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On that assumption, the prominence given to its creation may be paralleled in the introduction to a later magical text, which described, probably in connexion with an incantation, the creation of two small creatures, one white and one black, by Nin-igi-azag, "The Lord of Clear Vision", one of the titles borne by Enki or Ea.
The gods, too, are stated to have helped with the building, for Enki fixed the temennu of the temple, and the goddess Ninâ looked after its oracles, and Gatumdug, the mother of Shir-purla, fashioned bricks for it morning and evening, while the goddess Bau sprinkled aromatic oil of cedar-wood.
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.
He caused the temple to rise towards heaven like a mountain, or like a cedar growing in the desert. He built it of bricks of Sumer, and the timbers which he set in place were as strong as the dragon of the deep. While he was engaged on the building Gudea took counsel of the god Enki, and he built a fountain for the gods, where they might drink.
He, Professor Prince, and Professor Jastrow independently showed that the action of Enki in the myth in sending water on the land was not punitive but beneficent; and the preceding section, in which animals are described as not performing their usual activities, was shown independently by Professor Prince and Professor Jastrow to have reference, not to their different nature in an ideal existence in Paradise, but, on familiar lines, to their non- existence in a desolate land.
II, pp. 160 ff.; for a number of other examples, see Jastrow, J.A.O.S., Vol. XXXVI, p. 279, n. 7. Perhaps the most interesting section of the new text is one in which divine instructions are given in the use of plants, the fruit or roots of which may be eaten. Here Usmû, a messenger from Enki, God of the Deep, names eight such plants by Enki's orders, thereby determining the character of each.
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. Cf. Ezek. xviii, passim, esp. xviii. 20. The presence of the puzzling lines, with which the Sixth Column of our text opens, was not explained by Dr.
It may be added that the divine naming of the plants also presents a faint parallel to the naming of the beasts and birds by man himself in Gen. ii. 19 f. But Enki, like Ea, was no rain-god; he had his dwellings in the Euphrates and the Deep.
But in the former there is no attempt to explain how the universe itself had come into being, and the existence of the earth is presupposed at the moment when Anu, Enlil, Enki, and Ninkharsagga undertake the creation of man.
Before leaving the names, it may be added that, of the primaeval deities, Anshar and Kishar are obviously Sumerian in form. Damkina was the later wife of Ea or Enki; and Ninkharsagga is associated with Enki, as his consort, in another Sumerian myth. It may be noted that the character of Apsû and Tiamat in this portion of the poem is quite at variance with their later actions.
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