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In a hymn where a description occurs of the boat containing Ea, Damkina his wife, and Marduk their son, together with the ferryman and some other personages sailing across the ocean, we may see traces of the process of symbolization to which the old figures of mythology were subjected. Shamash.
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.
Damkina. Of the consort of Ea, it is sufficient to note that she is occasionally referred to in the historical texts of the Assyrian period. In the inscriptions of Sargon she appears under the rather strange title of 'Belit ilâni, i.e., the mistress of the gods.
At the close, the king Agumkakrimi appeals to Anu and his consort Anatum, who are asked to bless the king in heaven, to Bel and Belit who are asked to fix his fate on earth, and to Ea and Damkina, inhabiting the deep, who are to grant him long life.
But, in addition, our investigations have shown that we are justified in adding the following as forming part of the Babylonian pantheon during this entire period: Sarpanitum, Belit, Tashmitum, Sin, Ninib, Ishtar, Nergal, Nin-khar-sag, and the two other members of the triad, Anu and Ea, with their consorts, Anatum and Damkina.
The epoch of Hammurabi was a crucial one for Babylonia from a religious as well as from a political point of view. Damkina. The consort of Ea figures occasionally in the historical texts of Hammurabi's successors. Agumkakrimi invokes Ea and Damkina, asking these gods, who 'dwell in the great ocean' surrounding the earth, to grant him long life.
Marduk is an afterthought that points to the remodeling of the ancient texts after the period of Hammurabi. Damkina, the consort of Ea, is occasionally invoked, but it is significant that Sarpanitum, the consort of Marduk, is rarely mentioned.
He was the young god who interceded continually between the angry, omnipotent Ea, his father, and the humble and unhappy Damkina, or Earth, who was his mother. This is interesting from another point of view, because this Merodach or Marmaduke is, so far as we can see now, the original prototype of our 'divine intermediary' idea.
Each of them duplicated himself, Anu into Anat, Bel into Belit, Ea into Damkina, and united himself to the spouse whom he had produced from himself. Other divinities sprang from these fruitful pairs, and, the impulse once given, the world was rapidly peopled by their descendants.
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