Enlil: the Chief of the Gods

In those early days, when gods alone inhabited Nippur and Man had not yet been created, Enlil met the goddess who was to become his wife.

According to one version, Enlil saw his future bride while she was bathing in Nippur’s stream—naked.

It was love at first sight, but not necessarily with marriage in mind:

But Enlil did not take no for an answer. He told his chamberlain Nushku of his burning desire for “the young maid,” who was called SUD (“the nurse”), and who lived with her mother at E.RESH (“scented house”).

Nushku suggested a boat ride, and brought up a boat. Enlil persuaded Sud to go sailing with him. Once they were in the boat, he raped her.

The ancient tale then relates that though Enlil was chief of the gods they were so enraged that they seized him and banished him to the Lower World. They shouted at him:

“Enlil, immoral one! Get out of the city!”

This version has it that Sud, pregnant with Enlil’s child, followed him, and he married her.

Another version has the repentant Enlil searching for the girl and sending his chamberlain to her mother to ask for the girl’s hand. One way or another, Sud did become the wife of Enlil, and he bestowed on her the title NIN.LIL (“lady of the airspace”).

But little did he and the gods who banished him know that it was not Enlil who had seduced Ninlil, but the other way around.

The truth was that Ninlil bathed naked in the stream on her mother’s instructions, with the hope that Enlil—who customarily took his walks by the stream—would notice Ninlil and wish to “forthwith embrace you, kiss you.”

In spite of the manner in which the two fell for each other, Ninlil was held in the highest esteem once she was given by Enlil “the garment of ladyship.”

With one exception, which (we believe) had to do with dynastic succession, Enlil is never known to have had other indiscretions.

A votive tablet found at Nippur shows Enlil and Ninlil being served food and beverage at their temple. The tablet was commissioned by Ur-Enlil, the “Domestic of Enlil.” (Fig. 45)

Enlil was:

• chief of the gods
• the supreme Lord of Sumer (sometimes simply called “The Land”) and its “Black-Headed People.”

A Sumerian psalm venerated him:

The Sumerians revered Enlil out of both fear and gratitude. It was he who made sure that decrees by the Assembly of the Gods were carried out against Mankind;

It was his “wind” that blew obliterating storms against offending cities.

It was he who, at the time of the Deluge, sought the destruction of Mankind.

But when at peace with Mankind, he was a friendly god who bestowed favors;

According to the Sumerian text, the knowledge of farming, together with the plow and the pickax, were granted to Mankind by Enlil.

He also selected the kings who were to rule over Mankind, not as sovereigns but as servants of the god entrusted with the administration of divine laws of justice.

Accordingly, Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian kings opened their inscriptions of self-adoration by describing how Enlil had called them to Kingship.

These “calls”—issued by Enlil on behalf of himself and his father Anu—granted legitimacy to the ruler and outlined his functions.

Even Hammurabi, who acknowledged a god named Marduk as the national god of Babylon, prefaced his code of laws by stating that “Anu and Enlil named me to promote the welfare of the people … to cause justice to prevail in the land.”

The following were some of the attributes of Enlil that bespoke his greatness and powers:

• God of Heaven and Earth
• Firstborn of Anu
• Dispenser of Kingship
• Chief Executive of the Assembly of the Gods
• Father of Gods and Men
• Granter of Agriculture
• Lord of the Airspace

His “command was far reaching,” his “pronouncements unchangeable”; he “decreed the destinies.”

He possessed the “bond heaven-earth,” and from his “awesome city Nippur” he could “raise the beams that search the heart of all the lands”—“eyes that could scan all the lands.”

Yet he was as human as any young man enticed by a naked beauty; subject to moral laws imposed by the community of the gods, transgressions of which were punishable by banishment; and not even immune to mortal complaints.

At least in one known instance, a Sumerian king of Ur complained directly to the Assembly of the Gods that a series of troubles that had befallen Ur and her people could be traced back to the ill-fated fact that “Enlil did give the kingship to a worthless man … who is not of Sumerian seed.”

The central role that Enlil played in divine and mortal affairs on Earth, and how his several sons battled among themselves and with others for the divine succession, undoubtedly giving rise to the later tales of the battles of the gods.

The third Great God of Sumer was another son of Anu. He had two names, EA and ENKI.

Like his brother Enlil, he, too, was a God of Heaven and Earth, a deity originally of the heavens, who had come down to Earth.

His arrival on Earth is associated in Sumerian texts with a time when the waters of the Persian Gulf reached inland much farther than nowadays, turning the southern part of the country into marshlands.

“Ea” literally meant “house-water”. He was a master engineer who planned and supervised:

• the construction of canals
• the diking of the rivers
• the draining of the marshlands.

He loved to go sailing on these waterways, and especially in the marshlands. The waters, as his name denoted, were his home.

He built his “great house” in the city he had founded at the edge of the marshlands, a city appropriately named HA.A.KI (“place of the water-fishes”); it was also known as E.RI.DU (“home of going afar”).

Ea was “Lord of the Saltwaters,” the seas and oceans. Sumerian texts speak repeatedly of a very early time when the three Great Gods divided the realms among them.

“The seas they had given to Enki, the Prince of Earth,” thereby giving Enki “the rulership of the Apsu” (the “Deep”). As Lord of the Seas, Ea built ships that sailed to far lands, and especially to places from which precious metals and semiprecious stones were brought to Sumer.

The earliest Sumerian cylinder seals depicted Ea as a deity surrounded by flowing streams that were sometimes shown to contain fish. The seals associated Ea, as shown here, with the Moon (indicated by its crescent), an association stemming perhaps from the fact that the Moon caused the tides of the seas.

It was no doubt in reference to such an astral image that Ea was given the epithet NIN.IGI.KV (“lord bright-eye”). (Fig. 46)

Ea was born in the heavens and came down to Earth before there was any settlement or civilization on Earth.

To make the land habitable, he:

• filled the Tigris River with fresh “lifegiving waters”
• appointed a god to supervise the construction of canals to make the Tigris and Euphrates navigable
• unclogged the marshlands, filling them up with fish and making them a haven for birds of all kinds
• grew there reeds that were a useful building material.

Turning from the seas and rivers to the dry land, Ea claimed that it was he who “directed the plow and the yoke … opened the holy furrows … built the stalls … erected sheepfolds.”

The self-adulatory text was named by scholars “Enki and the World Order”.

It credited Ea with bringing to Earth the arts of brickmaking, construction of dwellings and cities, metallurgy, and so on.

Presenting the deity as Mankind’s greatest benefactor, the god who brought about civilization, many texts also depicted him as Mankind’s chief protagonist at the councils of the gods.

Sumerian and Akkadian Deluge texts, on which the biblical account must have drawn, depict Ea as the god who—in defiance of the decision of the Assembly of the Gods—enabled a trusted follower (the Mesopotamian “Noah”) to escape the disaster.

The Sumerian and Akkadian texts, which (like the Old Testament) adhered to the belief that a god or the gods created Man through a conscious and deliberate act, attribute to Ea a key role: As the chief scientist of the gods, he outlined the method and the process by which Man was to be created.

With such affinity to the “creation” or emergence of Man, no wonder that it was Ea who guided Adapa—the “model man” created by Ea’s “wisdom”—to the abode of Anu in the heavens, in defiance of the gods’ determination to withhold “eternal life” from Mankind.

Was Ea on the side of Man simply because he had a hand in his creation, or did he have other, more subjective motives?

Ea’s defiance—in mortal and divine matters alike—was aimed mostly at frustrating the decisions or plans emanating from Enlil.

The record is replete with indications of Ea’s burning jealousy of his brother Enlil.

Ea’s other name was ENKI (“lord of Earth”).

The world was divided among the 3 gods by a drawing of lots. Ea lost mastery of Earth to his brother Enlil.

The gods had elasped hands together, Had cast lots and had divided. Anu then went up to Heaven; To Enlil the Earth was made subject. The seas, enclosed as with a loop, They had given to Enki, the Prince of Earth.

As bitter as Ea/Enki may have been about the results of this drawing, he appears to have nurtured a much deeper resentment. The reason is given by Enki himself in his autobiography: It was he, not Enlil, who was firstborn, Enki claimed; it was then he, and not Enlil, who was entitled to be the heir apparent to Anu:

“My father, the king of the universe, brought me forth in the universe… I am the fecund seed, engendered by the Great Wild Bull; I am the first born son of Anu. I am the Great Brother of the gods…. I am he who has been born as the first son of the divine Anu.”

Since the codes of laws by which men lived in the ancient Near East were given by the gods, it stands to reason that the social and family laws applying to men were copies of those applying to the gods. Court and family records found at such sites as Mari and Nuzi have confirmed that the biblical customs and laws by which the Hebrew patriarchs lived were the laws by which kings and noblemen were bound throughout the ancient Near East. The succession problems the patriarchs faced are therefore instructive.

Abraham, deprived of a child by the apparent barrenness of his wife Sarah, had a firstborn son by her maidservant. Yet this son (Ishmael) was excluded from the patriarchal succession as soon as Sarah herself bore Abraham a son, Isaac. Isaac’s wife Rebecca was pregnant with twins. The one who was technically firstborn was Esau—a reddish, hairy, and rugged fellow. Holding onto Esau’s heel was the more refined Jacob, whom Rebecca cherished. When the aging and halfblind Isaac was about to proclaim his testament, Rebecca used a ruse to have the blessing of succession bestowed on Jacob rather than on Esau. Finally, Jacob’s succession problems resulted from the fact that though he served Laban for twenty years to get the hand of Rachel in marriage, Laban forced him to marry her older sister Leah first. It was Leah who bore Jacob his first son (Reuben), and he had more sons and a daughter by her and by two concubines. Yet when Rachel finally bore him her firstborn son (Joseph), Jacob preferred him over his brothers.

Against the background of such customs and succession laws, one can understand the conflicting claims between Enlil and Ea/Enki. Enlil, by all records the son of Anu and his official consort Antu, was the legal firstborn. But the anguished cry of Enki: “I am the fecund seed … I am the first born son of Anu,” must have been a statement of fact. Was he then born to Anu, but by another goddess who was only a concubine?

The tale of Isaac and Ishmael, or the story of the twins Esau and Jacob, may have had a prior parallel in the Heavenly Abode. Though Enki appears to have accepted Enlil’s succession prerogatives, some scholars see enough evidence to show a continuing power struggle between the two gods. Samuel N. Kramer has titled one of the ancient texts “Enki and His Inferiority Complex.” As we shall see later on, several biblical tales—of Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden, or the tale of the Deluge—involve in their original Sumerian versions instances of defiance by Enki of his brother’s edicts. At some point, it seems, Enki decided that there was no sense to his struggle for the Divine Throne; and he put his efforts into making a son of his—rather than a son of Enlil—the third-generation successor. This he sought to achieve, at least at first, with the aid of his sister NIN.HUR.SAG (“lady of the mountainhead”). She, too, was a daughter of Anu, but evidently not by Antu, and therein lay another rule of succession. Scholars have wondered in years past why both Abraham and Isaac advertised the fact that their respective wives were also their sisters—a puzzling claim in view of the biblical prohibition against sexual relations with a sister. But as the legal documents were unearthed at Mari and Nuzi, it became clear that a man could marry a half-sister. Moreover, when all the children of all the wives were considered, the son born of such a wife—being fifty percent more of the “pure seed” than a son by an unrelated wife—was the legal heir whether or not he was the firstborn son. This, incidentally, led (in Mari and Nuzi) to the practice of adopting the preferred wife as a “sister” in order to make her son the unchallenged legal heir. It was of such a half-sister, Ninhursag, that Enki sought to have a son. She, too, was “of the heavens,” having come to Earth in earliest times. Several texts state that when the gods were dividing Earth’s domains among themselves, she was given the Land of Dilmun—“a pure place… a pure land… a place most bright.” A text named by the scholars “Enki and Ninhursag—a Paradise Myth” deals with Enki’s trip to Dilmun for conjugal purposes. Ninhursag, the text repeatedly stresses, “was alone”—unattached, a spinster. Though in later times she was depicted as an old matron, she must have been very attractive when she was younger, for the text informs us unabashedly that, when Enki neared her, the sight of her “caused his penis to water the dikes.” Instructing that they be left alone, Enki “poured the semen in the womb of Ninhursag. She took the semen into the womb, the semen of Enki”; and then, “after the nine months of Womanhood … she gave birth at the bank of the waters.” But the child was a daughter. Having failed to obtain a male heir, Enki then proceeded to make love to his own daughter. “He embraced her, he kissed her; Enki poured the semen into the womb.” But she, too, bore him a daughter. Enki then went after his granddaughter and made her pregnant, too; but once again the offspring was a female. Determined to stop these efforts, Ninhursag put a curse on him whereby Enki, having eaten some plants, became mortally sick. The other gods, however, forced Ninhursag to remove the curse. While these events had great bearing on divine affairs, other tales pertaining to Enki and Ninhursag have great bearing on human affairs; for, according to the Sumerian texts, Man was created by Ninhursag following processes and formulas devised by Enki. She was the chief nurse, the one in charge of medical facilities; it was in that role that the goddess was called NIN.TI (“lady-life”). (Fig. 47) Illustration: Ninhursag, the Chief Nurse Some scholars read in Adapa (the “model man” of Enki) the biblical Adama, or Adam. The double meaning of the Sumerian TI also raises biblical parallels. For ti could mean both “life” and “rib,” so that Ninti’s name meant both “lady of life” and “lady of the rib.” The biblical Eve—whose name meant “life”—was created out of Adam’s rib, so Eve, too, was in a way a “lady of life” and a “lady of the rib.” As giver of life to gods and Man alike, Ninhursag was spoken of as the Mother Goddess. She was nicknamed “Mammu”—the forerunner of our “mom” or “mamma”—and her symbol was the “cutter”—the tool used in antiquity by midwives to cut the umbilical cord after birth. (Fig. 48) Illustration: The Cutter of Mammu Enlil, Enki’s brother and rival, did have the good fortune to achieve such a “rightful heir” by his sister Ninhursag. The youngest of the gods upon Earth who were born in the heavens, his name was NIN.UR.TA (“lord who completes the foundation”). He was “the heroic son of Enlil who went forth with net and rays of light” to battle for his father; “the avenging son … who launched bolts of light.” (Fig. 49) His spouse BA.U was also a nurse or a doctor; her epithet was “lady who the dead brings back to life.”

The ancient portraits of Ninurta showed him holding a unique weapon—no doubt the very one that could shoot “bolts of light.” The ancient texts hailed him as a mighty hunter, a fighting god renowned for his martial abilities.

But his greatest heroic fight was not in behalf of his father but for his own sake. It was a wide-ranging battle with an evil god named ZU (“wise”), and it involved no less a prize than the leadership of the gods on Earth; for Zu had illegally captured the insignia and objects Enlil had held as Chief of the Gods.

The texts describing these events are broken at the beginning, and the story becomes legible only from the point when Zu arrives at the E-Kur, the temple of Enlil. He is apparently known, and of some rank, for Enlil welcomes him, “entrusting to him the guarding of the entrance to his shrine.” But the “evil Zu” was to repay trust with betrayal, for it was “the removal of the Enlilship”—the seizing of the divine powers—that “he conceived in his heart.”

To do so, Zu had to take possession of certain objects, including the magical Tablet of Destinies. The wily Zu seized his opportunity when Enlil undressed and went into the pool for his daily swim, leaving his paraphernalia unattended.

At the entrance of the sanctuary, which he had been viewing, Zu awaits the start of day. As Enlil was washing with pure water his crown having been removed and deposited on the throne— Zu seized the Tablet of Destinies in his hands, took away the Enlilship. As Zu fled in his MU (translated “name,” but indicating a flying machine) to a faraway hideaway, the consequences of his bold act were beginning to take effect. Suspended were the Divine Formulas; Stillness spread all over; silence prevailed… The Sanctuary’s brilliance was taken off.

“Father Enlil was speechless.” “The gods of the land gathered one by one at the news.”

The matter was so grave that even Anu was informed at his Heavenly Abode. He reviewed the situation and concluded that Zu must be apprehended so that the “formulas” could be restored. Turning “to the gods, his children,” Anu asked, “Which of the gods will smite Zu? His name shall be greatest of all!” Several gods known for their valor were called in. But they all pointed out that having taken the Tablet of Destinies, Zu now possessed the same powers as Enlil, so that “he who opposes him becomes like clay.” At this point, Ea had a great idea: Why not call upon Ninurta to take up the hopeless fight?

The assembled gods could not have missed Ea’s ingenious mischief. Clearly, the chances of the succession falling to his own offspring stood to increase if Zu were defeated; likewise, he could benefit if Ninurta were killed in the process. To the amazement of the gods, Ninhursag (in this text called NIN.MAH—“great lady”), agreed. Turning to her son Ninurta, she explained to him that Zu robbed not only Enlil but Ninurta, too, of the Enlilship. “With shrieks of pain I gave birth,” she shouted, and it was srhe who “made certain for my brother and for Anu” the continued “Kingship of Heaven.” So that her pains not be in vain, she instructed Ninurta to go out and fight to win:

Launch thy offensive … capture the fugitive Zu… Let thy terrifying offensive rage against him… Slit his throat! Vanquish Zu!… Let thy seven ill Winds go against him. Cause the entire Whirlwind to attack him. Let thy Radiance go against him… Let thy Winds carry his Wings to a secret place… Let sovereignty return to Ekur; Let the Divine Formulas return to the father who begot thee.

The various versions of the epic then provide thrilling descriptions of the battle that ensued. Ninurta shot “arrows” at Zu, but “the arrows could not approach Zu’s body … while he bore the Tablet of Destinies of the gods in his hand.” The launched “weapons were stopped in the midst” of their flight. As the inconclusive battle wore on, Ea advised Ninurta to add a til-lum to his weapons, and shoot it into the “pinions,” or small cog-wheels, of Zu’s “wings.” Following this advice, and shouting “Wing to wing,” Ninurta shot the til-lum at Zu’s pinions. Thus hit, the pinions began to scatter, and the “wings” of Zu fell in a swirl. Zu was vanquished, and the Tablets of Destiny returned to Enlil.