Enki, the Mesopotamian trickster god who shaped humans from clay
In Mesopotamian myth, when the gods grew tired of their labour, it was Enki who suggested making humans to do it. God of wisdom, crafts and the fresh water hidden underground, he was the clever adviser of the pantheon, often shown with streams pouring from his shoulders or from a vase in his hands.
His home was Eridu in southern Sumer, where his temple was named after the Abzû, the freshwater realm believed to lie beneath the earth. Springs rose from it, so Enki was bound up with irrigation and fertility, and because underground water featured in rituals, also with magic and incantation. One of his names, Nagbu, simply meant source or spring. His emblems were the goat-fish, a ram-headed staff and the turtle.
Scholars still argue over what his name means. The usual reading is Lord of the Earth, but some think that fits his watery role poorly. Edmond Sollberger and Wilfred Lambert noticed a hidden g in the ending and suggested Lord Love or Lord Benevolence, matching his reputation as humanity's friend. His other name, Ea, belonged originally to a separate god, possibly Semitic, perhaps linked to a root meaning to live; the two were merged in parts of Babylonia by the later third millennium BCE.
Myths cast him as the problem solver. In the story of Enki and Ninmah he devises the plan for a new creature to take over the gods' toil, and in Atra-hasis he works with the goddess Belet-ili to form people from clay mixed with divine blood. When Enlil later tries to wipe humanity out, Enki's advice to his human favourite lets people survive. Literary texts even nicknamed him the junior Enlil, an epithet scholars read variously as younger brother, equal or heir.
His worship travelled far. In the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods he ranked with Anu and Enlil at the top of the pantheon, and his cult appears in nearly every major Babylonian city. Hurrians adopted him with the same character, and he entered the Hittite pantheon in Anatolia, where he plays kingmaker in the Kumarbi cycle. The rise of Babylon's patron Marduk, traditionally his own son, eventually overshadowed him, though he stayed important into the first millennium BCE.
Source: Enki
