Ancient Creation Narratives
The Lord God, the Almighty . . . made the whole universe”—Revelation 4:8,11 NJB
In contrast to the Biblical creation narratives, ancient creation stories from Mesopotamia, Egypt and Syria-Palestine do far more than try to explain how the physical world came into being. Creation myths often elevated the particular god of a particular shrine to supremacy over all other gods in order to validate the prestige of that deity, that shrine or the city in which the shrine was located.
For example, Egyptian creation myths tend to assert that a primordial mound or “Island of Creation” arose from a primeval ocean and that a specific god created all things from that location. Several Egyptian shrines, however, claimed to be the site of that primordial mound and asserted that the god of their respective shrine was the great creator god.