Enlil

“ The stream of Enlil doth not rise. The high waters shine not, neither do they show their splendour. The stream of Enlil bringeth not good water like the Tigris. Let the King (i.e. Ningirsu) therefore proclaim the temple. Let the decrees of the temple E-ninnû be made illustrious in heaven and upon earth!” The great gods did not communicate their orders directly to Gudea, but conveyed their wishes to him by means of a dream. And while the patesi slept a vision of the night came to him, and he beheld a man whose stature was so great that it equalled the heavens and the earth. ”

“ Enki holds counsel with his own heart, evidently devising the project, which he afterwards carried into effect, of preserving the seed of mankind from destruction. Since the verb in the following line is wanting, we do not know what action is there recorded of the four creating deities; but the fact that the gods of heaven and earth invoked the name of Anu and Enlil suggests that it was their will which had been forced upon the other gods. We shall see that throughout the text Anu and Enlil are the ultimate rulers of both gods and men. ”

“ It was probably after his successful return from the long expedition in the north-west that Lugal-zaggisi deposited his vases as votive offerings within Enlil's shrine at Nippur, and engraved upon them the inscriptions from which we obtain our information concerning his reign. In the third column of his text he states that he has dedicated them to Enlil, after having made due offerings of loaves in Nippur and having poured out pure water as a libation. He then adds a prayer of dedication, in which he prays for life for himself, and peace for his land, and a large army. ”

“ There the myths that have not been subjected to a very severe process of editing, and in consequence the welding is not so complete as in the Sumerian Version of the Deluge. (4) If Enlil's name should prove to be the first word of the composition, we should naturally regard him as the speaker here and as the protagonist of the gods throughout the text, a rôle he also plays in the Semitic-Babylonian Version. ”

“ Enlil could not be entirely ousted from the position he had so long enjoyed, but Marduk became his greater son. The younger god is represented as winning his [Pg 195] position by his own valour, in coming to the help of the older gods when their very existence was threatened by the dragons of chaos; and, having slain the monster of the deep, he is portrayed as creating the universe from her severed body. ”

“ After Anu, Enlil, [401] Enki, [402] and Ninkharsag
The black-headed [403] race had created,
All that is from the earth, from the earth they caused to spring,
Cattle and beasts of the field suitably they brought into being.
[Pg 279] Here the first column ends. The passage opens in the midst of the speech of some deity—perhaps Ninkharsag (a Sumerian name of Ishtar) or possibly Enlil, the god of Nippur. First the deity tells how mankind, which has been overthrown, shall be raised up again. ”

“ But the Sumerian Version introduces the element of magic as the means by which man can bend the will of the gods to his own ends. How far the details of the Sumerian myth at this point resembled that of the Gilgamesh Epic it is impossible to say, but the general course of the story must have been the same. In the latter Enlil's anger is appeased, in the former that of Anu and Enlil; and it is legitimate to suppose that Enki, like Ea, was Ziusudu's principal supporter, in view of the part he had already taken in ensuring his escape. ”

“ In the Semitic-Babylonian Version, the first deity to approach the sacrifice is Bêlit-ili or Ishtar, who is indignant with Enlil for what he has done. When Enlil himself approaches and sees the ship he is filled with anger against the gods, and, asking who has escaped, exclaims that no man must live in the destruction. ”

“ SUMERIAN VERSION SEMITIC VERSION Then Enlil went up into the ship; Ziusudu, the king, He took me by the hand and led me forth. Before Anu and Enlil bows himself He brought out my wife and down. caused her to bow down at my side; He touched our brows, standing between us and blessing us: Life like (that of) a god he "Formerly was Ut-napishtim of gives to him. mankind, An eternal soul like (that of) a But now let Ut-napishtim be god he creates for him. like the gods, even us! ”

“ Further evidence of this may be seen in the fact that Anu, Enlil, and Ea (i.e. Enki) , who are here created together, are the three great gods of the Sumerian Version of Creation; it is they who create mankind with the help of the goddess Ninkharsagga, and in the fuller version of that myth we should naturally expect to find some account of their own origin. ”

“ From inscriptions found at Nippur we know that Bûr-Sin added to the great temple of E-kur, and also built a storehouse for offerings of honey, butter and wine, while his third year was dated by the construction of a great throne in Enlil's honour. Gimil-Sin appears to have been equally active in his devotion to the shrine, for two years of his short reign derive their titles from the setting up of a great stele and the construction of a sacred boat, both in honour of Enlil and his consort. ”

“ The evidence of Damascius suggests that Enlil's name was here retained, between those of Anu and Ea, in other versions of the poem. But the occurrence of the name in any version is in itself evidence of the antiquity of this strand of the narrative. It is a legitimate inference that the myth of the Birth of the Gods goes back to a time at least before the rise of Babylon, and is presumably of Sumerian origin. ”

“ He gives a literal translation of the cuneiform text of the tablet that has a well-defined metre, and is divided into sections. The first three verses are an invocation to Enlil, the supreme god, by this goddess, Nin-Mar, who declares that she is “Mistress of Mar,” who, through the power granted to her by Enlil, was once able to destroy the enemies of her country [Pg 163] and lay waste their lands, but the power has left her, as her “Master” sleeps. Nin-Mar gets a sympathetic god, named Nin-ib, to sing a hymn with her, in which the destroyed temples are recounted. ”

“ In the myth we are not told her method of creation, but from the above titles it is clear that in her own cycle of tradition Ninkhasagga was conceived as fashioning men not only from clay but also from wood, and perhaps as employing metal for the manufacture of her other works of creation. Moreover, in the great God List, where she is referred to under her title Makh, Ninkhasagga is associated with Anu, Enlil, and Enki; she there appears, with her dependent deities, after Enlil and before Enki. ”

“ Moreover, in his character as God of Wisdom, he is not only the teacher but the creator of those deities who were patrons of man's own constructive work. From such evidence we may infer that in his temple at Eridu, now covered by the mounds of Abu Shahrain in the extreme south of Babylonia, and regarded in early Sumerian tradition as the first city in the world, Enki himself was once celebrated as the sole creator of the universe.
The combination of the three gods Anu, Enlil, and Enki, is persistent in the tradition ”

“ A record of the treaty of delimitation that was drawn up on this occasion has been preserved upon the recently discovered cone of Entemena. This document tells us that at the command of the god Enlil, described as “the king of the countries,” Ningirsu, the chief god of Shirpurla, and the god of Gishkhu decided to draw up a line of division between their respective territories, and that Mesilim, King of Kish, acting under the direction of his own god Kadi, marked out the frontier and set up a stele between the two territories to commemorate the fixing of the boundary. ”

“ In one of the Babylonian charms the demons are referred to as "the spleen of the gods"--the symbols of their wrathful emotions and vengeful desires. Bel Enlil, the air and earth god, was served by the demons of disease, "the beloved sons of Bel", which issued from the Underworld to attack mankind. Nergal, the sulky and ill-tempered lord of death and destruction, who never lost his demoniac character, swept over the land, followed by the spirits of pestilence, sunstroke, weariness, and destruction. Anu, the sky god, had "spawned" at creation the demons of cold and rain and darkness. ”

“ Langdon’s strange misreading ri-eš-su for ri-eš-ka (“thy head”) leads him again to miss the point, namely that Enkidu comforts his rival by telling him that he is destined for a career above that of the ordinary man. He is to be more than a mere prize fighter; he is to be a king, and no doubt in the ancient sense, as the representative of the deity. This is indicated by the statement that the kingship is decreed for him by Enlil. Similarly, Ḫu (m) baba or Ḫuwawa is designated by Enlil to inspire terror among men (Assyrian version, Tablet IV, 5, 2 and 5) , i-šim-šú dEnlil = Yale tablet, l. ”

“ A rain god presided over the destinies of one community, and a god of disease and death over another; a third exalted the war god, no doubt because raids were frequent and the city owed its strength and prosperity to its battles and conquests. The reputation won by a particular god throughout Babylonia would depend greatly on the achievements of his worshippers and the progress of the city civilization over which he presided. Bel-Enlil's fame as a war deity was probably due to the political supremacy of his city of Nippur ”

“ Enlil-of-the-gods became extremely angry at their complaints, and [...] their territory. The gods who lived within them left their shrines,
10.
angry that he had made (them) enter into Shuanna (Babylon) . Ex [alted Marduk, Enlil-of-the-Go] ds, relented. He changed his mind about all the settlements whose sanctuaries were in ruins,
11.
and the population of the land of Sumer and Akkad who had become like corpses, and took pity on them. He inspected and checked all the countries,
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seeking for the upright king of his choice. ”

“ From what can be made out, some god seems to be addressing Enlil. Reference is made to Duazagga, the heavenly abyss, which is described as “the way of the gods,” probably an allusion to the Milky Way. It is implied that the gods live along this way. It seems that all was not going well with men on the earth, so this deity proposed to make a dwelling for Ashnan, the god of agriculture, outside of Duazagga, presumably on the earth. Two-thirds of the fold perished; Ashnan accordingly created plants as food for men. This reminds us of how plants and fruits were given to man as food in Gen. ”

“ Lugalzaggisi then goes on to describe the extent of his dominion, and he says: “When the god Enlil, the lord of the countries, bestowed upon Lugalzaggisi the kingdom of the world, and granted unto him success in the sight of the world, when he filled the lands with his power, and conquered them from the rising of the sun unto the setting of the same, at that time he made straight his path from the Lower Sea of the Tigris and Euphrates unto the Upper Sea, and he granted him dominion over all from the rising of the sun unto the setting of the same, so that he caused the lands to dwell in peace.” ”

“ On the Stèle des Vautours the person represented is not a god, but a king, Eannatum, with captured soldiers enclosed in the Net (Shusgal) . What is more, the king in the accompanying inscription, not only designates the Net as that of Enlil, the earth god, but also of Ninharsag, the mother goddess, of Enki, the water god, of Siu, the moon god, and of Shamash, the sun god. All the greater gods were supposed to carry nets: Ningirsu must certainly have possessed one, but neither he or it are depicted here. ”

“ For his destruction of the men of Umma is merely invoked as a possible occurrence in the future, while the god on the stele is already engaged in clubbing captives he has caught; and, whether the net of Ningirsu was referred to in a missing portion of the text or not, the fact that the figure on the stele grasps the emblem of Lagash is [Pg 133] sufficient indication that Ningirsu and not Enlil, nor any other deity, is intended. ”

“ At Keš she was identified with the unmarried and earlier deity Ninharsag.173.The line drawn across the tablet intersects the address of Innini and, if not for some unknown musical purpose, must be regarded as an error.174.For the construction, see Sumerian Grammar, § 91.175.GA = našû, variant of ga (ILA) = našû. The figure of lifting the foot and raising the hand (line 30) to Enlil refers to the attitude of adoration assumed by the mother goddess as she stands before one of the gods and intercedes for mankind. She is frequently depicted on seals in this attitude ”

“ Lord, leader of the Igigi, I am obedient to thy word. [33]
Strong one, glorious one, begotten of Nunammir
Who art clothed with sublimity, powerful one I will praise thy name. [34]
On the other hand there is but one example of the actual use of the first person plural in the hymnal introductions:
Father Enlil with song majestically we come,
The presents of the ground are offered to thee as sacrifice. [35]
It is not contended that the hymnal introductions are strongly individual in character, showing the marks of individual originality and genius ”

“ It is in their astrological character that we find them again in creative activity, though without the co-operation of any goddess, when they appear as creators of the great light-gods and as founders of time divisions, the day and the month. This Sumerian myth, though it reaches us only in an extract or summary in a Neo-Babylonian schoolboy's exercise, (1) may well date from a comparatively early period, but probably from a time when the "Ways" of Anu, Enlil, and Enki had already been fixed in heaven and their later astrological characters had crystallized. ”