Naomi
05-09-2007, 11:58 AM
This is the Ancient Mesopotamia chapter of Mythology - The Illustrated Anthology of World Myth and Storytelling. It's an excellent book and broad mythological reference guide, especially if you're like me and prefer having a wide library of paper books available for reference and touching. It has wonderful photographs, including, as I was delighted to discover this morning, the Musushu dragon mosaic from the walls of Babalon. I believe it can be picked up for around U.S. $33.00.
I've had this book for years, and it's falling apart, but I have completely ignored the entire section on Ancient Mesopotamia. I've never had an interest in it until now. Transcribing texts always helps me memorize topics so it will be quite handy for me as well. I definately feel a need to familiarize myself with the mythology intimately in order to apply it to my artistic endeavors.
The editor is C. Scott Littleton. The consultant for the section on Ancient Mesopotamia is Dr. Jeremy Black, The Oriental Institute.
This transcription does not include several pages with inset mini-essays which go into detail on specific subjects, including Mesopotamian cosmology, Enki and the Gods of Dunnu.
My comments will be highlighted in purple. Moderators are invited and encouraged to add their own relevant comments within this post if you like, as I know some of you are experts on Mesopotamian mythology. Furthermore this legitimizes the assertation offair use (http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html).
(http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html)
Ancient Mesopotamia
In 1616 an Italian called Pietro dell Valle, a traveller through the old fertile river valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates (Mesopotamia, meaning "between the rivers"), dug out a few mud bricks from a spoil-heap the local Arabs called Tell al Muqayyar ("the mound of pitch"). The bricks were marked with writing "in unknown characters" and the puzzle they presented was revealed only slowly, after generations of scholarly work. It transpired that beneath the neglected mounds lay nothing less than evidence of the origins of civilization - once great cities, such as Babylon, Ur, Nineveh and Ashur, which are referred to in the Bible. By c.3300BC some of these cities were thriving and each was home to thousands of people: Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Hittites, Canaanites and others. Their tales had merely been hidden, waiting to be remembered again.
We now know that the mesopotamian gods originiated either as the personificiation of towns and cities or as elemental forces, and they were portrayed with a full range of human emotions and individual characteristics. The society of the gods was no different from that of humans, and many myths give a divine justification for those institutions crucial to the organization of Mesopotamian culture, such as the temple.
The senior Sumerian gods were headed by An, or Anu in Akkadian, a remote authority figure in control of kingship and the cosmic laws that determined individual destinies. A more complex god was Enlil (Ellil) , a powerful and aggressive warrior who manifested himself in violent storms, but also fostered crop growth. Ninhursada, the primary goddess, represented motherhood and was known by many other names according to her different functions. She often worked in partnership or rivalry with Enki (Ea), the divine craftsman of the gods, who solved problems not with force like a warrior, but with cleverness and cunning. Enki used his intelligence to bring the clay in Ninhursaga's hands to life, just as he aided the land by filling the irrigation canals with water (the Sumerian word for water also meant semen).
The kings of Mesopotamia's city states acted as agents of the gods. In the stories the deities have mortal qualities, in part because the life-force in humans was thought to be derived from the blood of a deity. Humankind was created to perform the drudgery of heavy labour on behalf of the gods, who regarded humans as their progeny, protecting and punishing them by turns.
Divine Creators
The most complete and best known Mesopotamian creation myth is the Akkadian story named after its opening words, Enuma Elish "When on high ...". Predominantly a work of propaganda promoting the god Marduk and his city of Babylon, the myth charts the development of the cosmos as if it were a political organization.
The Enuma Elish may date from as early as 1900BC, but was probably composed in its present form in about 1100bc to celebrate the triumphal return of the statue of Marduk to Babylon after it's humiliating capture by the Assyrians, who had held it for a century. The poem was recited each spring on the evening of the fourth day of the Akitu ceremony during the New Year festival.
According to the Enuma elish, when the skies above and the Earth below were unformed, only the primordial fresh waters - the god Apsu - and the salt waters - the goddess Tiamat - existed. These two waters came together and Tiamat gave birth to Lahmu and Lahamu. The world gradually took shape: Lahmu and Lahamu also coupled and produced Anshar and Kishar, the rims of the sky and the Earth which meet at the horizon. Anshar begat Anu, the heavens (An or "sky" in Sumerian), and Anu begat Ea (known in Sumerian as Enki), the cunning god who would later usurp Apsu and become the god of fresh water.
As the world became more complicated, these beings became progressively less passive and more active. Eventually tension and conflict arose between the inert ancient gods and the restless, striving younger gods, who were endowed with human qualities.
The young gods started to play and shout and disturb the tranquility of Apsu and Tiamat, so Apsu proposed to exterminate them in order to re-establish silence. Tiamat responded angrily and shouted at her consort, "How could we allow what we ourselves created to perish?" Disregarding her protest, Apsu secretly plotted to kill the younger gods. But Ea, already displaying his nature as the cleverest of the deities, foiled his father: while his siblings panicked he recited a spelll which sent Apsu into a deep sleep. Then he seized Apsu's crown and cloak of fiery rays and killed his father.
Having vanquished Apsu, Ea gained control of the deep underground ocean of fresh water which was like wise called the apsu. On top of this he established his own temple and dwelled there with his consort Damkina. Here they engendered the handsome and mighty Marduk, who was more splendid than any of his predecessors; he had four eyes and four ears which endowed him with exceptional powers of sight and hearing.
(Note: In Lakota mythology, a god named Iya is the god of pestilence and
Marduk's grandfather Anu made the four winds as toys for the young god to play with. But their games raised storms on the surface of Tiamat, the sea, and disturbed the peace of the other gods. In their annoyance they began to taunt Tiamat for failing to avenge the death of her husband Apsu. Stung by their criticism, the goddess agreed to destroy the young Marduk. She created eleven dragons and other fearsome monsters and put them under the command of the god Qingu to whom she gave the tablet of destinies, which bestowed supreme power on its holder.
The First King
At the news of Tiamat's preparations, the gods panicked once again. As before, Ea made the first attempt to subdue Tiamat, but retired defeated. Then Anu tried, but retreated at the mere sight of the raging goddess, who was much more fearsome than Apsu had ever been. Finally the gods beggedd Ea's mighty son Marduk to save them.
Marduk agreed to fight Tiamat, but on the condition that he was given absolute authority over his fellow gods. The younger gods gathwered at a celebratory feast and, relaxed by drinking beer, readily agreed to Marduk's conditions. Thus the institution of kingship was established at the moment of emergency for the sake of collective security. Marduk was invested with the king's magical power of command: as the other gods told him, "From this day onward no one will go against your orders."
Decorated with the insignia of kingship and possessed of a fearsome arsenal of weapons, Marduk advanced to fight the enraged Tiamat. He commanded the four winds, which had provoked Tiamat in the first place, to stir her up even further. While Qingu and Tiamat's other helpers became distracted and confused, Marduk forced the winds in through Tiamat's open mouth, inflating her belly. Then he shot an arrow into her distended body and split it open down the middle. Standing on her corpse, he bound her army with his net and seized the Tablet of Destinies from Qingu. This he fastened to his own breast.
With the defeat of Tiamat and the capture of the Tablet of Destinies, Marduk's takeover of the insignia and powers of kingship had reached completion. Now, having gained the statues of both a god and a king, he embarked on an organized programme of action. According to the Babylonain writers, the heroic struggle with the ocean goddess Tiamat was the first essential step in the stages of establishing social order.
Marduk contemplated Tiamat's body to see what he could make from it. He split her in two halves "like a dried fish", and made one half into the sky, and the other into the Earth. To emphasize his legitimacy as the successor to Ea, Marduk built his own home, Esharra, in the heavens directly above his father Ea's dwelling on top of the apsu.
Turning his attention to the heavens, Marduk then established the constellations, instructed the moon in its monthly cycle, and made rainclouds from Tiamat's spittle. Next he formed the earth from the lower half of Tiamat's body. Then he made the rivers Tigris and Euphrates flow from her eyes and turned her breasts into mountains from which freshwater springs cascaded. As the memorial to his battle with her, he created statues from the corpses of Tiamat's eleven monsters and placed them at the entrance of Ea's temple.
The gods were delighted with Marduk's changes and willingly reaffirmed his title as king. Whereas they had originally conferred this title in an emergency, now they acknowledged his ability to bestow the benefits of stable government. Marduk commanded the gods to build a city which would be both a palace and a temple. This city was to be named Babylon. He also decided to make a new creature. "Let me put blood together, and make bones too, he declared. "Let me make a primeval savage, and call him Lullu, 'Man'. Let him bear the drudgery of the gods, so that they can relax at their leisure." So Marduk asked the assembled gods to name the one who had led Tiamat's revolt. They singled out the prisoner Qingu and he was punished by having his veins slit open. From Qingu's blood, following Marduk's ingenious instructions which were said to be beyond earthly understanding, Ea created humankind.
The creative phase of the story ends there, but the poem continues at length to praise Marduk and to strengthen his link with the city of Babylon and its institutions. Despite having created man to dig irrigation ditches, the gods finished the task of building the palace and temple of Babylon with their own hands. At the great feast upon the weapons with which Marduk had vanquished Tiamat and recited his fifty names, each of which described some aspect of Marduk's character, exploits or cult.
Enki and the Island of Dilmun
Enki's ability to nurture living creatures and plants with life-giving fresh water (associated with his semen) was a gift that made him a useful ally for other gods and humans alike. His virility is central to a myth set on the once barren island of Dilmun, which some scholars identify as what is now Bahrain.
Enki slept with the patron goddess of Dilmun, an island described as lacking almost everything - people, animals and fresh water were all absent. So Enki formed a plan: he asked the sun god Utu to make footprints on the ground, so that he could fill them with fresh water transported underground all the way from Ur. The water made agriculture possible and Dilmun became the great centre of foreign trade in luxury goods such as precious stones, rare woods and copper gongs.
In a series of incestuous unions, Enki fathered a number of gods and goddesses. In the first stage of his creation he begged the goddess Ninhursaga to let him sleep with her. She agreed to his request and he poured his semen into her womb so that she concieved. Within nine days of this union sshe had given birth to the goddess Ninsar. Ninsar grew up and, as her mother had done, visited the riverbank. Enki looked up at her from his domain in the water and desired to possess her. He asked his minister Isimu, who was always at his side, "Shall I not kiss this beautiful young girl called Ninsar?" With the encouragement of Isimu, Enki kissed Ninsar and poured his semen into her womb. Once again after only nine days, Ninsar gave birth to a daughter, this time called Ninkurra, mistress of the Mountains. In the same way, when she came of age, Enki impregnated Ninkurra. After her came another daughter, Ninimma, Lady Vulva. She too had intercourse with Enki.
Ninimma in her turn gave birth to Uttu, considered even more beautiful than any woman from the previous generations. Uttu's great-grandmother Ninhursaga warned her not to yield to Enki's advances unless he brought her the fruits of irrigated gardening, such as cucumbers, apples and grapes. When Uttu did as she was told and resisted Enki, the god hastened to a gardener whose work had been frustrated by drought. Enki filled up the nearby irrigation canals and in gratitute the gardener gave him the fruits he needed.
When Enki presented the gifts to Uttu, she let him make love to her. As he poured his semon on to her body, she cried out, and in a passage which is hard to decipher, it seems that Ninhursaga heard the cry and rushed to her great-granddaughter's aid. She quickly wiped Enki's semen from Uttu's body and planted it in the ground nearby.
This time, instead of creating a daughter, Enki's semen sprouted into eight different kinds of plant. Now when Enki looked up from the river he saw not a beautiful girl, but these unusual new crops. Since he did not realize they were his own offspring, and fuelled by his curiosity, Enki asked his minister Isimu to harvest these oddities for him so that he could discover their nature. Isimu did as he was told, and gave the plants to his master, who decided to eat them.
Enki grew sick and, for reasons which the text does not make clear, Ninhursaga swore that she would no longer be associated with him. The other gods sat down in the dust to despair, until a clever fox, carefully dressed for the occasion, managed to persuade the goddess to return. She had sex with Enki whose illness had spread to specific parts of his body. Ninhursaga was able to cure him by giving birth to eight deities whose names corresponded to the different body parts. Among the eight deities were the lords of Dilmun and Magan (now Oman in Arabia).
Thus the myth resolves the horror of repeated incestuous rape and the constant threat of Enki's unbridled desire and sexuality. However, with the assistance of the benign mother Ninhursaga, Enki is saved from severe illness and eight deities are born who are favourable to humankind.
The Suffering of Humanity
A number of imperfectons were introduced to the world as a result of a creature-making contest involving Enki, the divine craftsman, and Ninmah (another name for the mother goddess Ninhursaga), whose skills were inadequate for the challenge - leaving humanity to suffer the consequences. The original text commands Enki, who found roles for the handicapped people, and concludes with the words, "O Father Enki, your praise is sweet!"
Creation was seen, above all, as an act of skilled craftsmanship, the master of which was Enki. In the old days, the gods were forced to work hard excavating irrigation canals - the senior gods did the digging while the younger gods carried away baskets of earth. They all complained bitterly about their circumstances. But the only god able to alter their fate was the wise and resourceful Enki, and he was deep in sleep in his watery domain. So Nammu, the mother of all the gods, went in search of him and roused him so that he might fashion a substitute to undertake the arduous task, Enki, "the creator of forms", was deep in thought for a while and then said to Nammu, "Mother, you yourself can kneadsuch a thing from the claw which lies above the apsu. Let the goddess Ninmah assist you." And so it came about, while Nammu decreed the fate of each human being, Ninmah's task was simply to command the individual, after creation, to carry baskets of earth.
After the task had been completed, Enki held a feast to celebrate the new-found leisure of the gods, who praised him for his accomplishment, saying, "Oh lord of wide understanding, who is wise like you, Who can equal your actions?" As the feast progressed, Enki and Ninmah overindulged and drank too much beer so that they became intoxicated. Belligerently, Ninmah said to Enki "I could make humans by myself and give them a good or bad fate, as I please." Enki replied, "Whatever kind of human you create, I can turn to the advantage the fate you bestow on it."
Ninmah set about making her first human. Perhaps deliberately to challenge Enki, perhaps because she had only been Nammu's assistant and had limited skill, she produced creatures with physical handicaps. Yet despite their problems, Enki was able to find a useful role for each of them. When Ninmah made a man unable to stretch out his hands and grasp things, Enki made him a servant of the king because he would not be able to steal. The second man she made was blind, but Enki gave him the gift of musicianship so that he too could serve the king. Translators have not been able to decipher the nature of Ninmah's third creature, but her fourth was a man who could not hold his semen. Enki was able to cure him byt giving him a purifying bath. Ninmah's fifth creature was a barren woman, but Enki turned this to her advantage by placing her in a harem. The sixth and final creature, a sexless being, was also appointed as an attendant to the king. Enki concluded "I have found a role and given bread to every misformed creature of yours."
Having outdone Ninmah, Enki had to challenge her in turn, and it seems that he deliberately procured unfortunate beings in order to test her abilities. His first creature was a woman who was having difficulty giving birth. Ninmah's powers proved insufficient to reverse her fate. His second being was an umul, or very old man whose heart, bowels and lungs were so afflicted he could not answer Ninmah's questions. Frustrated, Ninmah complained that he was neither alive nor dead - she could do nothing to improve his deteriorating condition.
While Enki had managed to provide malformed creations with positive roles that were recognized within the community, Ninmah proved unable to do the same for Enki's creations, so their disabilities remained a problem for Mesopotamian society. The vagaries of creation had come into being as a result of Enki's drunken gambling with the ambitious Ninmah.
I've had this book for years, and it's falling apart, but I have completely ignored the entire section on Ancient Mesopotamia. I've never had an interest in it until now. Transcribing texts always helps me memorize topics so it will be quite handy for me as well. I definately feel a need to familiarize myself with the mythology intimately in order to apply it to my artistic endeavors.
The editor is C. Scott Littleton. The consultant for the section on Ancient Mesopotamia is Dr. Jeremy Black, The Oriental Institute.
This transcription does not include several pages with inset mini-essays which go into detail on specific subjects, including Mesopotamian cosmology, Enki and the Gods of Dunnu.
My comments will be highlighted in purple. Moderators are invited and encouraged to add their own relevant comments within this post if you like, as I know some of you are experts on Mesopotamian mythology. Furthermore this legitimizes the assertation offair use (http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html).
(http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html)
Ancient Mesopotamia
In 1616 an Italian called Pietro dell Valle, a traveller through the old fertile river valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates (Mesopotamia, meaning "between the rivers"), dug out a few mud bricks from a spoil-heap the local Arabs called Tell al Muqayyar ("the mound of pitch"). The bricks were marked with writing "in unknown characters" and the puzzle they presented was revealed only slowly, after generations of scholarly work. It transpired that beneath the neglected mounds lay nothing less than evidence of the origins of civilization - once great cities, such as Babylon, Ur, Nineveh and Ashur, which are referred to in the Bible. By c.3300BC some of these cities were thriving and each was home to thousands of people: Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Hittites, Canaanites and others. Their tales had merely been hidden, waiting to be remembered again.
We now know that the mesopotamian gods originiated either as the personificiation of towns and cities or as elemental forces, and they were portrayed with a full range of human emotions and individual characteristics. The society of the gods was no different from that of humans, and many myths give a divine justification for those institutions crucial to the organization of Mesopotamian culture, such as the temple.
The senior Sumerian gods were headed by An, or Anu in Akkadian, a remote authority figure in control of kingship and the cosmic laws that determined individual destinies. A more complex god was Enlil (Ellil) , a powerful and aggressive warrior who manifested himself in violent storms, but also fostered crop growth. Ninhursada, the primary goddess, represented motherhood and was known by many other names according to her different functions. She often worked in partnership or rivalry with Enki (Ea), the divine craftsman of the gods, who solved problems not with force like a warrior, but with cleverness and cunning. Enki used his intelligence to bring the clay in Ninhursaga's hands to life, just as he aided the land by filling the irrigation canals with water (the Sumerian word for water also meant semen).
The kings of Mesopotamia's city states acted as agents of the gods. In the stories the deities have mortal qualities, in part because the life-force in humans was thought to be derived from the blood of a deity. Humankind was created to perform the drudgery of heavy labour on behalf of the gods, who regarded humans as their progeny, protecting and punishing them by turns.
Divine Creators
The most complete and best known Mesopotamian creation myth is the Akkadian story named after its opening words, Enuma Elish "When on high ...". Predominantly a work of propaganda promoting the god Marduk and his city of Babylon, the myth charts the development of the cosmos as if it were a political organization.
The Enuma Elish may date from as early as 1900BC, but was probably composed in its present form in about 1100bc to celebrate the triumphal return of the statue of Marduk to Babylon after it's humiliating capture by the Assyrians, who had held it for a century. The poem was recited each spring on the evening of the fourth day of the Akitu ceremony during the New Year festival.
According to the Enuma elish, when the skies above and the Earth below were unformed, only the primordial fresh waters - the god Apsu - and the salt waters - the goddess Tiamat - existed. These two waters came together and Tiamat gave birth to Lahmu and Lahamu. The world gradually took shape: Lahmu and Lahamu also coupled and produced Anshar and Kishar, the rims of the sky and the Earth which meet at the horizon. Anshar begat Anu, the heavens (An or "sky" in Sumerian), and Anu begat Ea (known in Sumerian as Enki), the cunning god who would later usurp Apsu and become the god of fresh water.
As the world became more complicated, these beings became progressively less passive and more active. Eventually tension and conflict arose between the inert ancient gods and the restless, striving younger gods, who were endowed with human qualities.
The young gods started to play and shout and disturb the tranquility of Apsu and Tiamat, so Apsu proposed to exterminate them in order to re-establish silence. Tiamat responded angrily and shouted at her consort, "How could we allow what we ourselves created to perish?" Disregarding her protest, Apsu secretly plotted to kill the younger gods. But Ea, already displaying his nature as the cleverest of the deities, foiled his father: while his siblings panicked he recited a spelll which sent Apsu into a deep sleep. Then he seized Apsu's crown and cloak of fiery rays and killed his father.
Having vanquished Apsu, Ea gained control of the deep underground ocean of fresh water which was like wise called the apsu. On top of this he established his own temple and dwelled there with his consort Damkina. Here they engendered the handsome and mighty Marduk, who was more splendid than any of his predecessors; he had four eyes and four ears which endowed him with exceptional powers of sight and hearing.
(Note: In Lakota mythology, a god named Iya is the god of pestilence and
Marduk's grandfather Anu made the four winds as toys for the young god to play with. But their games raised storms on the surface of Tiamat, the sea, and disturbed the peace of the other gods. In their annoyance they began to taunt Tiamat for failing to avenge the death of her husband Apsu. Stung by their criticism, the goddess agreed to destroy the young Marduk. She created eleven dragons and other fearsome monsters and put them under the command of the god Qingu to whom she gave the tablet of destinies, which bestowed supreme power on its holder.
The First King
At the news of Tiamat's preparations, the gods panicked once again. As before, Ea made the first attempt to subdue Tiamat, but retired defeated. Then Anu tried, but retreated at the mere sight of the raging goddess, who was much more fearsome than Apsu had ever been. Finally the gods beggedd Ea's mighty son Marduk to save them.
Marduk agreed to fight Tiamat, but on the condition that he was given absolute authority over his fellow gods. The younger gods gathwered at a celebratory feast and, relaxed by drinking beer, readily agreed to Marduk's conditions. Thus the institution of kingship was established at the moment of emergency for the sake of collective security. Marduk was invested with the king's magical power of command: as the other gods told him, "From this day onward no one will go against your orders."
Decorated with the insignia of kingship and possessed of a fearsome arsenal of weapons, Marduk advanced to fight the enraged Tiamat. He commanded the four winds, which had provoked Tiamat in the first place, to stir her up even further. While Qingu and Tiamat's other helpers became distracted and confused, Marduk forced the winds in through Tiamat's open mouth, inflating her belly. Then he shot an arrow into her distended body and split it open down the middle. Standing on her corpse, he bound her army with his net and seized the Tablet of Destinies from Qingu. This he fastened to his own breast.
With the defeat of Tiamat and the capture of the Tablet of Destinies, Marduk's takeover of the insignia and powers of kingship had reached completion. Now, having gained the statues of both a god and a king, he embarked on an organized programme of action. According to the Babylonain writers, the heroic struggle with the ocean goddess Tiamat was the first essential step in the stages of establishing social order.
Marduk contemplated Tiamat's body to see what he could make from it. He split her in two halves "like a dried fish", and made one half into the sky, and the other into the Earth. To emphasize his legitimacy as the successor to Ea, Marduk built his own home, Esharra, in the heavens directly above his father Ea's dwelling on top of the apsu.
Turning his attention to the heavens, Marduk then established the constellations, instructed the moon in its monthly cycle, and made rainclouds from Tiamat's spittle. Next he formed the earth from the lower half of Tiamat's body. Then he made the rivers Tigris and Euphrates flow from her eyes and turned her breasts into mountains from which freshwater springs cascaded. As the memorial to his battle with her, he created statues from the corpses of Tiamat's eleven monsters and placed them at the entrance of Ea's temple.
The gods were delighted with Marduk's changes and willingly reaffirmed his title as king. Whereas they had originally conferred this title in an emergency, now they acknowledged his ability to bestow the benefits of stable government. Marduk commanded the gods to build a city which would be both a palace and a temple. This city was to be named Babylon. He also decided to make a new creature. "Let me put blood together, and make bones too, he declared. "Let me make a primeval savage, and call him Lullu, 'Man'. Let him bear the drudgery of the gods, so that they can relax at their leisure." So Marduk asked the assembled gods to name the one who had led Tiamat's revolt. They singled out the prisoner Qingu and he was punished by having his veins slit open. From Qingu's blood, following Marduk's ingenious instructions which were said to be beyond earthly understanding, Ea created humankind.
The creative phase of the story ends there, but the poem continues at length to praise Marduk and to strengthen his link with the city of Babylon and its institutions. Despite having created man to dig irrigation ditches, the gods finished the task of building the palace and temple of Babylon with their own hands. At the great feast upon the weapons with which Marduk had vanquished Tiamat and recited his fifty names, each of which described some aspect of Marduk's character, exploits or cult.
Enki and the Island of Dilmun
Enki's ability to nurture living creatures and plants with life-giving fresh water (associated with his semen) was a gift that made him a useful ally for other gods and humans alike. His virility is central to a myth set on the once barren island of Dilmun, which some scholars identify as what is now Bahrain.
Enki slept with the patron goddess of Dilmun, an island described as lacking almost everything - people, animals and fresh water were all absent. So Enki formed a plan: he asked the sun god Utu to make footprints on the ground, so that he could fill them with fresh water transported underground all the way from Ur. The water made agriculture possible and Dilmun became the great centre of foreign trade in luxury goods such as precious stones, rare woods and copper gongs.
In a series of incestuous unions, Enki fathered a number of gods and goddesses. In the first stage of his creation he begged the goddess Ninhursaga to let him sleep with her. She agreed to his request and he poured his semen into her womb so that she concieved. Within nine days of this union sshe had given birth to the goddess Ninsar. Ninsar grew up and, as her mother had done, visited the riverbank. Enki looked up at her from his domain in the water and desired to possess her. He asked his minister Isimu, who was always at his side, "Shall I not kiss this beautiful young girl called Ninsar?" With the encouragement of Isimu, Enki kissed Ninsar and poured his semen into her womb. Once again after only nine days, Ninsar gave birth to a daughter, this time called Ninkurra, mistress of the Mountains. In the same way, when she came of age, Enki impregnated Ninkurra. After her came another daughter, Ninimma, Lady Vulva. She too had intercourse with Enki.
Ninimma in her turn gave birth to Uttu, considered even more beautiful than any woman from the previous generations. Uttu's great-grandmother Ninhursaga warned her not to yield to Enki's advances unless he brought her the fruits of irrigated gardening, such as cucumbers, apples and grapes. When Uttu did as she was told and resisted Enki, the god hastened to a gardener whose work had been frustrated by drought. Enki filled up the nearby irrigation canals and in gratitute the gardener gave him the fruits he needed.
When Enki presented the gifts to Uttu, she let him make love to her. As he poured his semon on to her body, she cried out, and in a passage which is hard to decipher, it seems that Ninhursaga heard the cry and rushed to her great-granddaughter's aid. She quickly wiped Enki's semen from Uttu's body and planted it in the ground nearby.
This time, instead of creating a daughter, Enki's semen sprouted into eight different kinds of plant. Now when Enki looked up from the river he saw not a beautiful girl, but these unusual new crops. Since he did not realize they were his own offspring, and fuelled by his curiosity, Enki asked his minister Isimu to harvest these oddities for him so that he could discover their nature. Isimu did as he was told, and gave the plants to his master, who decided to eat them.
Enki grew sick and, for reasons which the text does not make clear, Ninhursaga swore that she would no longer be associated with him. The other gods sat down in the dust to despair, until a clever fox, carefully dressed for the occasion, managed to persuade the goddess to return. She had sex with Enki whose illness had spread to specific parts of his body. Ninhursaga was able to cure him by giving birth to eight deities whose names corresponded to the different body parts. Among the eight deities were the lords of Dilmun and Magan (now Oman in Arabia).
Thus the myth resolves the horror of repeated incestuous rape and the constant threat of Enki's unbridled desire and sexuality. However, with the assistance of the benign mother Ninhursaga, Enki is saved from severe illness and eight deities are born who are favourable to humankind.
The Suffering of Humanity
A number of imperfectons were introduced to the world as a result of a creature-making contest involving Enki, the divine craftsman, and Ninmah (another name for the mother goddess Ninhursaga), whose skills were inadequate for the challenge - leaving humanity to suffer the consequences. The original text commands Enki, who found roles for the handicapped people, and concludes with the words, "O Father Enki, your praise is sweet!"
Creation was seen, above all, as an act of skilled craftsmanship, the master of which was Enki. In the old days, the gods were forced to work hard excavating irrigation canals - the senior gods did the digging while the younger gods carried away baskets of earth. They all complained bitterly about their circumstances. But the only god able to alter their fate was the wise and resourceful Enki, and he was deep in sleep in his watery domain. So Nammu, the mother of all the gods, went in search of him and roused him so that he might fashion a substitute to undertake the arduous task, Enki, "the creator of forms", was deep in thought for a while and then said to Nammu, "Mother, you yourself can kneadsuch a thing from the claw which lies above the apsu. Let the goddess Ninmah assist you." And so it came about, while Nammu decreed the fate of each human being, Ninmah's task was simply to command the individual, after creation, to carry baskets of earth.
After the task had been completed, Enki held a feast to celebrate the new-found leisure of the gods, who praised him for his accomplishment, saying, "Oh lord of wide understanding, who is wise like you, Who can equal your actions?" As the feast progressed, Enki and Ninmah overindulged and drank too much beer so that they became intoxicated. Belligerently, Ninmah said to Enki "I could make humans by myself and give them a good or bad fate, as I please." Enki replied, "Whatever kind of human you create, I can turn to the advantage the fate you bestow on it."
Ninmah set about making her first human. Perhaps deliberately to challenge Enki, perhaps because she had only been Nammu's assistant and had limited skill, she produced creatures with physical handicaps. Yet despite their problems, Enki was able to find a useful role for each of them. When Ninmah made a man unable to stretch out his hands and grasp things, Enki made him a servant of the king because he would not be able to steal. The second man she made was blind, but Enki gave him the gift of musicianship so that he too could serve the king. Translators have not been able to decipher the nature of Ninmah's third creature, but her fourth was a man who could not hold his semen. Enki was able to cure him byt giving him a purifying bath. Ninmah's fifth creature was a barren woman, but Enki turned this to her advantage by placing her in a harem. The sixth and final creature, a sexless being, was also appointed as an attendant to the king. Enki concluded "I have found a role and given bread to every misformed creature of yours."
Having outdone Ninmah, Enki had to challenge her in turn, and it seems that he deliberately procured unfortunate beings in order to test her abilities. His first creature was a woman who was having difficulty giving birth. Ninmah's powers proved insufficient to reverse her fate. His second being was an umul, or very old man whose heart, bowels and lungs were so afflicted he could not answer Ninmah's questions. Frustrated, Ninmah complained that he was neither alive nor dead - she could do nothing to improve his deteriorating condition.
While Enki had managed to provide malformed creations with positive roles that were recognized within the community, Ninmah proved unable to do the same for Enki's creations, so their disabilities remained a problem for Mesopotamian society. The vagaries of creation had come into being as a result of Enki's drunken gambling with the ambitious Ninmah.