first appears in Enūma eliš. When Tiamat declared war on the gods she raised Qingu above her army and said to him: you are the greatest, my husband; let your command be greatest over all the Anunna-gods. Then she gave him the Tablet of Destinies, had him hold it to his chest, and said: your command shall not be changed, your utterance shall endure. When Qingu was highest he ordained destinies for the gods her children. Then Marduk went out, killed Tiamat and trussed her followers, bound Qingu and counted him among the doomed gods, "took away from him the tablet of destinies, which he had no right to, sealed it with a seal and affixed it to his chest". After creating heaven and earth he carried off the tablet he had taken from Qingu and presented it to Anu as the foremost trophy.
In the epic of Anzu the tablet is stolen. Enlil set the bird Anzu to guard the entrance of his sanctuary, and Anzu watched him bathe every day in pure water, his eyes resting on the crown, the divine garments and the Tablet of Destinies in his hands. He resolved in his heart to take the supremacy and said: let me take the gods' tablet of destinies, then I will have all the gods' responsibilities, I will have the throne, I will give orders to every one of the Igigi. When Enlil undressed, set his crown on the throne and went into the water, Anzu took the tablet and flew off to his mountain; an awful silence fell, a deathly stillness, and the sanctuary lost its splendour. When Ninurta went out against him, Anzu used the tablet's power to order the arrows back: bowstring to the sheep's sinews, feathers to the birds. Ea told Ninurta to tire him in the storm until his wings fell, and to cut them off. When Anzu saw his feathers flying he cried, "Feather to wing!", and the arrow passed through his heart and lungs; Ninurta took back the Tablet of Destinies, and the wind carried Anzu's feathers away as glad tidings.
The idea the tablet turns on is that authority in Babylon is a written thing that can be worn and taken. Strength alone does not suffice: a god holds the tablet and his word becomes fate. That is why Anzu says the tablet will give him the throne and all the gods' offices, why the world falls silent when it is stolen, and why Marduk seals it as contracts are sealed. Nabu, Marduk's scribe, wrote the fates on the tablet every year on the eleventh day of the first month, at the end of the New Year festival, the Akitu, after settling the destiny of the land with Marduk.
We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Ṭuppi šīmāti is two words. The second is the plural of šīmtu, from the verb šâmu, to fix or decree, with -t the feminine ending and -u the case ending. The Babylonian essay reads it as Arabic shīma, and Lane gives shīma as nature, the natural disposition with which a person is made. Fate in Babylon is the same: something set into a being so that it becomes its nature. Brown, Driver and Briggs set the Akkadian verb beside Hebrew śîm, to put or set, and Arabic shāma, to sheathe a sword, so in all three the root means putting a thing in its place. The first word, ṭuppu, is the tablet, taken from Sumerian dub; the essay reads it ṭabb and ḍabb, and beside them we set, on the method, daffa, a board; this word stays open.
Linguistic Root
Shīma: what is set into a being
| Form | Sense |
|---|---|
| šâmu | to fix, decree, determine |
| šīmtu, plural šīmātu | what is fixed; testament; fate, destiny; death |
| ṭuppu | clay tablet, also of wood, metal, stone or wax |
| dub | tablet in Sumerian, from which the Akkadian word was taken |
In šīmtu we separate the -t of the feminine and the -u of the case, leaving šīm-, from the hollow verb šâmu. Akkadian š answers Arabic sh here, as it does Hebrew śîm, written with śin; y is y and m is m. Lane: shīma, nature, natural disposition, character, plural shiyam; shāma al-sayf, he sheathed the sword, put it in its place. The Akkadian dictionary gives šīmtu as "what is fixed", then testament, then fate, then the day of death: "the day of šīmtu" is the appointed day, and "a day not šīmtu" a premature death. In Akkadian the word is what is set for a being and fixed for it; in Arabic, what is set in it and becomes its nature. That is what the tablet does in the stories: whoever holds it "decrees destiny", gives each thing what it is to be. The essay also gives sīma, a mark, and Lane has sawwama al-faras, he put a mark on the horse; it is close in sense, fate being a mark set on a thing, but the Akkadian š of this word meets Arabic sh, not s.
The tablet: ṭabb, ḍabba and daffa
Ṭuppu is taken from Sumerian dub, its doubled p coming from the Sumerian b. The Babylonian essay reads it ṭabb or ḍabb, writing and tablet. The letters fit: ṭ is ṭ, b is the Sumerian b, and the Arabic root is doubled as the Akkadian consonant is. But Lane gives ṭibb no sense of writing; he gives medicine, skill, custom and state, and gives ḍabba as a broad piece of iron or wood with which a door is clamped or a vessel mended, a broad plate but not one written on. Beside it we set a reading proposed on the method, daffa. Lane: daffa, a board in general; daffatā al-muṣḥaf, the two boards that hold a book between them, and "he memorised what is between the two boards", the whole book. The d is that of Sumerian dub, and f answers Akkadian p regularly. Daffa meets the tablet fully in sense, but needs d where Akkadian has ṭ, and takes its f from a p that was b in Sumerian. The reading stays open between ṭabb, which meets the letters, and daffa, which meets the sense.
Key Mythic Narratives
The tablet returns to the abzu
In a broken Sumerian poem the Anzu chick speaks after Ninurta's weapon has struck it: "As I let the me go out of my hand, these me returned to the abzu. As I let the divine plan go out of my hand, this divine plan returned to the abzu. This tablet of destinies returned to the abzu. I was stripped of the me." Here the tablet returns to the house of Enki in the fresh water, as the me do, and Ninurta does not get it.
Ninurta will not give it back
In Tablet III of the late Anzu, Enlil's messenger comes to Ninurta after the victory: let him stand with the gods his brothers and hear the secret knowledge. Ninurta answers, in broken lines: why surrender the trappings of kingship? My command has become like that of the king of the gods; "I will not return the tablet of destinies." Then the gods praise him with many names. The hero who recovered the tablet nearly did what Anzu had done.
Symbolic Reading
The Babylonian structural essay says that whoever owns the tablets of destiny rules the universe, and that in Babylonian thought the universe is not chaos but a "text written" in advance, in which the god is "the writer", Nabu, and the universe "the written". The two structural essays set the tablets of destiny beside the Qur'an's "Preserved Tablet" and "Mother of the Book". The two pictures differ in that the Babylonian tablet is an instrument of rule that changes hands in battle, given by Tiamat, seized by Marduk, stolen by Anzu, while the tablet in the Qur'an is a preserved place of scripture, never told of as stolen or passing between rivals.
Cross-Cultural Parallels
Among the Greeks fate is a thread that the three Moirai spin, measure and cut; in the North the norns decide lifespans at the well of Urðr and carve on slips of wood. The Babylonian tablet and the Norse carved wood make fate something written; the Greek thread makes it something spun. The other difference is that among the Greeks and the Norse fate is in the hands of women whom no one owns, while in Babylon it is in the hands of whoever holds the tablet, so it can be stolen and seized.
In Arabic lawḥ is a shared Semitic word: Brown, Driver and Briggs set Hebrew lûaḥ, a tablet to write on, beside the Aramaic, Arabic and Ethiopic forms, and note an Assyrian liʾû, a writing board. Lane gives lawḥ as any broad thin thing of wood or bone, and that on which one writes, as in the Qur'an "and We wrote for him on the tablets", and al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ as the depository of what God has decreed. This is a parallel in word and image, fate written on a tablet, not a claim that one tablet was taken from the other.
The tablet is stolen while Enlil bathes, as in India the drink of immortality is taken back while the serpents bathe, after Garuḍa has carried it off from heaven. Marduk's taking of the tablet from Qingu is part of the chaoskampf, and the assembly in which the tablet's holder decrees is the divine council.