As Marduk, the champion of the young gods in their war against Tiamat, is of Babylonian origin, the Sumerian Ea/ Enki or Enlil is thought to have played the major role in the original version of the story. He despairs and will not attack Anzu after Anzu has stolen the Tablets of Destinies from Enlil. Omissions? Ea and his wife Damkina then gave birth to the hero Marduk, the tallest and mightiest of the gods. Completely enraged, she takes the form of a sea dragon and wages war against the killers. Ea The Babylonian name for Enki. Major Deities Edit. Her husband Absu is killed by them so that they could take over the throne. Commonly translated as the ‘Lord of the Earth’, Enki had also been depicted as a deity of creation, crafts, intelligence and even magic. From the other direction, Jean Bottéro has suggested that Ya of Ebla (a possible precursor of Yam) was equated with the Mesopotamian god Ea during the Akkadian Empire. The gods were known by different names depending on whether the scribes wrote Sumerian or Akkadian. Dumash - Babylonian shepherd and vegetation God. In the belief system of the Sumerians, Enki (known also as Ea by the Akkadians and Babylonians) was regarded to be one of the most important deities. Incantations, wisdom and cleaners The Sumerian poem Ninurta and the Turtle (ETCSL 1.6.3) describes how Enki created a turtle from the clay of the abzu to help him recover the stolen tablet of destinies, which controls humanity's future. ... She was first the consort of Enlil but latter was associated with Ea and was Marduk's mother. Gods, Goddesses, Demons & Monsters The Mesopotamian scribes compiled long lists of their gods. View large image on the British Museum's website. As we fleetingly mentioned before in the earlier entry, Enki (known as Ea in Akkadian and Babylonian mythology), was one of the other important Mesopotamian gods of the supreme triad. It is unclear when he was merged with the god Ea, whose name first appears in the 24th century BCE (Edzard 1965: 56). Ea appears as a bearded man surrounded by flowing water. Apsû wishes to kill the young gods, but Tiamat disagrees. They promptly assemble, declare hint king, and send him forth, armed With his winds and Storms. Mesopotamian Gods & Kings Mesopotamian Artifacts & Texts Menu Skip to content. Myths & Legends. Ishtar - Similar to Inanna, she was goddess of love and war. Enki was the son of the god An, or of the goddess Nammu (Kramer 1979: 28-29, 43) and a twin brother of Adad. Mischievous god of wisdom, magic and incantations who resides in the ocean under the earth. His name is an Akkadian loanword from Sumerian "umun", which translates as "main body, bulk, life-giving force" and "knowledge" as the active part in contrary to the more lethargical primordial forces Tiamat and Apsu (Sumerian Abzu).. Amongst others, he challenged the terrifying Imdugud (a gigantic eagle with the head of a lion) after the latter had stolen the Tablet of Destinies from Enlil. Hadad (or Adad) - storm and rain god; Enlil (or Ashur) - god of air, head of the Assyrian and Sumerian pantheon; Anu (or An) - god of heaven and the sky, lord of constellations, and father of the gods; Dagon (or Dagan) - god of fertility; Enki (or Ea) - god of the Abzu, crafts, water, intelligence, mischief and creation and divine ruler of the Earth and its humans (Black and Green 1998: 76; Kramer and Maier 1989: 121-123). Elegists and other funerary personnel were in attendance and conducted the laments seeking to give full expression to the grief of the bereaved and propitiate the…. The later versions describe the enemy force as agents of the gods – Ea (MB 5’-10’) or Enlil (LA 130-135). Mummu is a Mesopotamian deity. Genesis 6:4 “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days–and also afterward–when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. When his neice, Ishtar, is taken to the underworld, Ea sends a eunuch to make a bargan with Ereshkigal. Greenstone cylinder seal TT  of the scribe Adda, showing Enki depicted with a flowing stream full of fish; c.2300-2200 BCE. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... Ea (seated) and attendant deities, Sumerian cylinder seal, c. 2300, …took all the ingenuity of Enki (Lord of Sweet Waters in the, …body “in the reeds of Enki,” is not understood. The Sumerians believed that … Anu and Antu. Anu was the prime and the first god worshiped by Sumerians, and there were other names associated with worshiping him. Ea generally provided the spell, Marduk oversaw its implementation and Šamaš provided purification (Foster 2005: 645). When the youngest of the gods, Ea (Enki in Sumerian) heard about the planned attack, he put a powerful sleeping spell on Apsu and then killed him in his sleep. More specifically, it is frequently suggested that Adapa can be paralleled with Adam for several reasons. Enki is also known as Ea in Babylonian and Akkadian mythology. Sumerian texts about Enki often include overtly sexual portrayals of his virile masculinity. Another name for Enkidu. In his role as adviser to the king, Ea was a wise god although not a forceful one. of the gods Enki and Ea 2 appeared during the course of Mesopotamian history. But the supreme god Enlil attempted to destroy Ea's newly created humans with a devastating flood, because their never-ending noise prevented him from sleeping. – UNALTERED! Enki, or Ea (Akkadian), is the Mesopotamia god of fresh waters known as apsu. Gods of Mesopotamia. View large image on the British Museum's website. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. But clever Ea foresaw Enlil's plan; he instructed a sage TT  named Atrahasis to build an ark so that humanity could escape the destruction. Babylonian Gods. His wife was Damgalnunna/ Damkina and their offspring were the gods Marduk, Asarluhi and Enbilulu, the goddess Nanše and the sage Adapa (Bottéro 2002: 234; Black and Green 1998: 75). Following Ea’s wise advice, Ninurta defeated the monster. In the Babylonian myth of 'Adapa', he was one of the gods who guarded the gates of Heaven. Lugalirra and Meslamtaea (a pair of gods) Underworld deities that often occur together, also called the 'Divine Twins'. In particular, there is a metaphorical link between the life-giving properties of the god's semen and the animating nature of fresh water from the abzu. Major Deities Edit. As Marduk, the champion of the young gods in their war against Tiamat, is of Babylonian origin, the Sumerian Ea/Enki or Enlil is thought to have played the major role in the original version of the story. His connection with water meant that Ea was also the patron deity of cleaners (Foster 2005: 151-152). p. 415. Though the story is incomplete, presumably the tablet was returned to Enki, and Ninurta was taught a valuable lesson regarding the corrupting nature of power. He was commonly represented as a half-goat, half-fish creature, from which the modern astrological figure for Capricorn is derived. Enki/Ea God of Water and Wisdom General Information. View large image on the British Museum's website. They make so much noise that the babel or noise annoys Tiamat and Apsû greatly. As Enlil, the supreme Sumerian god, had no counterpart in the Semitic pantheon, his name remained unchanged. (BM 124573). There is a presumed relationship between the Adapa myth and the bible. He is also significant in Akkadian mythology as the father of Marduk, the national god of Babylonia. In the Sumerian myth “Enki and the World Order,” Enki is said to have fixed national boundaries and assigned gods their roles. Clay tablets found in archeological excavations describe the cosmology, mythology and religious practices and observations of the tibme. Ea was served by his minister, the two-faced god Isimu/Akkadian Usmû (pictured to Enki's right in Image 1). From a local deity worshiped in the city of Eridu, Ea evolved into a major god, Lord of Apsu (also spelled Abzu), the fresh waters beneath the earth (although Enki means literally “lord of the earth”). Marduk, Babylon’s god, for example, was known as Enki or Ea in Sumer. Until recently, however, many of the more explicit details have been suppressed in modern translations (see Cooper 1989; Dickson 2007). The god Ea (whose Sumerian equivalent was Enki) is one of the three most powerful gods in the Mesopotamian pantheon, along with Anu and Enlil. ISBN 0-09-927367-5. He then killed Apsu and captured Mummu, his vizier. Ea told the hero Gilgamesh to construct a boat for his family, his craftsmen, the "animals of the field", and for himself before flooding the world.. Ea – the God of Water Known as Enki in the Sumerian language, Ea was the Mesopotamian god of water. The god Ea (whose Sumerian equivalent was Enki) is one of the three most powerful gods in the Mesopotamian pantheon, along with Anu and Enlil. Myths & Legends. Enlil was the Mesopotamian god of the atmosphere and ruler of the skies and the Earth. The Sumerian god’s name means Lord of the Earth. Gods, Goddesses, Demons & Monsters The Mesopotamian scribes compiled long lists of their gods. Adad - The mesopotamian Weather God. A wild human creature of the steppes, fashioned from clay by the goddess Aruru to provide a challenge to the … The Sumerian epic mythic narrative known to modern scholars as ‘Enki and Ninhursag’ details a micro-creation-story having to do with medicinal plants, illnesses, and gods; Enki (also known later as Ea) is the god of the first city Eridu, water, and mischief; Ninhursag is the goddess of the earth and Enki’s consort. [21] Enki: EN.KI-GA.KAM2; d40; d60; dEN.KI; dIDIM, dnu-dím-mud, dnin-ši-kù, Ruth Horry, 'Enki/Ea (god)', Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, Oracc and the UK Higher Education Academy, 2016 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/enki/], http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/enki/, View large image on the British Museum's website, Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions, The Corpus of Ancient Mesopotamian Scholarship, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. He resides in the ocean underneath the earth called the abzu (Akkadian apsû), which was an important place in Mesopotamian cosmic geography. The Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Ea is depicted in Mesopotamian art as a bearded god who wears a horned cap and long robes. Tiamat, in order to stop this from occurring, warns Ea, the most powerful of the gods. In the Middle and Late Bronze Age, there are also strong Hurrian and Mitannite influences upon the Canaanite religion. Parents. He then killed Apsu and captured Mummu, his vizier. He was the wisest among the gods and the patron … The battle is short; the Winds inflate Tiamat's body like a balloon and Marduk sends an arrow through her gaping mouth into her heart. The gods were known by different names depending on whether the scribes wrote Sumerian or Akkadian. He was sometimes pictured with his pet dragon. Children. Cara - Cara - Shara - Anu and Inanna's son. Excavations at Eridu, however, have uncovered evidence of a tradition of shrines to Enki dating back to the founding of the city c. 5400 BCE. Clay tablets found in archeological excavations describe the cosmology, mythology and religious practices and observations of the tibme. He was the son of Anu and was derived from an earlier Sumerian God, Iskur. Ea has associations with wisdom, magic and incantations. Most of the lesser Sumerian deities now faded from the scene. In one Neo-Assyrian prayer against evil from the city of Huzirina, a man named Banitu-tereš asks Ea to remove the "evil of ominous conditions (and) bad, unfavourable signs" that are present in his house because he is "constantly terrified" of what will happen (STT 1, 67). Shamash - The Assyrian version of Utu; Elil - The Assyrian version of Enlil. He was the child of Ansar and Kisar, the very first set of gods and descendants of primordial beings. Ea recited a spell that made Apsu sleep. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Mesopotamian Creator God Supreme Creator, God of Water and Half-fish The father of Marduk, he also created Adapa, the first human, out of wet mud. Corrections? It may have denoted the floating of the body down the river into the canebrakes. – UNALTERED! © The Trustees of the British Museum. He is a god of wisdom, farming, building, magic and arts and crafts. Marduk, given control of the four winds by the sky god Anu, is told to let the winds whirl. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Enki's role as a creator of the world is described in Enki and the World Order (ETCSL 1.1.3), and his creator aspect becomes an increasingly prominent in later literature, a phenomenon that Frymer-Kensky (1992: 70-90) has called the "marginalization of goddesses". Enki's two-faced minister Isimu stands to his right. Prayers for success in divination and protection of kings also invoked Ea. As we fleetingly mentioned before in the earlier entry, Enki (known as Ea in Akkadian and Babylonian mythology), was one of the other important Mesopotamian gods of the supreme triad. Later traditions imagine them as guardians to the entrance of the underworld. Ninurta, however, decided to keep it for himself rather than return it to Enki. Also the God of the Underworld. Ea, (Akkadian), Sumerian Enki, Mesopotamian god of water and a member of the triad of deities completed by Anu (Sumerian: An) and Enlil. The gods, however, learned about Apsu’s plan, and one of them, Ea, put a sleeping spell on Apsu, and killed him. The traditions and beliefs about the Mesopotamian deity Enki/Ea – the god of water, wisdom, magic, and creation – formed a major part of the Sumerian and Babylonian religious text material. Marduk, Babylon’s god, for example, was known as Enki or Ea in Sumer. He is above all a warrior: several myths relate his formidable fights and victories. Consort. 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