The draconic pantheon was always one of my favorites and one of first got to know better. Al thanks to appearance of Tiamat in the old D&D cartoon, which, together with Baldur's Gate got me interested into the PnP version of D&D. The Dragon Queen also got me interested into Mesopotamian mythology. With is also where begins the topic which I would like to discuss. In D&D we see two faces of Tiamat , one is as the queen, mother and goddess of chromatic dragons, child of Io, sibling and archenemy of Bahamut, but on the other hand we see the Babylonian(and perhaps Akkadian) primal goddess, mother of gods and monsters. We cannot say they simply share the same name because there are treated as one deity, for sample in Forgotten Realms Unther. Bahamut also seems to be the same god in Faerun as Marduk, because of the evidence that he used the name Marduk long before the orcgate incident. I wondered how this possible, and one day I got the 2e version of Draconomicon and discovered the “Book of world" creation myth, were Asgorath is presented as a female Tiamat-like deity rather than Io, red dragons are here the first dragon species and Bahamut is the renegade child of Tiamat who created the metallic dragons and caused the creation of other types. I know it may be at least partially a red dragon propaganda, but it inspired me to create a theory.
Maybe Tiamat was the first one to use the name Asgorath and created by Io as mother to all dragons but somehow lost this position and name, becoming evil after the death of her husband Apsu(who would the father of all dragons), and being defeated and killed by Marduk( the same as Bahamut and Xymor) and resurrected in today’s form. Bahamut’s biological parents would be Lendys(Enki) and Tamara(Damkina, Ninhursag) but Io would be Bahamuts “spiritual” father (like Yahweh in some interpretations of Jesus's birth). Null(Falzure or Chronepsis) would be Kur the first king of underworld in Mesopotamian mythology.
Io before taking Asgorath as a name would be known as Zorquan in Faerun. He would be also the primal Anu(An) which name took later a younger deity like later did Nanna-Sin.
I know this article is a bit Faerun-centric, but its because 2e Draconomicon was a FR product and Unther is in Toril.
Sorry for any grammatical errors, Im not a Native English speaker, and I hadn’t wrote in English for almost a Year
I do not know how much my view on mythology applies to D&D powers, but I wouldn't put the gods into the three dimensional frame of mortal lifeforms.
A god/dess and his/her faith tend to shape each other. The concept of space and time need not apply to deities. For example the great Egyptian god Amun is, historically seen, a rather young god, but nevertheless is regarded as the first god and creator of the world by his mythology (and, depending on the particular myth, the same time younger than, say, Ptah). The same applies to the god of the Abrahamic religions, and other gods that can't be traced back to the beginnings of history.
When it works this way in reality, it should particulary do so on the planes, where belief noticeable shapes reality. So, if everyone believes that Tiamat was the first dragon deity, then she was the first to be around (and up to this moment, she is the first for those who already believe it is so).
But then, I'm just assuming here that the real world development of gods and faith applies on D&D deities as well...![Eye-wink Eye-wink](http://planewalker.com/sites/all/modules/smileys/packs/Example/wink.png)
"La la la, I'm a girl, I'm a pretty little girl!"
--Bel the Pit Fiend, Lord of the First (in a quiet hour of privacy)