in the babylonian epic poem "enûma eliš", the milky way is created from the severed tail of the primeval salt water dragoness tiamat, set in the sky by marduk, the babylonian national god, after slaying her. this story was once thought to have been based on an older sumerian version in which tiamat is instead slain by enlil of nippur, but is now though to be purely an invention of babylonian propagandists with the intention to show marduk as superior to the sumerian deities. another myth about labbu is similarly interpreted.