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. He hatched a plan to create humans out of clay so that they could perform work for the gods. His connection with water meant that Ea was also the patron deity of cleaners ( Foster 2005: 151-152).Įa is the creator and protector of humanity in the Babylonian flood myth Atra-hasīs and the Epic of Gilgameš. Ea was patron of the arts and crafts, and all other achievements of civilization. He was a favourite god amongst diviners TT ( bārû) and exorcist priests TT ( ašipū) as he is the ultimate source of all ritual knowledge used by exorcists to avert and expel evil. Until recently, however, many of the more explicit details have been suppressed in modern translations (see Cooper 1989 Dickson 2007).Įa has associations with wisdom, magic and incantations.
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. Sumerian texts about Enki often include overtly sexual portrayals of his virile masculinity. For example, the city of Babylon was said to have been built on top of the abzu. He resides in the ocean underneath the earth called the abzu (Akkadian apsû), which was an important place in Mesopotamian cosmic geography. 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.
View large image on the British Museum's website. Babylonian limestone kudurru TT depicting a turtle, which was a symbol of Enki 1125BC-1100 BCE (BM 102485).