Enki and Ninhursag The Trickster in Paradise

Enki and Ninhursag: The Trickster in Paradise
Author(s): Keith Dickson

Source: Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 66, No. 1 (January 2007), pp. 1-32
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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ENKI AND NINHURSAG: THE TRICKSTER IN PARADISE*
KEITH DICKSON, Purdue University
(Only) after you have eaten the bread you have made (?) is its nature decided.
Sumerian proverb1
I. Introduction
Since its first published editions and translations early in the last century, the 2
Sumerian narrative now generally known as Enki and Ninhursag has been at the center
of claims and controversies over the nature of myth and the relations among the myths of
different cultures in the ancient Near East. The present study proposes to review earlier in-
terpretations of the narrative and to suggest—tentatively, given the fragmentary nature of the
texts that preserve it—less a unified interpretation than a number of different but perhaps
still unified approaches to an understanding of its context and content as myth.
II. Narrative Sequence
A bare summary of the narrative follows, based principally on the edition of Attinger,
on whom (along with others identified in the notes) I rely both for the text and also for the
translation(s) from Sumerian.3 Given the fact that as recently as 1995 interpretations of the
* Here follows a list of works frequently cited in Lambert and Tournay = M. Lambert and R. Tournay,
this article with their abbreviations: “Enki et Ninhursag: à propos d’un ouvrage récent,”
Revue d ’assyriologie et d ’archéologie orientale 43
Alster = B. Alster, “Enki and Ninhursag: The Creation
(1949): 105–36.
of the First Woman,” Ugarit-Forschungen 10 (1978):
Leick = G. Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian
15–27.
Literature (London, 1994).
Attinger = P. Attinger, “Enki et Ninhursage,” Zeitschrift
Rosengarten = Y. Rosengarten, Trois aspects de la
für Assyriologie 74 (1984): 1–52.
pensée religieuse sumérienne (Paris, 1971).
Bottéro and Kramer = J. Bottéro and S. Kramer,
Lorsque les dieux faisaient l’homme: mythologie 1 B. Alster, Proverbs of Ancient Sumer (Bethesda,
mésopotamienne (Paris, 1989). 1977), p. 11 (= SP 1.26).
Jacobsen = T. Jacobsen, trans and ed., The Harps That 2 For bibliography of scholarship prior to Kramer’s
Once . . . : Sumerian Poetry in Translation (New 1945 edition, see E. Weidner, Die Assyriologie 1914–
Haven, 1987). 1922: Wissenschaftliche Forschungsergebnisse in Bib-
Kirk = G. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in liographischer Form (Leipzig, 1922), nos. 984–1012,
Ancient and Other Cultures (Berkeley, 1970). and Kramer p. 3, nn. 1, 3. For brief summaries of in-
Kramer = S. N. Kramer, Enki and Ninhursag: A terpretations since Kramer, see Kirk, pp. 90–96; Alster,
Sumerian “Paradise” Myth (New Haven, 1945). pp. 109 f.; Leick, pp. 36 f.; and J. Evers, Myth and
Narrative: Structure and Meaning in Some Ancient
Near Eastern Texts (Kevelaer and Neukirchen-Vluyn,
1995), pp. 35–37.
[JNES 66 no. 1 (2007)] 3 The standard translations are those of Attinger;
ç 2007 by The University of Chicago. Jacobsen, pp. 181–204; S. N. Kramer and J. Maier,
All rights reserved. Myths of Enki, The Crafty God (Oxford, 1989), pp. 22–
0022–2968–2007/6601–0001$10.00. 30; Bottéro and Kramer, pp. 152–80; and W. Römer,
2 Journal of Near Eastern Studies
narrative continue to be guided by much older rather than more contemporary readings,4
some form of synopsis is necessary if only to present a working text on which to base the
discussion that follows. I have divided the summary into several “acts,” each corresponding
to a different locale in the story.5 For the most part, this is a division that the text itself ex-
hibits; its justification as an interpretative measure will emerge during the course of the sub-
sequent commentary.
A. City (lines 1–64)6
(A1) Dilmun is praised as a sacred, pure, bright city. It is a place from which what can be
identified as natural evils—predation by animals, disease, old age, dirt—are explicitly absent.
No young girl bathes, no man sails the river, no herald makes his rounds; there is no song
of joy, there is no wailing.
(A2) Ninsikila (= Ninhursag) complains to Enki that Dilmun lacks water; its canals are
empty.
(A3) Enki makes water well up from the subterranean reservoirs over which he has control.
The wells of Dilmun fill; their saltwater becomes sweet. The furrowed fields produce grain.
(A4) Either as an immediate result, or else in the optative form of wish or exhortation,
Dilmun is described as an urban emporium into which flow riches from all over the world—
precious wood and stones, minerals, wool, spices, spun cloth. Its dwellings are praised, along
with its grain and dates; its triple harvests are celebrated.7
B. Marsh (lines 65–89)
(B1) With his penis, Enki digs channels in the marsh and “waters” the reedbeds. His penis
bursts out of his clothing (?).
(B2) Enki forbids anyone from entering the marsh, then invites Nintu/Ninhursag (?) to sleep
with him there. He copulates with Damgalnuna (?) and Ninhursag. After an accelerated,
nine-day gestation, Nintu/Ninhursag gives birth to Ninsar. The delivery is described as
smooth and painless, as if lubricated with oil.
D. O. Edzard, and O. Kaiser, eds., Mythen und Epen 1: and 47 below.

Texte aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments III,3 5 The episodic character of the narrative is obvious,
(Gütersloh, 1993); online resources are available at leading Lambert and Tournay to posit the existence of
the Electronic Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http:// six independent narratives—“La légende de Dilmun,”
etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk). B. Alster (“Dilmun, Bahrain and “La legende de l’ambar,” “Le mythe du gú-íd,” “En-ki
the Alleged Paradise in Sumerian Myth and Literature,” et Uttu,” “Enki et les huit plantes,” “Ninhursag et les
in Dilmun: New Studies in the Archaeology and Early huit divinités”—that were at some later point stitched
History of Bahrain [Berlin, 1983], pp. 61–65) offers an together by a single poet. Others acknowledge the
edition and translation of the first sixty-three lines of the divisions but assume a consistent intention throughout
narrative, along with the twenty lines of interpolation the narrative, which forms the basis for a literary/cul-
from the so-called Ur version, on which see n. 7 below. tural interpretation of the myth as a whole.
4 Evers’s 1995 structuralist approach ( Myth and 6 I follow the numbering in Attinger.
Narrative ), for instance, seems to be unaware of 7 The precise location of this passage of some twenty
Attinger’s 1984 edition of Enki and Ninhursag, result- lines is problematic. Also at issue is whether the mood
ing in significant differences in readings and therefore of the verbs is optative or indicative. See Attinger, p. 13,
in the interpretation of the narrative. See also nn. 13 n. 28.
One Line Short
Enki and Ninhursag: The Trickster in Paradise 3
C. Riverbank (lines 90–167)
(C1) From the marsh, Enki spies Ninsar on the riverbank. After consultation with his sukkal,
Isimud, Enki travels by boat to dry land and there copulates with Ninsar. After accelerated
gestation, she gives birth—“like oil”—to Ninkura.
(C2) From the marsh, Enki spies Ninkura on the riverbank. After consultation with
Isimud, he travels by boat to dry land and there copulates with Ninkura. After accelerated
gestation, she gives birth—“like oil—to Ninimma.8
(C3) From the marsh, Enki spies Ninimma on the riverbank. After consultation, he travels by
boat to dry land and there copulates with Ninimma. After accelerated gestation, she gives
birth—“like oil”—to Uttu.
(C4) Ninhursag warns Uttu about Enki. In a fragmentary passage, she apparently advises
Uttu to demand cucumbers, apples (apricots?), and grapes from Enki as the price for
intercourse.9
D. Garden (lines 153–67)
(D1) Enki raises sweet water “a second time” (cf. A3). A grateful gardener brings Enki
cucumbers, apples (apricots?), and grapes.
E. House (lines 168–95)
(E1) Enki goes to Uttu’s house, having first made his face attractive.10 He identifies himself
as the Gardener and offers Uttu cucumbers, apples (apricots?), and grapes; in exchange,
Uttu “opens her house.” Enki then—in a more extended and less formulaic description of
intercourse—copulates with her.
(E2) Uttu experiences pain, presumably during intercourse itself or else, possibly, in the
act of childbirth.
(E3) Ninhursag removes Enki’s semen from (within?) Uttu’s body, and from it (by putting
it within her own body?) produces eight plants.11
F. Riverbank (lines 196–219)
(F1) From the marsh, Enki spies the plants and consults with Isimud about them. Isimud
names each plant, cuts or pulls it from its roots, and gives it to Enki, who eats each in turn.
In this way, Enki “knows the heart” and “determines the destiny” of each plant.
(F2) Ninhursag curses Enki, withdrawing her “life-giving eye” from him. Enki falls ill.
8 A fragment of some twenty lines from an inde- p. 23, n. 46.

pendent source identifies Ninimma instead as daughter 10 See Attinger, p. 23, n. 44. By contrast, Kramer,
of Ninkura and Enki, then describes his formulaic p. 17 (along with Kramer and Maier, Myths, p. 27)
rape of Ninimma, who in turn gives birth to Uttu. See translates “his face turned green” and glosses (Kramer,
Attinger, p. 19. p. 28) as “the gardener’s action must have displeased
9 Alternatively, it is the gardener from whom Uttu and troubled him in some way.”
makes such a demand. See Attinger, p. 21, n. 41 and 11 Attinger, p. 25, nn. 48 and 49.
G. Temple (lines 220–50)
(G1) The fox approaches Enlil with an offer to bring Ninhursag back; in return, Enlil
promises it a tree in his city and subsequent fame.
(G2) In a fragmentary passage, the fox adorns itself and approaches Ninhursag, apparently
claiming that it has unsuccessfully approached the other gods—Enlil, Nanna, Uttu—in their
temples.
(G3) Ninhursag goes to the temple (of Enlil?), where the gods strip her and Enki is put
inside (or before?) her vulva.
H. Vulva (lines 251–78)
(H1) Ninhursag asks Enki which part of his body hurts. As he answers, listing a series of
eight parts—head, hair, nose, mouth, throat, arm, ribs, sides—she somehow facilitates the
birth of a series of eight minor deities.
(H2) Each of the eight deities is named as it emerges. An element in each deity’s name
puns with the name of a body part mentioned by Enki.
(H3) Enki (presumably) is healed. The narrative concludes with a hymnic formula of
praise for the god.
III. Commentary
(A1–A4) City
The description of Dilmun as “pure” and “bright,” along with the negative language used
to characterize it as free from certain natural and cultural evils, leads Kramer to accept the
classification of the narrative as a “paradise myth.”12 This is of course a loaded choice of
terms—a choice already made in Langdon’s much-flawed interpretation of the myth three
decades earlier13—and certainly also a hermeneutically revealing one. For if the Dilmun
of the narrative is genuinely a “paradise,” it is perhaps only natural to consider how it stands
related to the Paradise in which Kramer and his audience have the greatest cultural invest-
ment. As Lambert and Tournay are quick to note,14 the classification is surely motivated to
a large degree by the desire to build upon earlier discoveries of other, more genuine parallels
between Mesopotamian and Hebrew myths—specifically, between the myth of Ziusudra/
Utnapishtim and that of the Flood in Genesis15—in such a way that the Sumerian story
12 Kramer remains true to this interpretation lonian Section, vol. 10, no. 1 (Philadelphia, 1915).
throughout his subsequent scholarship on the narra- On the egregious errors in Langdon’s methods and
tive; see S. N. Kramer, “Dilmun: Quest for Paradise,” conclusions, see M. Jastrow, “Sumerian Myths of
Antiquity 37 (1963): 111–15; Sumerian Mythology, Beginnings,” American Journal of Semitic Languages
rev. ed. (Philadelphia, 1972), pp. 54–59; and Kramer and Literatures 33 (1917): 89–144—itself a chastening
and Maier, Myths. lesson in the fragility of interpretation, since the text
13 Compare S. Langdon, “A Preliminary Account of on which he, too, bases his understanding has subse-
a Sumerian Legend of the Flood and the Fall of Man,” quently proved to be just as flawed.
Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 37 14 Lambert and Tournay, p. 122.
(1914): 188–96; idem, Sumerian Epic of Paradise, the 15 Ibid. The authors remark: “On devine facilement
Flood and the Fate of Man, Publication of the Baby- le but de cette interprétation: il s’agit d’établir des
One Line Short
comes to be seen as at least genetically affiliated with if not, directly or otherwise, the
authentic parent of the Old Testament account.16 Among other things, the assumption that
the tale of Enki and Ninhursag is concerned in some principal way to narrate the creation of
and subsequent Fall from Paradise results in a disproportionate focus on certain elements
in the story to the exclusion of many—some would say most—others. In true hermeneutic
fashion, the initial assumption both guides the direction the investigation takes and at the
same time also closes off other, potentially even more valid, avenues of inquiry. Kramer’s
attention is drawn in particular to (1) the episode of Enki’s watering of Dilmun (A3), with
which he compares the mist that rises from the arid plain in the Yahwist (J) tradition of the
Hebrew account (Gen. 2:6 f.);17 (2) Enki’s eating of the plants (F1) and subsequent fatal
malady, which recalls for him Adam’s and Eve’s transgression along with their ensuing
punishment by expulsion into a world of work, labor-pain, and death—Ninhursag here
debuting in the role Yahweh later will make famous; and (3) the creation (H2) of a
goddess “Nin-ti” (Lady of the Rib) in response to the pain Enki feels in his rib (Sumerian
ti), to which Kramer predictably compares the biblical origin of Eve.18
Lambert and Tournay are among the first to call attention to the difficulty in regarding
the Dilmun of Enki and Ninhursag as a “paradise” in the Edenic sense. For them, as for the
majority of later scholars, it is clearly less a positive than a negative utopia—a figure of pure
potentiality, a site dormant and in need of activation: “le texte donne moins l’impression
d’un paradis que celle d’un monde endormi dans une non-vie: toutes les forces et tous les
êtres y sont en puissance et déjà en place, mais aucune n’existe vraiment.”19 The language
of this initial description of Dilmun is indeed purely figurative, unfolding by means of vivid,
selective negations to present a sequence of remarkably concrete images of what in fact
entirely lacks all genuine substance. Neither grain nor house nor woman nor animal yet
exists, to pick only one instance, in the world about which the text claims (lines 19 f.) that
no bird in the sky eats the malt a widow leaves out to dry on the roof. Hardly a real place
at all—and certainly far from Adam’s verdant and tangible Paradise—the Dilmun of the
opening scene is at best just a topos, a merely rhetorical space in which the (surprisingly
large) matrix of actions and meanings implied by bird, malt, and widow is only a virtual
one.20 The images created by the opening series of negative predications conjure up a world
that exists as yet only as prolepsis.
Moreover, and equally far from being a paradise—“a happy state at the beginning of
things,” as Alster neatly defines it—Dilmun here is most expressly problematic,21 and it is
indeed as a sequence of problems for which solutions must be found that the narrative as
relations entre la Bible et les récits les plus anciens curs: “Ce passage célébre, considéré longtemps comme
de la Mésopotamie; parceque des mythes relativement la description paradisiaque de Dilmun, dépeint en fait
plus récents, ainsi celui du déluge, en ont fourni quel- Dilmun avant l’apparition de toute vie. . . .” Cf. also
quesunes, on est autorisé, semble-t-il, à en chercher Rosengarten, pp. 9 f., 14 f.; Alster, pp. 21 f. and “Dil-
dans des récits antérieurs.” mun, Bahrain,” p. 55; and Bottéro and Kramer, p. 160.
16 See Kramer’s qualification, p. 9, n. 29. 20 Lambert and Tournay (p. 123) hedge somewhat,
17 Ibid., pp. 102 f. in that they imagine a Dilmun indeed populated with
18 Ibid., p. 9; see also S. N. Kramer, ed. Mythologies creatures but creatures who do not yet act: “Le lion
of the Ancient World (Garden City, New York, 1961), ne tuait pas . . . [signifie] qui’il n’avait pas encore
p. 103. Kramer, p. 8, also draws attention to the effort- commencé à tuer, à faire son métier de lion.” See also
lessness of childbirth as index of a prelapsarian world. Alster, pp. 55–58.
19 Lambert and Tournay, p. 123. Attinger, p. 33, con- 21 Alster, p. 54.
a whole proceeds. Dilmun may lack the sound of wailing (line 30), but that does not mean
it is free from complaint (lines 31–36). Without water to drink and for irrigation, it is “une
vaste machine toute monté, mais qui ne tourne pas.”22 This fact alone serves both to exclude
the narrative from the category of “paradise myths” and to locate it instead within the far
broader (if vaguer) category of “myths of origin.”23 Specifically, the main issue on which
the tale of Enki and Ninhursag turns is that of the conditions necessary for the creation
and maintenance of a habitable world. It is a myth concerned principally with delineating
certain aspects of the origin of culture.
In response to Ninsikila’s complaint, Enki makes water rise up from below, filling the
wells and exchanging saltwater for sweet water. While its transformative effect is described
with reference both to city and countryside, more attention focuses on the urbanization of
Dilmun. A passage of some twenty lines (A4 = UET 6 1) supplied from a source other
than the main Nippur text of the narrative (PBS 10/1.1), represents Dilmun after its “irri-
gation” as a vast urban center into which flow luxurious goods from around the world.24 It
is unclear whether the verbs of this passage are to be translated as indicative or optative,25
making it difficult to determine whether the description is intended as a statement of fact,
an exhortation, or yet another prolepsis—in this case now richly affirmative—of a city at the
height of its cultural development. In any instance, Dilmun’s metamorphosis is dramatic:
an arid topos delineated strictly in the negative becomes a treasury of precious stones,
woods, cloth, and spices. Barges laden with barley and oil ply the canals; the homes of
Dilmun are beautiful; its barley and famous dates flourish; its harvests come to term three
times each year. The contrast between the two descriptions could not be more forceful: on
the one hand, the almost dreamlike latency and suspended animation of Dilmun before the
waters rise, on the other, a Dilmun seemingly at the hub of commerce, replete with the fine
trappings of culture, and as the apparent destination of all movement in the world.26
The specific terms of Dilmun’s transformation likewise serve to distance it even more
from Adam’s quiet garden in the east. The latter is strictly precultural, a natural world of
fauna and plush vegetation: no wood is chopped for furniture, no mines dug to extract ex-
pensive minerals and gemstones, no cloth spun or deep wells sunk or splendid homes
erected, no keels laid for fine ships to freight their precious cargo to and fro, furrowing
the waters of the known globe. The Genesis account, on the contrary, situates technology
squarely in the postlapsarian world of labor (both male and female) and eventual death; here
the tool, far from celebrating human control over nature, only confirms human subjection
to it as punishment for disobedience. Alster is surely correct in noting that “paradise” in
Kramer’s Edenic sense is in fact quite alien to Sumerian—and, for that matter, Mesopo-
tamian—thought as a whole, which understands natural, pretechnological existence as
an index of barbarism or savagery rather than bliss and prefers to valorize stable political
authority and technological innovation over biblical “innocence and piety.”27 Dilmun, really
22Lambert and Tournay, p. 123. hursag, see Attinger, p. 5.

23Compare Rosengarten (relying on Eliade), pp. 7 f.: 25 Ibid., p. 13, n. 28.
“Les mythes d’origine prolongent et complètent le 26 See Alster, “Dilmun, Bahrain,” on the rich ar-
mythe cosomogonique: ils racontent comment le Monde chaeological evidence supporting the role of ancient
a été modifié, enrichi et appauvri.” For Alster, p. 59, Dilmun (Bahrain) as an international center of trade.
the narrative has the status of a “creation myth.” 27 See Alster (“Dilmun, Bahrain,” p. 55), who
24 On the various textual sources for Enki and Nin- remarks: “. . . it should be reasonably clear that if by
no “paradise” at all, is here instead envisioned as a thoroughly urban space, state-of-the-art,

modern, vibrant, and vigorously mercantile. There is no reasonable sense in which Enki’s
intervention can be mapped either onto that of the Snake in Adam’s Garden or onto Adam
himself, and not a single regret attends the metamorphosis his actions bring about. By their
means, Dilmun in fact most triumphantly shifts from its timeless and vacant state of mere
potentiality to full, robust engagement in commerce, history, and time. In the pages that
follow, I will argue that Enki and Ninhursag is a sort of experimental piece of narrative—
specifically, that it is largely concerned with charting the effects of Enki the Trickster’s
passage through one after another of the significant cultural spaces Sumerian civilization
delineated in the process of organizing and understanding its world. It is doubtless quite
fitting that, at the outset, the first space Enki occupies—only to contradict and violate it,
very tricksterlike indeed—is the one falsely imposed by early scholarship on his myth.
(B1–B2) Marsh
The setting, too, now shifts from this urban scape to the Marsh of or around Dilmun.
From a structuralist perspective,28 this is a categorical as much as a topographical movement,
a shift from culture to nature. Moreover, the different site in turn promotes other possibilities
for how the narrative will unfold: what can and does happen in the City is distinctly dif-
ferent from what can be expected to happen in the Marsh. We move from the City Enki’s
waters have created to a place whose waters suggest instead an as yet much less orga-
nized, liminal, and even potentially dangerous world. In the context of the narrative so far,
it initially signals a return to a state homologous with that of the first scene (A1), as if the
tale had looped on itself and were now beginning anew in a different locale.29
This in turn suggests that Enki’s activities in both scenes should also be viewed as
analogous. What supports the claim that they are similar, if not identical, in function is the
fact that irrigation and sexuality are themselves homologous terms in Sumerian myth. In
Sumerian, as in most traditional cultures, cosmogony and agricultural fertility are generally
understood by analogy to human reproductive acts, thereby making irrigation and inter-
course virtually interchangeable tropes.30 Although the first scene in the narrative is not
the term ‘paradise’ we understand an original happy structuralist reading of the myth.
state in the beginning of the creation of mankind, then 29 Lambert and Tournay, pp. 124 f., consider this
this term is misleading when used in connection with an entirely independent narrative, in fact, describing an
Mesopotamian beliefs. The term ought not to be used in alternate myth of origin (“une autre explication de la
this context at all. According to Mesopotamian thought vie”); see also Jacobsen, pp. 182 f. For Kirk, p. 95, the
it was the ideal ruler, the Sumerian king, who was re- change in venue instead marks a topographical exten-
sponsible for creating a happy and well-organized so- sion of Enki’s domain outward from the city toward
ciety. The society did not live by innocence and piety, (by the end of the story) the desert.
but by palpable financial prosperity.” The triumphalist 30 See Kirk, pp. 84–107; J. Cooper, “Enki’s
language of the Ur-interpolation (A4) is certainly best Member: Eros and Irrigation in Sumerian Literature,”
understood in this context. On the celebration of in- in H. Behrens et al., eds., dumu-e2-bub-ba-a: Studies in
vention in Sumerian literature, see G. Komoróczy, Honor of Åke W. Sjöberg (Philadelphia, 1989), pp. 87–
“Lobpreis auf das Gefängnis in Sumer,” Acta Antiqua 89, and also Leick, pp. 21 ff. Jacobsen, p. 183, more
Academiae Scientiae Hungaricae 23 (1975): 153–74. explicitly allegorizes the connection when he notes
28 See, for example, C. Lévi-Strauss, Structural that the reeds into which Enki plunges his penis in B1
Anthropology (London, 1968), pp. 206–31. Evers, Myth should “probably . . . be understood mythopoeically as
and Narrative, offers a consistent, if somewhat rigid, the pubic hairs of the earth mother.”
expressly sexual, then, the analogy is nonetheless presumably implied by the description
of Enki’s raising of sweet water to fill the cisterns of Dilmun (A3). The erotic nature of his
activity in the present scene (B1) set in the Marsh, in any case, is undeniably overt. If nothing
else, the juxtaposition of scenes makes it that much more likely that the sexual metaphor
is to be understood in the earlier passage, thereby making explicit for us an element in the
first scene that was probably not very latent at all for the tale’s original audience.31 Lambert
and Tournay, by contrast, find the Enki of this second passage strikingly different from the
god of the first; they consider the two similar in name alone and completely divergent in
function.32 It is hard to see any fundamental difference at all between Enki as Lord of
Waters (abzu) and as Primal Parent, however, given the fact that in both cases he is a god
whose fluid creates and fosters life,33 whether or not the language in each instance deploys
explicitly sexual metaphors.
This is not to say that Lambert and Tournay are wrong in noting a clear shift in tone. If
there is any appreciable difference in the descriptions of Enki in these two scenes, however,
it is perhaps best initially characterized as a difference in rhetorical genre, namely, between
“high” and “low” representations. The Enki of A1– 4 is a sacral figure in a myth of origin
in which Dilmun undergoes dramatic physical and cultural transformation within the course
of a single day. The solemn and triumphalist language of the passage (A4) supplied by the
text from Ur, implicitly contrasting the merely virtual with the fully vibrant City, reflects
back on Enki himself as the one through whose agency the change has been wrought. The
grand sweep of the passage, with its litany of far-off places from which all goods now flow
into Dilmun, confirms the even greater power and majesty of the god responsible for such
a stunning metamorphosis.
In the present passage (B1), on the other hand, it is hard to overlook the perhaps equally
broad sweep of pure burlesque in the description of Enki digging irrigation ditches with his
penis and just as triumphantly plunging it again and again into the Marsh. The contrast is
striking, as is the rhetorical distance, from august to aggressively comic and salacious—
from “sacred myth” to folktale. Enki ploughs the wet ground in plain sight of the birth-
goddess Nintu, thereby incidentally also establishing himself as “the first flasher,” as Cooper
delightedly notes—probably not the sort of “first” Kramer would have wanted to include
in his impressive list of other Sumerian precedents!34 Literal collides with figural reference
in the terms that describe the god’s appearance and behavior here, and (at least among in-
terpreters) the meanings compete with one another for precedence.35 The detail—just as in
A1—is once again vivid and in its own way quite compelling: Enki’s clothing grotesquely
31 See Leick on the often neglected sexual dimension and Leick, pp. 21–29. Leick, p. 39, makes “the double
of traditional Sumerian literature. meaning of the Sumerian sign /a/, denoting ‘sperm’ as
32 See Lambert and Tournay, p. 124: “Seul Enki well as ‘water’ ” the foundation of her reading of the
revient, mais si dissemblable qu’il n’a avec le dieu du story as a whole.
passage précédent que le nom seul de commun; ce 34 See Cooper, “Enki’s Member,” p. 88 and S. N.
n’est plus le seigneur de l’eau, mais l’engendreur Kramer, History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts
primordial. . . .” See also Jacobsen, p. 183: “Even the in Man’s Recorded History (1956; Philadelphia, 1981).
identity of the Enki of the first story with the one of 35 For a different, but less convincing, view of this
the second one may not be beyond doubt.” passage, based on a reading that would substitute the
33 On the analogy between water and seminal fluid term “agency”—“ ‘(par) son dresser’, c’est-à-dire: ‘par
in Sumerian literature, see J. Cooper, “Enki’s Member,” son action’ ”—for “penis,” see Rosengarten, p. 20, n. 3.
One Line Short
bulges at the groin. His erection tears through the fabric in an image that suggests to
Attinger “la croissance soudaine de la végétation”36 but which even more strongly insists
on being understood directly at first, without allegorical refraction, namely, as a coarse in-
stance of sexual exposure.37 Cooper and Leick emphasize the bawdy humor in this passage
and likewise draw attention to the “raw [and] often violent” phallocentric sexuality that char-
acterizes Enki both here and elsewhere in Sumerian literature.38 This is especially by con-
trast with what is found to be the softer and more sensuous language of Inanna-Dumuzi
poetry, with its primary focus on the vulva.39 To be sure, Enki’s priapism is of course a
gesture simultaneously “low” and also deeply sacred, given the genuinely religious func-
tion of ritual obscenity in traditional cultures, especially when pressed into the service of
asserting and ensuring fertility. Literal and figurative meanings tend to resolve themselves
quite pragmatically here.
At the same time, these elements of burlesque also serve as clear indices of the presence
of a trickster-figure.40 Enki’s sexual romp in the Marsh is in fact the first clear indication of
his primary function in Enki and Ninhursag, a prolepsis of the role he will play throughout
the rest of the narrative. It likewise provides an important key to interpretation. This is
because the contrast in generic level and rhetorical tone between scenes A3– 4 and B1
more fundamentally reflects a contrast intrinsic to the character of Enki himself, as of all
trickster-figures, between sacred and profane. What indeed identifies tricksters in general
tends in fact to be precisely an ambiguity over attribution. How should this figure be char-
acterized, after all, if not as the juxtaposition of opposites? The trickster unites both contrary
and contradictory traits—“high” vs. “low,” “august” vs. “absurd,” “guileful” vs. “gullible,”41
“beneficent” vs. “malicious,” “good” vs. “evil,” and so on—which in turn endows him with
vast creative (and destructive) powers. Two reflexes of his character are especially relevant
to an understanding of Enki’s behavior in Enki and Ninhursag. First, the trickster’s multi-
valent, polysemous, and volatile nature makes him, among other things, an ideal border-
crosser. This is reflected here in the degree to which the narrative unfolds within a series
of distinct spaces—City, Marsh, Riverbank, Garden, Threshold, Temple—across whose
boundaries Enki smoothly passes to and fro, whether promoting commerce or initiating
sexual exchanges. It is interesting to note that with few if any clear exceptions, Enki is
the only one who actually moves from place to place in the story. The other figures for the
36 Attinger, p. 15, n. 33. al., eds., Figurative Language in the Ancient Near East
37 Bottéro and Kramer, p. 153, translate as: “dé- (London, 1987), and Leick, pp. 90–96.
chirant de son pénis le vêtement/qui recouvrait le 40 On tricksters in general, see N. Brown, Hermes
giron de la terre!” Similar allegorization characterizes the Thief (New York, 1947); P. Radin, The Trickster:
Jacobsen’s approach as a whole. Note his synopsis of A Study in American Indian Mythology (New York,
the myth (p. 184): “Water and the foothills, Enki and 1956); W. J. Hynes and W. G. Doty, eds., Mythical
Ninhursaga, produce the mountain verdure (Ninnisiga) Trickster Figures: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms
which in turn produces the high mountains behind (Tuscaloosa, 1993); and R. Erdoes and A. Ortiz, eds.,
(Ninkirra), and they, as pasture for sheep, produce the American Indian Trickster Tales (London, 1998). On
goddess of weaving, Uttu. . . .” On nature allegory and Enki as trickster, see Kramer and Maier, Myths, along
Jacobsen’s methodology in general, see Kirk, pp. 88–94. with Leick, p. 40.
38 Compare the narrative known as Enki and the 41 In this context, one wonders whether the epithet
World Order, in which Enki ejaculates the Tigris and in line 65 (gfl éstu-ge tuku-a) that Attinger (p. 15, with
Euphrates; and see Cooper, “Enki’s Member,” p. 88, p. 37 ad loc.) translates as “l’intelligent” is not itself a
n. 9, and Leick, pp. 21–29 and 48–54. semantic marker of Enki as Trickster.
39 See also the studies collected in M. Mindlin et
most part simply inhabit one space or another; each is the merely static occupant of a
single locale.42 Enki by contrast is defined by his ability—often embodied in the figure of
his sukkal, Isimud—to negotiate passage.
A second important reflex of the trickster’s character involves his proclivity to cross moral
no less than physical borders. Multivalent and volatile, he is also decidedly perverse. His
conflicting traits often mark him as conflicted—his own worst enemy, in fact—a figure
prone stupidly or even willfully to violate taboos and conventions of order and thereby to
suffer the consequences of their transgression. In many myths of origin, for that matter, it
is the trickster’s violation of boundaries that for the first time marks precisely where the
limits are; his excess delineates a culture’s moderation. Given the issue of incest in Enki
and Ninhursag—to which much scholarly attention has been drawn, especially since Kirk’s
reading of the myth43—this latter trait seems to emerge as particularly significant.
The Marsh is the site of the first in a sequence of what are, technically speaking, hieroi
gamoi. After forbidding anyone to enter—thereby both ensuring privacy and also fulfilling
the requisite narrative conditions that mark the place as well suited either for tryst or rape44—
Enki invites Ninhursag to mate with him there. The fragmentary nature of this passage has
not always allowed for an especially clear understanding of what happens next, or even with
whom it happens. The issue turns on two separable but related questions: (1) the identity
of Enki’s mate and (2) the nature of their intercourse. The first question stems from the
presence in the text at this point of not one but three names of female deities: Nintu (lines
65, 87), Damgalnuna (lines 74 f.), and Ninhursag (lines 75 f.). The first and third names
most certainly refer to the same mother-goddess figure. For Lambert and Tournay, the claim
that Enki mates with Ninhursag—elsewhere the wife of Enlil—serves as an indication of
political rivalries among Sumerian cities and, in particular, a feud by proxy between Eridu
(Enki) and Nippur (Enlil).45 For Alster, on the other hand, the reference to Damgalnuna,
whom tradition usually assigns to Enki as his main and “lawful” spouse, introduces a whiff
of adultery and/or sexual deviance that in turn helps fuel an entirely different interpreta-
tion of the story as a whole.46 It is more than likely the case, however—as Attinger notes,
though with some reservations47—that we are dealing with essentially interchangeable
epithets of one and the same divine person.
The related issue of exactly how Enki and Nintu/Damgalnuna/Ninhursag mate should
on this basis be consequently easier to resolve. That he has sexual involvement with all
42 The major exception is the fox—another folktale garten, pp. 20–22.

border-crosser—who is perhaps a doublet of Enki; see 46 See Alster, p. 17: “When the text states that he
below. lets flow the semen of Damgalnunna, otherwise known
43 Kirk, pp. 90–107. to be his wife, the point is certainly to tell that he is
44 Compare the locale for the rape scene in the doing something unnatural.” This understanding in turn
narrative known as Enlil and Ninlil in J. Black et al., fuels an interpretation of the narrative that is somewhat
eds., The Literature of Ancient Sumer (Oxford, 2004), difficult to follow but that hinges on the claim that
pp. 102 f., along with Kirk and also Cooper, “Enki’s Ninhursag “steals” Enki’s semen; essentially the same
Member,” p. 89, n. 12, who claim (with perhaps too interpretation is assumed in Alster, “Dilmun, Bahrain,”
much confidence) that “Enki’s multiple rapes of his pp. 55–59. See also Leick, p. 36.
young offspring here provide the model, both in terms 47 See Attinger, p. 38: “Nous admettons, non sans
of theme (rape of young girls, aquatic setting, use of hésitation, que Nintu/Damgalnuna/Ninhursaga ne sont,
boat, initial violation of prohibition) and phraseology, dans ce texte, que d’autres noms de Ninsikila. . . .”
for Enlil’s rape of Ninlil in Enlil and Ninlil.” See also Bottéro and Kramer (pp. 160 f.) assume that the
Leick, pp. 32 ff. mate is Damgalnuna, with the other names serving as
45 For criticism of this interpretation, see Rosen- epithets.
three—whether individuals or a unity—is clear from the statements that Enki “waters” Dam-
galnuna (line 74) and pours out his semen into Ninhursag’s lap, which receives it (lines 75 f.);
this later (lines 87 f.) results in Nintu’s giving birth to Ninsar, the first in a series of children
with whom Enki will mate in turn. On the assumption that Damgalnuna/Ninhursag/Nintu is
a single female triply named, there would be no problem at all, even though Rosengarten’s
attempt to account for the three names in terms of a chronological sequence of stages or
functions—wife, earth-mother, birth-goddess—through which Enki’s mate passes might
seem a little strained.48
Where major differences arise is in Alster’s claim that what happens in the Marsh is not,
strictly speaking, heterosexual at all. He argues that Enki’s act in B2 is still (as perhaps in
B1) one of masturbation, namely, that he first ejaculates into the Marsh and that Ninhursag
subsequently collects his semen and with it impregnates herself. This is one element in
an argument to the effect that the true aim of the narrative is to explore “the paradoxical
beginning of sexual relations,” 49 in whose initial stage “an abnormal reversed order”
(line 17) prevails, with Ninhursag playing the male role and Enki (one assumes) the
female. It would take us too far afield to address Alster’s thesis in detail.50 Three points,
however, should suffice to suggest some problems with respect to the present issue of
whether or not Enki’s sexual relations with Ninhursag are what he calls “normal.” First,
as against Alster’s claim that Ninhursag “violates [Enki’s] prohibition” against entering
the Marsh, line 73 (in Attinger’s construction) has Enki issue a direct invitation to the
goddess to join him there;51 the earlier ban on trespassing would in this case apply to all
but the one whom Enki now proceeds to invite. Next, the language used to describe their
sexual act (lines 75–76) is formulaically repeated in all the subsequent (three or four)
occasions of intercourse in the narrative, that is, between Enki and his own offspring.
Why in those latter cases the unions should be normatively heterosexual and only here an
“abnormal,” extravaginal emission followed by self-implantation is unclear and apparently
contradictory.52 Finally, Attinger’s remark that the grammar of line 75 precludes reading
Ninhursag as an agent—namely, as the one who allegedly “steals” Enki’s semen—makes
at least this part of the thesis unsupportable.53 In the absence of hard evidence otherwise, it
is perhaps safest and simplest to assume that what occurs in B2 is a “normal” hieros gamos,
resulting in the conception and subsequent birth of Ninsar.
Nintu’s birthing is described as effortless, “smooth as oil.” This set of lines, repeated
verbatim in the description of the later two (or three) acts of childbirth (C1–3), serves for
48 Her argument (Rosengarten, pp. 20–22) recalls statement is taken to be declarative rather than an in-
the suggestion of Lambert and Tournay (p. 125, n. 1) vitation, nonetheless still assumes that Enki mates with
that the different names “marquent . . . des temps par- the goddess. J. Evers, Myth and Narrative, pp. 38 f.,
ticuliers dans la vie de la déesse.” See also Attinger, likewise takes Enki’s statement to be prohibition, not in-
p. 39. vitation. It should be noted that Evers relies on Kramer’s
49 Alster, p. 19. text and translations in J. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near
50 The issue of sexual reversals also figures promi- Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 2d ed.
nently in Kirk’s 1970 reading, as well as in that of (Princeton, 1955); Attinger’s 1984 edition is apparently
J. Evers, Myth and Narrative, which leans heavily on unknown to him.
Kirk. On Alster’s 1978 interpretation (presented again 52 Cooper, “Enki’s Member,” pp. 88 f., follows
in Alster, “Dilmun, Bahrain,” pp. 59 f.), see Leick, Alster in claiming that Enki “releases his semen into
pp. 34 f. the water for Ninhursag to take into her womb herself.”
51 See Attinger, p. 38 ad loc. The alternate con- 53 Attinger, p. 39 ad loc.
struction he cites (attributed to Wilcke), in which the
Kramer as additional ground for the claim of affiliation between Enki and Ninhursag and
Genesis, at least inasmuch as chief among the punishments Eve suffers is its precise opposite
(Gen. 3:16). The relation between the two narratives is lopsided, however, and the argument
therefore not entirely sound, since symmetry would imply painless birth in Eden before
the Fall and for that matter, sexual intercourse, conception, and pregnancy as well. While
rejecting that specific thesis, most other commentators still take this formulaic statement
as an index of a prelapsarian world54 or at least of the privileges—including an accelerated
period of gestation—that female deities enjoy over female mortals.55 Whatever its com-
parative value, the significance of painless birth within the narrative as such comes mainly
from its contrast with two later episodes in which pain is prominently featured. In the first
passage (E2), Enki’s own (great-) great-granddaughter Uttu suffers either during intercourse
or else immediately after the god has sex with her. She cries out (line 186), naming her
thighs, body, and belly/womb as sources of discomfort. In the second and analogous episode
(H1), it is Enki himself who, after eating the eight plants that indirectly or otherwise issue
from intercourse with Uttu, experiences various pains; here, too, specific body parts are
named. I will deal with these two scenes below.
Of final note with respect to this episode is its affirmation of Enki’s power to bring life
into being, which is understood primarily as male sexual potency.56 If, in its most general
terms, the overall theme of Enki and Ninhursag is to explore a number of aboriginal changes
(for better or worse) wrought by the god, these first two episodes must surely be regarded
as homologous. Despite the difference in locale, both scenes depict a male potency which,
like the waters that embody it, easily crosses boundaries to work its effects. In the first (A3),
Enki/water/semen rises up from below, from deep in the abzu within or underneath the earth;
in the second (B1–2), the movement now comes from the opposite direction, as Enki/water/
semen flows down into the earth (Ninhursag) it will fertilize. In either case, from below or
above, and in urban space or the raw, uncultivated Marshes, his effects are transformative.
Despite the difference in rhetorical level, moreover, both scenes are celebratory and tri-
umphalist. Enki as master of spaces is also the master of powers and processes that
change them dramatically. The tale of Dilmun’s metamorphosis into an urban center is to
be sure more self-contained. It reaches a closure in A4 that could allow it to stand alone as
a short, independent narrative, and it is only Enki’s presence in the first two scenes of Enki
and Ninhursag, along with the analogy between his activities in both episodes, that helps
us make the passage from City to Marshland.57 The second episode (B1–2) enjoys no such
closure, however, since intercourse with Nintu/Damgalnuna/Ninhursag and the birth of
Ninsar are only the prelude to other narrative sequences. Like the fluid power he sym-
bolizes, Enki spills over into subsequent venues.
(C1–C4) Riverbank
The site for the next series of actions is a liminal one. If A1– 4 is set within the City, and
B1–2 in the Marshes, the next scenes (C1– 4) unfold as a repetitive series of lateral move-
54 See Alster, p. 17, and “Dilmun, Bahrain,” p. 59. lignes 14–64, forme donc un tout complet d’une par-
55 See Lambert and Tournay, pp. 125 f., and Rosen- faite unité; unité d’action: il s’agit d’éveiller le monde
garten, p. 22. à la vie; unité de lieu: la scène se passe à Dilmun; trois
56 See Leick, pp. 21–29. personnages interviennent: Nin-Sikil, Enki et son ser-
57 Lambert and Tournay, p. 124: “Tout ce passage, viteur Utu.” See also Jacobsen, pp. 182 f.
One Line Long

ments back and forth between two different spaces, as well as a series of encounters at the
point at which both spaces intersect. The scene of the main action is set on the Riverbank,
itself a threshold marking out the boundaries between marsh and dry land, wilderness and
habitable space, and even between different kinds of locomotion—sailing (Enki) vs. walking
(female offspring)—appropriate to each locale. If the worlds of culture (City) and nature
(Marsh) are contrasted through an abrupt narrative shift between the first two scenes of
Enki and Ninhursag, as I suggested above, the site of that juxtaposition (Riverbank) is pre-
cisely the venue for this third string of episodes. Here Enki emerges clearly as the border-
crossing trickster, at the same time as the metaphors for spatial transition, sexual intercourse,
and possibly moral transgression, too—all genuine forms of commerce, be it noted—overlap
and indeed converge on one another.
It is spatial contrast that is emphasized at the outset by the formulaic lines (lines 89 f. =
109 f. = C3 f.) that begin each narrative string (C1, C2, C3), locating one after another of
Enki’s female offspring “on the bank of the river” while Enki himself lies “in the reeds
within the marsh.” Their physical separation in fact calls for a way to negotiate the
distance, and this is supplied in two distinct, but functionally identical, forms. First, the
opening formula continues with the introduction of Enki’s sukkal, Isimud. His appearance
here and at F1 but in no other scene in Enki and Ninhursag has been taken as further evi-
dence that the entire narrative itself is perhaps a series of independent tales with no strong
intrinsic relation to each other.58 On the other hand, Isimud’s presence also serves to draw
attention to the theme of (physical, sexual, moral) border-crossing that runs throughout
Enki and Ninhursag. The vizir is a mediator and facilitator; his role is precisely to execute
Enki’s will by supplying the means for its enactment. This is, of course, the job of all divine
ministers in Sumerian myth, but in the case of Isimud that role seems to be especially
appropriate. The two-faced sukkal is in a certain sense the expression of Enki’s character
as trickster: Janus-like, Isimud is ideally suited as a go-between to represent the trickster’s
own ambivalent nature. To Enki’s rhetorical questions as the god spies each woman in
turn, Isimud provides not only the predictably affirmative answers—couched in double
entendre59—but also the boat on which Enki travels over the Marsh. Like Isimud himself,
the boat he pilots is a figure of mediation, the means of transit between two spaces, and its
phenomenal speed—“with one step he was on the boat, with the other he stepped on dry
land” (lines 98 f. = 118 f. = C11 f.)—speaks to the facility with which Enki/Isimud crosses
boundaries.
The densely formulaic character of the episodes (C1–3) that follow, detailing Enki’s
serial rapes of his offspring at the Riverbank, is worth some comment.60 Generally speak-
ing, formulaic repetition in traditional narratives tends to serve two main classes of func-
tions, depending on whether we view it from outside or inside the narrative.61 From the
58 See n. 57 above. is inappropriate here since these myths are not con-
59 See Leick, p. 33. Leick reads the reference to cerned with social customs and institutions but portray
Enki’s “reaching out” from the marsh as double en- the activities of deities in a world largely devoid of
tendre for his erection and also finds sexual play in the human regulations.”
reference to boat and foot. 61 On formulaic language in general, see, for ex-
60 I use the term “rape” advisedly, as a kind of ample, J. Foley, Immanent Art: From Structure to
shorthand for intercourse initiated by one partner Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic (Bloomington,
without any apparent willingness on the part of the Indiana, 1991), esp. pp. 1–37, and R. Finnegan, Oral
other; in context, it need not necessarily imply moral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social Context
transgression. See Leick, p. 51: “The concept of rape (Bloomington, Indiana, 1992).
outside, that is, at the level of narrative composition, it is simultaneously a structuring and
a mnemonic device; it facilitates the initial construction and later transmission of the narra-
tive in performative contexts. Within the narrative itself, on the other hand, repetition serves
any number of rhetorical ends. Repeated lines or scenes establish patterns that can be used
to emphasize an issue, to endow a statement or action with an authority that comes from the
use of what are felt to be traditional or archaic modes of expression, to create expectations
that are subsequently either fulfilled or contradicted later in the story, and so on. The latter
category of uses includes repetition that draws attention to a problem, for instance, by a
narrative that (as often happens in folktale) takes the form of a series of false starts or un-
successful attempts. The problem “traps” the narrative in a kind of closed circle in which
it endlessly loops until an agent or event intervenes from somewhere outside the looping
action to break the cycle. Without suggesting either that this list is comprehensive or that
these various ends are mutually exclusive ones, it seems most likely that the repeating epi-
sodes in C1–3 belong to this last category, that is to say, that they serve to highlight an issue
as problematic.
Enki’s rapes indeed form a recursive loop. In the Nippur version of the story, he mates
with two of his offspring—Ninsar (C1) and Ninkurra (C2)—in this way; a text of unknown
provenance (C = TCL 16 62) includes an additional episode (C3), inserting Ninimma
between Ninkurra and Uttu and thereby making Uttu his great-great-granddaughter.62 The
pattern could presumably be further extended, if need be, to accommodate any number of
children in need of genealogy. Its closed nature is critical for an understanding of these
three or four episodes, as well as for the story as a whole. Structurally, both the narrato-
logical and, as it were, the genealogical shape of Enki’s matings is viciously cyclical, not
linear. In particular, the formula of accelerated gestation (lines 77–88 = 103–8 = 123–27;
cf. C 1 f. = C 16–28) following each mating contributes to an odd sense of narrated time as
proceeding through a series of rapid skips to precisely the same place and moment again
in each case. This is especially true insofar as the interval between the birth of each of the
daughters and her arrival at sexual maturity has also been so breathtakingly compressed
that it is virtually imperceptible. Where the text is not lost or obscured by the presence of
overlapping versions, each girl’s birth is immediately followed by the formulaic line (89 =
109 = C3) indicating her appearance at the Riverbank, fully grown and now nubile bait for
Enki’s lust. This conflation of spatial and temporal registers—the fact that arrival at the
Riverbank and arrival at maturity coincide in the text—implicitly characterizes the space
of the Riverbank as a site for sexual encounter.
Moreover, there is a strong sense in which, given the circular pattern of the narrative,
the offspring of the rapes—Ninsar, Ninkurra, Ninimma, Uttu—are not really distinct from
one another but instead functionally identical, inasmuch as the story in each case simply
returns to its beginning and repeats itself rather than moving forward. This would mean that
there are, technically, no true “offspring” at all, namely, that none of the sexual relations
has any genuine issue in the sense of offspring that perpetuate a true line of descent through
the subsequent course of time—and this because the time-signature of the episode is not
linear at all but cyclic instead. Despite the text’s apparent claim to the contrary, each act
62 Attinger, p. 5. See also Leick, p. 34, for parallels Enlil and Ninlil.
between this scene and an episode in the narrative
of mating does not lead to conception and birth but, rather, to the very same act of mating
all over again. Narratologically, Enki is spinning his wheels, stuck in a rut. The futility of the
cycle—the fact that it takes the form of a potentially endless series of sexual encounters
without offspring—may be intended to present a deliberate, iconic image of the incestuous
nature of these encounters. There is neither narrative nor genealogical movement here
because the (genetically and temporally) distinct categories of offspring and mate, child
and parent have been collapsed into each other. No child comes from each sexual act, just
yet another potential mate, another female whose status as Enki’s daughter is forfeited to
his desire to have her sexually.63 In one sense, this potentially endless repetition of course
confirms his role as border-crosser by emblematizing the act itself of interchange—spatial,
sexual, moral—over which he presides. In another sense, however, it undercuts precisely that
role by representing the exchange as a fruitless cycle, in constant movement but without
any genuine advance.
The cycle is broken (C4) by the intervention of Nintu. Here the text is again fragmentary,
making it difficult to reconstruct precisely what the goddess says to Uttu; in turn, both the
speaker and addressee of the lines (lines 148 ff.) that resume after the break are also un-
certain.64 However the lacuna is resolved, what seems reasonably clear is that Nintu’s advice
is for Uttu to demand a gift of various fruits—presumably from Enki, though this, too, is
not explicit in the text—before agreeing to have intercourse. Kirk focuses on the specific
content of the proposed gift and understands the passage as a strategic move on the part of
Nintu/Ninhursag to lure Enki into further extending himself (= his irrigating water) beyond
the Marsh and into the desert in order to create more arable land.65 It is not unlikely that Enki
could be fooled; in this context, we need recall that the trickster in traditional narratives is
just as often the dupe as the agent of guile. Alster in turn draws attention to the role of
gifts, especially of various fruits, in courtship rituals, and suggests that this amounts to “a
decent way to approach a woman, not just by raping her.”66 These arguments of course to
some degree complement each other, and while it is probably dangerous to lapse too far into
allegorical interpretation—as does Kirk, and to a far greater extent Jacobsen, Lambert and
Tournay, and Rosengarten67—what indeed emerges from this episode is the fact of Nintu’s
manipulation of rape into something that more closely approximates an equal exchange of
goods. For the first time, a kind of sexual economy is established. Thanks to Nintu’s advice,
masturbation (? cf. B1) and rape (C1–3)—the immediate gratification of (male) desire—are
now replaced by a less direct, but institutionally more stable, means of satisfaction, that is,
the purchase of sex.
(D1) Garden
This purchase in turn requires further cultivation of nature. By another act of irrigation,
Enki again brings sweet water/semen up to produce one more distinct place in the narrative—
63 See Alster, p. 20: “. . . the world is still abnormal 64 Kramer, pp. 60 f.; Lambert and Tournay, p. 128;
in that the creator can only beget children in incest re- Attinger, p. 21 ad loc.
lations with his own daughters. In a way we return to 65 Kirk, p. 95.
the original state of things as the creator swallows his 66 Alster, p. 18.
own offspring, thus again creating a paradoxical unity 67 See Jacobsen (with n. 37 above); Lambert and
of unity and binarity.” Tournay, p. 123; Rosengarten, pp. 23–25.
that of the Garden.68 This new locale is no less important despite the minimal narrative
space that is devoted to it, which is no doubt due partly to the fragmentary nature of this
section of the text.
Reference to Enki’s raising water “a second time” (line 153) expressly recalls the earlier
passage (A3) in which the same feat brought about the dramatic transformation of Dilmun.
A number of analogies link the two episodes. Most conspicuously, the use of which the
fruits of the Garden are to be put—namely, as barter for sex69—recalls the far more elaborate
economy of urbanized Dilmun after Enki’s first irrigation. Both passages (A4 and C4), it
should be noted, are built around the detailed enumeration of commodities for exchange.
Whereas the Dilmun of A4 is a City in which the importation of goods seems to be em-
phasized, however, the Garden is a site in which the focus is chiefly on the production of
goods meant to export, so to speak. Cucumbers, apples (or apricots?), and grapes feed an
economy in which sex, too, is now commodified.
Some sort of fruitful exchange would in fact seem to be part of the solution to the problem
delineated in episodes C1–3, in which a recursive loop trapped both Enki and the narrative
in a circle of incestuous rape. By channeling Enki’s sexuality into a different kind of cycle,
Nintu redirects and transforms it at the same time as she helps effect the transformation of
arid space into a productive garden. The new economic cycle is one in which the cultivation
of the earth—always at least implicitly sexual—now yields as its genuine “offspring” fruit
that are in turn used as barter for sex that is presumably no less fruitful. Like Dilmun the
City, Dilmun the Garden is at the center of a network of production and exchange.
Moreover, it is also worth noting that the number of participants in this new economy
has grown. No longer is it simply a relation between Enki and one or another of his female
offspring as sexual objects, with Isimud less a distinctly individuated go-between than an
expression of Enki’s own role as border-crossing trickster. C4–D1 instead now present a
triangulated relation, in which Nintu plays the role of broker between Enki and Uttu and
the Gardener is either a facilitator or else, possibly, even a rival to Enki’s desire—thereby
forming a more familiar “romantic” triangle, as I suggest below. Finally, triangulation also
characterizes the curious sexual relations among Enki, Uttu, and Ninhursag in the following
episode.
(E1–E3) House
Nintu’s advice in C4, making sexual access to Uttu conditional on Enki’s payment of
a kind of “bride-price,” calls to mind other narratives in which conditions are set for
“marriage” and suitors then compete to fulfill them. In this context, reference is generally
made to the group of epithalamian songs that goes under the name of The Courtship of
Inanna and Dumuzi.70 Here Dumuzi the shepherd prevails over Inanna’s initial preference
68 On the garden in Sumerian literature, see Leick, 70 See Lambert and Tournay, pp. 128 f., and Attinger.
pp. 73–75, 121 f., and references. For a critical edition of the songs, see Y. Sefati, Love
69 See Cooper, “Enki’s Member,” and especially Songs in Sumerian Literature: Critical Edition of the
W. G. Lambert, “Devotion: The Languages of Religion Dumuzi-Inanna Songs (Ramat-Gan, 1998). Leick, p. 34,
and Love,” in Mindlin, ed., Figurative Language, n. 18, notes the folktale signature of this theme; see
pp. 25–39, on metaphors of fruit in erotic language in also her treatment of bridal songs, pp. 64–89.
Mesopotamian literature.
for the Gardener Enkimdu by promising to better the latter’s gifts one for one. It is less than
likely that this familiar, folktale pattern of conflict between rivals—whether for “marriage”
or patrimony—is operative at the surface of the Enki and Ninhursag narrative, if for no
other reason than that the lacuna in which it should fit (some 10–15 lines, in Attinger’s re-
construction) is probably too small to accommodate it in its full-blown version. At the same
time, however, there is no reason not to think that its presence as part of the broad back-
ground of oral and textual traditions might nonetheless be implicit here. Given the frag-
mentary nature of the text at this point, all but the most conservative interpretations are
tentative at best. Yet if Attinger is correct in assigning to Uttu (not Nintu) the speech in
progress after the lacuna (lines 148 ff.), in which a female voice asks for various fruits to
be brought to her, and also in identifying the Gardener (not Enki) as its addressee,71 Enki’s
subsequent impersonation of the Gardener in D1 (lines 171 f.) could indeed suggest just
such a triangulated folktale pattern. The contrast between the two types—the cultivated
Gardener vs. Enki the rampant marshland suitor, both vying for sexual access to Uttu—
certainly resembles the class opposition on which the rivalry between Enkimdu and
Dumuzi is structured in the Inanna poems. At any rate, Enki’s behavior in C1–3 clearly
marks him as the boorish, uncouth, violent lover—the stalker and rapist, in fact—with
which his bearing and initial comportment in E1 both stand in strong contrast. Here he
now appears at Uttu’s door made up, as it looks (line 168),72 with cosmetics and bearing
an armful of fruit, just like a “refined” suitor. One way or another, thanks to Nintu’s inter-
ventions, Enki has become acculturated. The trickster has been tricked.
Or at least it would seem that way. Enki’s impersonation of the Gardener is itself a
trickster’s act, after all. In this context, the role of cosmetics may just as likely be one of
disguise as of adornment. In the absence of textual evidence, it is impossible to determine
with certainty whether his impersonation belongs to the narrative pattern of rivalry, that is,
whether Enki has in fact just cheated the Gardener out of enjoying what would have been
the metaphorical fruits of his labor. The trick clearly does seem to take some advantage of
Uttu, however, at the same time as it helps Enki negotiate another border-crossing. In re-
sponse to his false identification, Uttu opens the door and leads him across the threshold
into a new and distinctly cultural space. The House of Uttu—or more likely, of Nintu/Nin-
hursag, in which Uttu resides as the youngest daughter—is a site of implicitly ritualized
social behaviors. As we see, access is gained through a choreography of gestures and formal-
ities that initially sublimate sexual desire: role-playing, decoration of the body, formulas
of question and answer (lines 171 f.),73 the offering of gifts, and possibly also the institu-
tion of a shared meal.74 Unlike the Riverbank, the House is the space of institutionalized
(not impulsive) sexual exchange—of proper courtship, not rape.75
71 Attinger, pp. 21, n. 41; 22, n. 46. Garden) of a product whose appearance in this episode
72 Ibid., p. 23, n. 44, with references. speaks to the issue of the acculturation of nature.
73 Note what appears to be a similar ritual in the 75 On the narrative patterns for courtship in Sumerian
broken section of the text (lines 159 f.), where the literature, see Sefati, Love Songs, esp. pp. 102 ff.
Gardener asks Enki his name. Jacobsen, p. 199, n. 22, observes: “The symbolic act
74 Jacobsen’s translation (p. 199) includes beer on that concluded a Sumerian marriage consisted in the
the menu, an item lacking in Attinger. If Jacobsen is bride opening the door to the groom who was bringing
correct, this would suggest not only another Sumerian the specified wedding gifts. It was followed by the
“first”—specifically, date rape—but also, and more im- consummation of the marriage and a wedding banquet
portantly, another instance (along with the fruits of the the next morning.”
Despite uncertainties in establishing and interpreting the passage E1–2, it seems clear
that Enki to some extent violates the cultural conventions he has used in order to gain
entrance to the House—as usual, the trickster confirms the limits by transgressing them.
Once inside, and after his offering of fruits, the god is at first warmly greeted by Uttu; the
text makes no mention of whether or not she becomes aware of his true identity or even
whether this is a significant issue at all. In any case, the courtship quickly turns to seduc-
tion, arousal, and, perhaps, some form of sexual mistreatment or abuse. This would appear
to make the best sense of Uttu’s presumably unpleasant experience in lines 186 f. For after
a somewhat more explicit account of sexual activity than is found in the earlier rape episodes
(C1–3)—specifically, of prolonged foreplay (lines 179–83) leading to formulaic intercourse
(lines 184 f.)—the anticipated, equally formulaic description of accelerated pregnancy and
childbirth “smooth as oil” is conspicuously absent. In this case, sex with Enki leads not to
easy birth but instead to pain: Uttu cries out (line 186) and identifies her thighs, body, and
belly/womb as sites of discomfort. The cause of her pain is not immediately clear. On the
one hand, Attinger draws attention to the play on words in this passage between Sumerian
/a/ (“ah! hélas!”) and /á/ (“bras; force”),76 noting “Enki a certainment abusé d’Uttu.”77 If this
is the case, we would have (yet another) violent scene of rape in which Uttu is victimized—
despite the initial presence of the somewhat more “cultured” gestures of foreplay—though
for some reason with more brutality than her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother
were.78 Enki’s transformation was only an apparent one, then; the suave suitor is the trickster
rapist in disguise.
On the other hand, strong expectations established by the formula employed four times
in the earlier episodes would suggest her pain is related somehow to conception, since it
comes immediately after Enki’s sexual release. In the corresponding passages (line 77 =
103 = 123 = C17), the first day/month of pregnancy follows directly upon consummation
of the act (lines 75 f. = 101 f. = 121 f. = C15 f.) and leads smoothly to pregnancy and birth.
In Uttu’s case, however, we have instead these expressions of pain—“Ah! my thighs! Ah!
my body! Ah! my belly/womb!”—after which Ninhursag takes Enki’s semen from Uttu’s
thighs, and eight plants somehow arise thereafter. The text is unclear whether Ninhursag
herself is also the maternal agent responsible for the plants’ gestation or whether they
somehow spontaneously or intransitively come into being.79 In one sense, her intervention
only complicates interpretation of the passage as a whole by making what should be a binary
relation instead triangular. Given the formula indicating Uttu’s insemination (line 185; cf.
76 = 102 = 122 = C16), are we supposed to assume that she conceives? The fact that Uttu
quickly disappears from the story at this point, and that no explicit statement ever links
76 Attinger, p. 43 ad loc. mon corps! Oh! mon coeur.” Leick, p. 35, n. 20 (with
77 Kramer and Maier, Myths of Enki, p. 28, translate which cf. Bottéro and Kramer, p. 161), remarks: “the ex-
these lines as “Oh, the power [in my] body! Oh, the clamation á is homophonous with a, ‘sperm’, ‘water’.
power inside! Oh, my power on the outside!” but remark [Uttu] may well have received a surfeit of the latter,
(n. 24) that, “If it could be assumed that the á of our which now covers now only her ‘insides’ but also her
text is a variant writing of a, the rendering of the line ‘outside’ and thighs.”
would read: Uttu, the fair lady, says ‘Oh, my loins’, 78 This interpretation might also raise the question
says ‘Oh, my outside! Oh, my inside’, which would of the exact sense of the phrase in line 178, descriptive
indicate that Enki’s semen had made Uttu ill in some of Uttu, which Attinger translates as “battre les mains.”
way.” Compare Jacobsen, p. 200: “Woe, my under- He speculates (p. 43 ad 178) whether it might be a
belly! Woe, my outsides! Woe, my innards!” Bottéro “geste exprimant la joie.”
and Kramer, p. 157, translate: “Oh! mes cuisses! Oh! 79 Attinger, p. 25, n. 49, with commentary ad loc.
her to the eight plants as genetrix to offspring, would suggest she does not;80 and this in turn
might lend apparent strength to the claim that Ninhursag (line 187) removes Enki’s semen
from within Uttu’s body and with it somehow impregnates herself.81 Attinger’s edition and
commentary seem to have definitively laid the first part of that argument to rest, however;
for it is apparently by wiping, not extraction, that his semen is displaced.
This does not rule out transplantation as a relevant procedure, though, and the other half
of the argument in fact has some merit. However one wishes (or dares) to picture what is
meant literally to happen in E2–3, it is at least certain that here, too—in keeping with the
four prior episodes—intercourse (of some kind) is followed by conception (of some sort)
and birth (in the broad sense of coming-to-be). How the three characters stand related to one
another in the present episode is the issue on which much turns. This is certainly a different
kind of triangulation from that of Enki, Uttu, and the Gardener in the earlier episode (E1).
Scholars throughout the history of the interpretation of Enki and Ninhursag have felt com-
fortable linking Enki’s later eating of the eight plants (F1) to the Greek myth of cannibal
Kronos in the Hesiodic version;82 it is odd that none seems to have looked in the same
general direction for comparanda to help make better sense of the sexual triangle Enki/Uttu/
Ninhursag. For at least in its overall structure, the narrative in which birth results from a
single male’s sexual contact with two different females—one young, one old; one virgin, one
sexually experienced; and both related across three or four matrilineal generations—bears
striking resemblance to the Greek myth of the birth of Erikhthonios, the Athenian dynastic
founder who enjoys the rare privilege of descent from a trio rather than a simple pair of
parents.83 The similarity is especially notable given the fact that in both cases the ménage
à trois is accomplished by means of the displacement of semen. In the Greek myth, too, a
clumsy rape leads to strange bedfellows. In the course of struggling (Gk. eris) in a botched
attempt to force himself upon the constitutionally asexual Athene, the god Hephaistos ex-
citedly ejaculates on her thigh. She wipes off the semen with a piece of wool (erion) and
throws it on the ground (khthôn), thereby impregnating the ancient earth goddess Gaia—
her great-grandmother—who then gives birth to the paronomastic Erikhthonios: the Struggle-
Wool-Earth Child. One of the numerous issues that motivate the Athenian myth is the need
to claim descent from Athene without thereby compromising her famous virginity. The
mechanism of premature ejaculation effects precisely that; while the wiping of semen from
her virgin thighs and its transfer to another female better able to bear issue in turn enlist
the participation of the Earth Mother herself in the acts of conception, gestation, and birth.
In all this, Athene gets to have it both ways, so to speak, as both the mother of the Athenian
dynastic line and also, perpetually, a virgin.
80 For Leick, p. 35, Uttu does not conceive; this is p. 157; and Evers, Myth and Narrative, p. 37. It is hard
despite Leick’s claim (p. 280, n. 20) that Uttu is indeed to see how the text (at least in Attinger’s recension)
filled to overflow with Enki’s sperm. supports his view.
81 Attinger, p. 25, n. 48. On the differing view, 82 See Lambert and Tournay, p. 130; Kirk, pp. 95 f.;
see Alster, p. 18, where the argument seems self- Alster 1978; and Cooper, “Enki’s Member,” pp. 20 f.
contradictory: “[Ninhursag] succeeds in picking up 83 For the text, see Apollodorus Library 3.14.6
the semen from Uttu’s thighs, and, apparently, spreads (translation in R. Hard, Apollodorus: The Library of
it on the ground. . . . This is the reversed order from Greek Mythology [London, 1997], pp. 132 f.), along
what happened when [i.e., B2] originally the mother with the elegant analysis of the myth by J. Peradotto,
goddess picked his semen up from the water. This time “Oepidus and Erichthonius: Some Observations on
it is he who pours it into someone, and she who takes Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic Order,” Arethusa 10
it out.” See also Jacobsen, p. 184; Bottéro and Kramer, (1977): 245–58.
Knowing less about what specifically motivates the scene in E2—and perhaps even less
than that about what the text of Enki and Ninhursag might actually say at this point84—I can
only suggest that a similar narrative pattern might structure this episode. Superficially, of
course, the similarities are striking: (unsuccessful) rape attempt, ejaculation, thigh, wiping
of semen, autochthonous birth. In the case of Uttu, as most certainly in that of Athene,
the reference to ejaculate on the thigh may be intended as index and confirmation of her
virginity—or at least, since Enki seems indeed to inseminate her (line 186), of the fact that
Uttu is an inappropriate mate, possibly because of her age.85 This might also account for
the pain she experiences, whether during or as a result of intercourse. It is always risky to
press for more consistency than the story is able (or even willing) to provide. Questions
arise here that may be simply out of place, however critical they might seem for an inter-
pretation of the myth. Does Uttu’s sexual encounter with Enki also—as does Athene’s with
Hephaistos—culminate in extravaginal ejaculation? Is this why there is semen on her thighs
for Ninhursag to wipe off? Or is their intercourse “normal,” to borrow Alster’s term?86 In
that case, is the semen on her thighs due to spillage after Enki has withdrawn his penis or—
as Leick suggests—to an overflow of the vast quantity of semen with which he has filled
her?87 As we have seen, what can be called the formulaic valence of this episode strongly
suggests full insemination. Further, the experiences of her mother, her grandmother, her
great-grandmother, and so on up the generational line all lend their weight to the expectation
that Uttu is also impregnated, and this would seem to relate her pain more to problems
with conception or delivery than what is generally meant by “sexual abuse.” This in turn
stands in stark contrast with the preternaturally rapid pregnancy and childbirth “smooth as
oil” that characterized the earlier episodes.
In a sense, of course, these questions clearly push speculation beyond what the text itself
supports and (more importantly, perhaps) beyond what the story might really aim to achieve
in this passage. Myths have their own logic, and it may not be advisable to press too hard
for consistency here. The question of where the myth aims may in fact raise the more im-
portant issue. After all, one of the many distinguishing marks of mythic as opposed to literary
narratives is that myths evince relatively less concern over harmonizing (inner) motive and
(external) function. Exactly why a character in a myth does such-and-such a thing, for in-
stance, is most of the time considerably less important than the role the action itself plays
in advancing the story towards its predetermined conclusion, and myths are often all too
willing to sacrifice narrative consistency in the interest of promoting the overriding function
of a character or scene. Put another way, it is literary narratives in general that tend to invest
a great deal of energy in concealing the fact that, like all narratives, they are always
heavily end-determined. In terms of the final aim of Enki and Ninhursag, it might just be
the case that Uttu—like Athene and ultimately the story, too, for that matter—somehow
gets to have it both ways here. Ninhursag’s intervention to wipe the semen from her great-
granddaughter’s thighs may well suffice as a gesture meant to signal a transition, to effect
a kind of transfer of agency via the displacement of Enki’s sperm from a younger to an
84 Attinger, p. 25, n. 48 and p. 43 ad loc. young, they do not know kissing. . . .” (Black, Litera-
85 Compare Ninlil’s initial response to Enlil’s sexual ture, p. 103).
overture in Enlil and Ninlil (lines 31–34): “My vagina 86 Alster, p. 17.
is too small, it does not know pregnancy. My lips are 87 Leick, p. 280, n. 20.
older female better suited to carry the sexual issue to term. This mechanism neatly allows
Uttu to be both isolated from the birth of the eight plants—as never “really” pregnant if
not quite sexually “intact” any longer—and at the same time also still somehow parentally
involved with them.
(F1–F2) Riverbank
Yet another recursive loop now seems to return us to the point at which Enki’s sexual
adventures with his offspring first began (C1–4), that is, to the liminal Riverbank. As in those
prior episodes, the place itself not only frames but also helps to identify and corroborate the
god’s role as a predatory trickster by raising formulaic expectations as to his behavior. In
what might well be a parody of those earlier scenes of stalking and rape,88 Enki is in the
Marsh again (line 196 = 90 = 110 = C4) and back on the prowl, this time spying not on his
daughters and granddaughters, but instead on the eight plants, with Isimud once more at
hand to facilitate his will. Enki’s questions to his sukkal are now different, however. Rather
than asking for affirmation of his sexual desire—“Should I not embrace that young and
lovely woman?” (lines 92 f. = 112 f. = C7 f.)—his request is now (line 199) instead to
know each plant’s name. The theme of naming of course assumes increasingly prominent
emphasis in the course of the narrative and in a sense represents the point at which the
story—from at least as early as E3, if not earlier89—means to culminate. At least superfi-
cially, sex now seems to have been displaced by hunger for knowledge.
While parody is in perfect keeping with Enki’s role here, formulaic repetition once again
calls for closer comparison between this and the earlier scenes. Where the episodes differ
conspicuously is in the fact that eating now replaces rape of offspring. Most scholars have
regarded the consumption of the plants as both cannibalistic, on lines allegedly very similar
to the Hesiodic myth of Kronos’s eating of the first generation of the Olympian gods, and
also as figurative of Enki’s incest with Ninsar and the others. The Greek myth might well
corroborate the theme of cannibalism, but incest as such is not especially at issue there,
since no sexual relations between Kronos and his children are involved.90 There the sup-
pression of offspring instead unfolds within the specific context of intergenerational con-
flict and the broader context of antagonism between male and female over what we might
be tempted to call reproductive rights. Ingestion of the children is a tactic—ultimately un-
successful—resulting in a kind of uterization of Kronos, the creation of a male “womb”
through which Kronos temporarily gains control over the destabilizing force of female re-
productive powers, only to lose it after swallowing the abortifacient stone that is Zeus.91
In Enki’s case, however, sexual politics of this kind does not seem to be the central issue
at play. To all appearances, the motives of these two gods are quite different—or Enki’s at
least somewhat more complex. If that of Kronos is to suppress the birth of offspring, Enki’s
88 See Alster, p. 18. For interpretation, see C. Penglase, Greek Myths and
89 Note that the tag-line in each of the earlier Mesopotamia (London, 1994).
formulas anticipates the theme of naming by including 91 In the related Hittite myth of Kumarbi and
the name of each of his offspring (line 93 = 113 = C8): Teshshup, the motive is intergenerational conflict, with
“Should I not embrace that love fiNAMEfl?” Kumarbi devouring the penis of his father Alalush.
90 For the text, see Hesiod Theogony, lines 156– For the text of the myth, see H. Güterbock, “Hittite
206, 453–500 (translation in A. Athanassakis, Hesiod: Mythology,” Kramer, ed., Mythologies, pp. 155–65.
Theogony, Works and Days, Shield [Baltimore, 1983]).
stated purpose, on the contrary, is to “determine the destiny” of the plants (lines 198,
217).92 The fact that naming and the fixing of destinies is the god’s role elsewhere in far
more solemn contexts in Sumerian tradition is of course insufficient in itself to decide
whether the use of the formula in F1 is meant to be taken as parody and therefore dis-
missed.93 Before discounting its seriousness in the context of the plants, however, it is worth
recalling two things. First—and here we return to the issue of the “end-determination” of
all narratives—it should be noted that the present episode also has a genuinely sober aim,
namely, to account for the birth, identification, and installation of an octet of (albeit minor)
deities.94 If only in this sense, the concluding episodes (E3–H3) in the narrative are rigor-
ously etiological. In terms of overriding narrative function, Enki eats the plants precisely
in order that they later somehow be born as deities—and, moreover, as deities with fixed
names, familial ties, and determinate spheres of influence. The myth therefore has authentic
cosmological import, inasmuch as it recounts the origin of a network of significant asso-
ciations and implied influences presumably still operative in the world, linking gods with
certain plants and both with parts of the body and the maladies specific to those parts. It
must be further noted that the voice that narrates the story also corroborates both Enki’s
motive in eating the plants and also the success of his aim (line 217). “Fixing their destiny”
and “knowing their hearts” are not simply pretexts for gluttony or cannibalism; the god does
what he says and actually comes to know the plants intimately. While Enki is most certainly
playing the trickster here, too, his role should by no means be dismissed as capricious.
The second point is somewhat broader and speaks to the apparently universal connection
traditional cultures make between eating or tasting and the acquisition of knowledge.95 If
“knowing their hearts” and “fixing their destinies” is Enki’s professed aim (line 217), his
method of doing so most certainly rests on a broad cross-cultural basis. For most if not all
cultures, eating is a fundamental mode of making what is alien familiar, of coming to know
it fully and thus also even assimilating its stuff and nature to one’s own, in the familiar
sense of “becoming what we eat.” Through eating, Enki becomes aware—as do we, too, for
that matter, as the beneficiaries of his knowledge—of the character and specific properties
of each of these eight plants; and it is our informed ability to use them properly in medicine
and magic, after all, that is in all likelihood among the most pragmatic points of the story.
Moreover, the narrative of the trickster—deity or culture-hero—who (stupidly or otherwise)
risks health and even death in the process of determining the medicinal powers of plants
92 Lambert and Tournay, p. 129, n. 4, prefer to render a familial, cultic link between Ur and the historical
the phrase as “destroy their destiny,” as do Bottéro and Dilmun/Bahrain.
Kramer, p. 157, who translate: “Ainsi Enki connut-t-il 95 On the theme in general, see, for example,
la nature de ces plantes/et en arrêta-t-il le destin!” S. Thompson, Motif-index of Folk-Literature: A Clas-
93 See Enki and the World Order (Black et al., eds., sification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads,
Literature, pp. 215–24). Alster, p. 18, finds the reference Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fa-
to Enki’s determination of their destiny “ironic.” Bottéro bliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends (Bloomington,
and Kramer, p. 157, likewise see a contrast: “Enki veut Indiana, 1955–58), types D551 ff., D1357.1, and
les leur assigner en ‘arrêtant leur destin.’ Mais, aupa- D1358.1. Note also the traditional Sumerian proverb
ravant, il entend les goûter.” They seem alone in sug- cited by Alster (Proverbs, p. 11 [= SP 1.26]): “(Only)
gesting (ibid.) that Enki only samples the plants (“et de after you have eaten the bread you have made(?) is its
lui en tailler un morceau, qu’il goûta”) instead of eating nature decided.” While this may mean little more than
each entirely. “the proof ’s in the pudding,” its linking of eating with
94 For Alster, “Dilmun, Bahrain,” the myth’s pri- acquisition of knowledge about the nature of a thing is
mary aim is in fact genealogical, namely, to establish nonetheless intriguing.
and herbs is also a fairly widespread one, attested in myths as far-flung as those of ancient
China and Celtic Ireland. According to the second-century b.c.e. text Huai Nan Zi, the
Chinese god Shen Nong “tasted the flavor of every single plant . . . and himself suffered
poisoning seventy times in one day.” He later imparts his knowledge of their properties to
human beings, who beforehand had “suffered much due to illness and poisoning.”96 In
Celtic tradition, much the same basic story is taken up into a far more complicated Old
Irish narrative of intergenerational rivalry.97 Here the physician god Dian Cécht, jealous
of the medical accomplishments of his own son Miach, murders the young man. From
Miach’s grave then grow 365 magical herbs with restorative qualities, “corresponding to
the number of his joints and sinews.” In this case, the death of the culture-hero responsible
for identifying herbs is displaced from father to son.98 The link between medicinal plants
and specific parts of the body in the Celtic myth will bear more scrutiny when I examine the
similar link in Enki and Ninhursag.
If Enki’s avowed purpose in eating the plants has a certain mythic legitimacy, then, how
does it relate to the issues of incest and punishment, which enjoy central place in most in-
terpretations of Enki and Ninhursag? It should be remembered that in one sense the status
of incest as a problem is never raised expressly in the narrative itself. However one
wishes to understand his illness as retribution, or even to associate it (as Kramer famously
does) with the violation of the prohibition on eating in the Genesis account, 99 the fact
remains that Enki’s sickness is only indirectly related to his sexual adventurism in C1–3/
E1–2. If he is punished for incest, justification for that punishment is transposed from a
sexual to a culinary code. Enki incurs Ninhursag’s immediate anger not for rape or serial
rape or even incestuous serial rape but instead for cannibalism.100 In one sense, of course,
it can be claimed that cannibalism is indeed analogous with incest on the ground that it is
implicitly incestuous by definition, at least insofar as both eating one’s own (sc., species)
and having sex with one’s own (sc., kin) constitute prohibitively close relationships with
others.101 The cycle of fruitless, incestuous sex that characterized episodes C1–3 and
96 See A. Birrell, Chinese Mythology: An Introduc- tive evidence suggest that this is a case of “poisoning,”
tion (Baltimore, 1993), pp. 47–50, for this and other namely, that Enki becomes sick precisely because of
sources for Shen Nong. what he has eaten, just as the Chinese Shen Nong does
97 The myth is preserved in the Cath Maige Tuired repeatedly. These etiologies are not mutually exclusive,
(Battle of Mag Tuired), the Old Irish narrative detail- of course, and both are certainly also compatible with
ing the conquest of Ireland by the divine race known the third alternative, namely, that Enki’s condition is a
as the Tuatha dé Danann; for the text, see E. Gray, ed., kind of morning sickness due to pregnancy.
Cath Maige Tuired: The Second Battle of Mag Tuired 99 Kramer, Mythologies, pp. 102 f.
([Dublin], 1982). On the theme relating the god’s death 100 Rosengarten, pp. 29 f., argues that Enki is pun-
to the appearance of herbs, see also M. Detienne’s ished not for cannibalism per se but instead for having
analysis (The Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek usurped from Ninhursag/Nintu the prerogative of “fixing
Mythology [Princeton, 1972]) of the Greek myth of their destiny”; Bottéro and Kramer, pp. 162 f., concur.
Adonis. Leick, p. 40, remarks: “I do not believe that incest or
98 A similar kind of displacement occurs in the case rape has anything to do with her anger; it is more likely
of Enki, whose suffering after eating the plants appears his untoward assumption of responsibility regarding
overdetermined. On the one hand, it is expressly due the plants—[Ninhursag] (remember that she represents
to Ninhursag’s angry withdrawal of the “look of life” Earth) considers them as belonging to her domain.”
in F2 that he falls ill; she curses him and both literally 101 On the homology between eating and sex, see
and figuratively removes herself from his presence. Here E. Leach, “Anthropological Aspects of Language:
responsibility for his immanent death is displaced onto Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse,” in P. Maranda,
Ninhursag. as in the Old Irish tale in which Dian Cécht ed., Mythology: Selected Readings (Harmondsworth,
is the agent for Miach’s death. On the other hand, both 1963), pp. 39–67.
the events leading up to her curse and also the compara-
trapped Enki, his story, and possibly also the movement of time itself in a vicious loop
seems mirrored here in Enki’s eating of the plants. Formulaic echoes in the stalking scene
in F1 may well verge on parody, but the underlying issue is a serious one. The transposition
from sexual to culinary codes should not conceal the fundamental identity between incest and
the devouring of young. These acts are more than simply indices of excess, however, as
Kirk argues,102 but are instead genuinely homologous, inasmuch as cannibalism of children
and incest both amount to radical denials of progeny. Incest “devours” the next generation,
just as Enki’s eating of the plants brings their productive life to an end before they are able
in turn to produce more offspring.
Why a transposition from a sexual to a culinary code takes place at all has much to do
with the end toward which the story aims—an end that requires Enki’s eating of the plants
in order to induce a kind of male pregnancy. Here again the story’s end-determination is
apparent: for Enki to give birth (somehow) to eight minor deities, he must (somehow)
become pregnant; in order to this to happen, he must eat the plants. The analogy here with
the Greek myth of Kronos—along with its older, Near Eastern templates, such as the Hittite
myth of Kumarbi—is a striking one, as commentators have noted.103 The discomfort Enki
subsequently suffers (H1) is thus best understood in two senses. On the one hand, it is a
sequence of individual pains in specifically localized bodily sites (lines 251–68)—head,
hair, nose, mouth, throat, arm, ribs, sides—for which plants (and corresponding gods) will
be produced to effect remedies. At the same time, the suffering also collectively amounts to
a kind of labor-pain, presumably just as in the case of Uttu in E2. The pain they both ex-
perience—by contrast with the formulaically “smooth birth” of the previous generations
of females—draws attention to the markedly inappropriate or abnormal nature of their
conditions. In Uttu’s case, the fragmentary nature of the text makes this issue a speculative
one. Her pain, as I suggested, may well serve as index of the fact that she is simply too
young for intercourse and/or childbirth. In Enki’s case, the unnaturalness of male preg-
nancy is reason enough for his “sickness.” That Ninhursag’s later intervention (H1–2)
results somehow in the (re)birth from Enki of the eight plants he earlier swallowed, now
in a different form, further strengthens the argument for the uterization of the male god,
just as occurs in the Greek and (for very different reasons) the Hittite myths.
However true that might be, the narrative’s real emphasis seems to lie elsewhere, less with
the issue of incest as such—on which most commentators focus104—than with the trans-
formation of the plants into gods, linked to one another and to specific parts of the body
etymologically and therefore, one assumes, also in terms of their essential characters and
powers. The passage (F1) in which Enki determines their destiny by ingesting them thus
makes sense best as the first stage in a process that culminates in their second birth and
apotheosis in H1–2. In both cases, everything centers on the act of naming. This is pre-
sumably because, for Sumerian as for all traditional communities, “knowing the heart”
and “fixing the destiny” are correlative acts in which the nature of a thing is first discovered,
then expressed, and thereby permanently established in the form of the name that embodies
102 Kirk, p. 96. ently acknowledging the incest, dismisses what he con-
103 Ibid., pp. 95 f.; Penglase, Greek Myths, pp. siders the overly “moral” judgment of Kirk and other
185 ff. commentators. See also Leick, quoted above (n. 100).
104 Evers, Myth and Narrative, p. 40, while appar-
its essence. In Enki and Ninhursag, this initially takes place in Isimud’s naming of the plants
as Enki eats each one on the Riverbank, and by which he swallows, incorporates, and
therefore comes to know them and “determine their destinies.” The second stage, far more
mysterious, takes the form of his (somehow) giving birth to them as deities who, the story
seems to claim, both embody and guarantee what properties the plants themselves have
within a magico-medical pharmacopoeia.105 Just as in the transformation of Dilmun in A1–4,
the narrative here, too, celebrates a kind of alchemy—though this time pursuant not to
irrigation/fertilization but instead to acts of birth, ingestion, and rebirth. This final meta-
morphosis, however, requires a change of venue from Riverbank to Temple and then from
Temple to what the myth considers the source of all life.
(G1–G3) Temple
Cursed by Ninhursag, and apparently sick unto death from his meal, Enki the trickster sits
or lies immobile, as do the other gods, too, the Annunaki, who all sit in the dust (line 220).
The goddess herself has withdrawn somewhere, with consequences presumably more wide-
spread than the immediate effect her curse has on Enki alone. The threat is in fact cosmo-
logical—no less than the undoing of everything that has been accomplished so far.106 With
Enki’s death comes the recession of the transformative sweet waters that first gave life to
the City (A3– 4), fertilized the Marsh (B1–2), and later produced the Garden (D1) of fruits
and vegetables. Entire webs of interrelationships and associations—economic production,
trade, institutions founded on the exchange of goods, along with all else that results from
these activities—would cease to exist or would again fall into the kind of primal latency
with which the narrative at first opened. With his death, the known world lapses into the
merely virtual, dormant state of Dilmun prior to its initial irrigation by Enki (A1)—a dream-
like litany of vivid negations. The narrative is therefore again at a critical impasse, in a
way quite similar to the one represented by the vicious cycle of rape scenes in C1–3, and
there is once more need for some kind of intervention. The movement this time, too, comes
in double form, through a shift in place—from Riverbank to Temple—and also in agent of
action—from Enki to the new character of the fox. This latter shift, moreover, in turn brings
yet another one, at the level of narrative genre—from “sacred myth” to folktale.
The new space that opens is that of the Temple, presumably Enlil’s at Nippur.107 This is
a place of resolution. It serves at one and the same time as the locus of the authority in-
vested in the higher gods, the site for final adjudication of conflicts between them, and also
the point of (physical and ritual) contact between the divine and human worlds. Despite
the absence of human beings in the narrative, except by implication in A2 and A4, it is of
course, after all, the human world that stands to be most radically affected by the events in the
story. The tale of the trickster’s imminent death bodes the death of all culture. The demise
105 See C. Gadd’s review of Kramer (Journal of the comedy as the key to the interpretation of the story,
American Oriental Society 66 [1956]: 266–67). Kramer noting (p. 39) “We do not get the impression of great
(for example, Kramer and Maier, Myths, p. 29) consis- religious intensity. A work such as Enki and Ninhur-
tently refers to the octet as “healing deities”; see also saga therefore makes no sense as ‘myth’ or a deeply
Bottéro and Kramer, pp. 162 f. significant theological treatise.”
106 Leick, p. 40, still acknowledges the serious- 107 Lambert and Tournay, p. 130, n. 4.
ness of this episode, despite her emphasis on absurd
of this world in turn spells disaster for the gods’ world, too, since both are intimately inter-
twined. Built at the intersection of both worlds, the Temple offers the only venue in which
mediation can occur between them—both now threatened by the loss of the very fluid of
life—and an absent deity.
The long passage (lines 229– 44) describing the fox’s successful attempt to bring Nin-
hursag back to the Temple is unfortunately far too broken to support any idea of exactly how
the feat is performed. That Fox now emerges as the agent of resolution, however, thereby re-
placing Enki as the principal mover of the action, is worth notice. In one sense, given both
the traditional association of foxes with cunning and of tricksters with cunning animals,108
Fox’s appearance in the narrative at this point might best be understood in terms of a kind
of doubling. That is, at the level of function, the animal is more than likely a figure for Enki
himself, representing the trickster’s cleverness by contrast with the reckless stupidity that
has brought him into the present situation. The moral and intellectual division I noted before
within the trickster’s own character, resulting in his ambiguity and ambivalence as a figure,
can just as easily take the form of a splitting of the trickster into two separate individuals,
as with Prometheus and Epimetheus in the Greek tradition, for example. Moreover, while
material evidence exists suggesting a cultic association between foxes and Enlil,109 not
Enki, at least one element in the present narrative in fact strongly suggests a link with Enki
instead, namely, the use of similar or perhaps identical tactics. For with clear tones of parody
(lines 226–28), Fox apparently also “goes a-courtin’ ” in his attempt to win Ninhursag back,
smoothing or oiling his fur and applying make-up to his eyes. The implication here is that
he deploys a ruse much like the one used by Enki (line 168) to gain entrance to the House of
Uttu (E1). It would be interesting to know whether this case, too, involved impersonation.
The introduction of a folktale element in the character of Fox likewise mirrors a similar,
earlier shift in the narrative from A4 and B1, where the crude burlesque of Enki’s romp in
the Marsh replaced his more august role as “creator”—or at least primal “animator”—of
Dilmun. The nearly complete loss of the present passage makes even speculation difficult.
What is clear is that in the broadest terms, the discernible narrative motifs are apparently
all familiar ones and serve to confirm the folkloric signature of this episode:110 (1) Fox offers
help on condition of recompense (lines 221 f.). (2) The great god Enlil, unable himself to
remedy the problem despite his status as highest power and authority, agrees to bestow on the
lowly animal a reward that is both material—the tree kishkanu, whatever its significance
may be111—and also social, in the form of a promise to celebrate Fox’s name (lines 223–25).
(3) Fox then passes through—or at least subsequently narrates—a series of unsuccessful
attempts (lines 233–36), visits to one god after another, before somehow finally managing
to return Ninhursag to the Temple, where the Annunaki take her and strip her of clothes in
preparation for the cure.
108 On the fox in Sumerian literature, see B. Alster, (Potomac, Maryland, 1988), pp. 19–25.
“On the Earliest Sumerian Literary Tradition,” Journal 111 Attinger, p. 44 ad loc., notes the association of
of Cuneiform Studies 28 (1976): 125, n. 52, and es- the kishkanu with Enki and Eridu and remarks that
pecially Proverbs, pp. 56–60 (= SP 1.58–70). it “joue un rôle important dans les rituals.” This link
109 Lambert and Tournay, p. 130, n. 5. Rosengarten, would in itself seem to strengthen the claim made
pp. 30 f., refers to the animal as “messager d’En-lil.” earlier linking Enki with Fox. Note also that Enlil
110 On the motif, see M. Cohen, ed. and trans., promises to plant such a tree in his own city of Nippur.
The Canonical Lamentations of Ancient Mesopotamia
(H1–H3) Vulva
Ninhursag’s nakedness marks the culmination of a dominant theme. The narrative has
unfolded thus far within a succession of significant spaces that have served as far more
than just static backdrops for the action. Each space instead tends to embody a specific char-
acter of its own and therefore also to define certain predictable narrative possibilities. This
was especially clear, as we saw, in the case of Marsh and Riverbank, both spaces marked as
potentially dangerous, sexually charged, the sites of abduction and rape and, in general, the
often violent confrontation between raw nature and the cultured world. Stalkers lurk in the
Marsh and lie there in wait to violate young females who venture too close to the Bank that
divides the Marsh from the dry and habitable land of their mothers. The Garden, too, is a
place marked by the meeting of nature and culture, but in this case their conjunction is trans-
formative: raw natural processes (Enki’s sweet waters) are cultivated to produce vegetables
and fruits that then become the stuff of social (and especially sexual) exchange. Cucumbers,
apples (or apricots?), and grapes have value both as food and also, more importantly, as
tokens in a system in which they signify the beloved’s desirability and her lover’s own
sublimated desire.112 In turn, the House is a cultural artifact both in its physical structure
and especially as an ediface of social rituals, a space in which is enacted a fixed choreography
of question and answer, adit and egress across a threshold, thereby ideally bringing about the
metamorphosis of stranger into suitor and suitor into acceptable mate. Unlike the River-
bank, where all sex is predation, the House is the site of the domestication of sexual desire
into socially sanctioned “marriage.” With its buildings, broad avenues, and busy quays, and
with its network of links to other cities throughout the known world, the City is the very
paradigm of cultural space. Its counterpart is the Temple, positioned at the center of each
City and thereby connected horizontally, as it were, to all communities and temples—and
also the site of the vertical link between human and divine. In each one of these spaces, the
trickster Enki makes and leaves his mark, whether for good or evil, to transform creatively
(City, Marsh, Garden) or else through violation (Riverbank, House). In the latter case,
moreover, the violated conventions are thereby implicitly confirmed, in keeping with the
trickster’s function of establishing limits by transgressing them.
The final space through which the story passes lies within the body itself; it is the central
space, in fact, at least in terms of the production of life, namely, the matrix that is the Vulva
of Ninhursag, stripped naked by the Annunaki in the Temple of Enlil. That this last site is a
bodily one should come as no real surprise. To a certain degree, the narrative has reflected
all along what can be called an implicit anthropomorphization of space. This is especially the
case within the framework of a sexual code in which, as we saw, irrigation and intercourse
are interchangeable terms. Enki’s watering of Dilmun (A3) is, after all, only a somewhat
less explicit instance of his overtly sexual acts in the Marsh (B1) and elsewhere. The fact
is that corresponding to each of these objective, external spaces in the narrative has been
the female bodily space—vagina and womb—that receives Enki’s male fluids, whether on
each occasion the act of reception is expressly or only metaphorically sexual. The cisterns
of Dilmun, the furrows of the Marsh, the Garden as locus amoenus, the doorway of the
112 On the allegedly aphrodisiac qualities of fruit,

see Leick, p. 34, with references, and n. 69 above.
House, as borders encountered and crossed in intercourse, have all been implicitly gendered
and sexualized. Enki’s movements throughout the narrative, whether as sweet rising waters
or violent sexual predation, have in each and every case traversed and marked the space of
the female body, transforming it into City and Marshland, Mother and Garden.
In addition to being the site of action, the body has also been an affective site measured
in terms of pleasure and suffering. The repeated formula (B2, C1, C2, C3) describing birth
as “smooth as oil” finds its counterpart first in Uttu’s lament (E2) over places on her body
that cause her pain—“Ah! my thighs! Ah! my belly/womb!”—after her experience with Enki.
These places in turn prefigure the pain that Enki himself now suffers (H1) in eight bodily
sites; each scene echoes the other, if only by contrast with the “smooth” births, and they
do so, I suggested, as indices of abnormal or marked states. What links both passages even
more strongly together is the fact that in each case pain issues in an act of naming. Just as
Uttu cries out to identify the places where her body hurts, so too does Enki (H1) localize his
pain by specifically naming his head, hair, nose, mouth, throat, arm, ribs, and sides. Names
have, of course, been an integral part of the narrative all along, at the very least insofar as one
of its aims has been to account for the existence of the deities Ninsar, Ninkurra, Ninimma,
and Uttu, whose births and names it recounts. More significantly, it is difficult not to see
a foreshadowing of the penultimate scene (H1), in which Enki names his pain in answer to
Ninhursag’s questions, in the earlier scene (F1) in which Isimud responds to Enki’s ques-
tions by naming each plant for the trickster to eat and “fix” in terms of its “destiny.” The act
of naming in fact marks the goal and culmination of the narrative. In terms of that goal,
the eight plants, eight parts, eight pains, eight names, eight deities are most certainly meant
to correspond directly with one another, thereby underwriting the story’s implicit claim—
a major tenet of all myths, if least acceptable to modern sensibilities113—that etiology is in
some fundamental sense identical with etymology.
In this sense, it is perhaps only fitting that interpretation of the setting of this final episode
should hinge on a preposition. After Ninhursag has been stripped by the Annunaki, the
moribund Enki is placed (line 250) “before” or “by” or else “within” her vulva. Commen-
tators part company here in terms of which preposition is correct and also how to interpret
its meaning; all tend to agree that the passage is implicitly something of a locus desperatus.
Despite acknowledging that the phrase “actually . . . seems to say ‘in her vulva’,” Kramer
opts for “by (?) her vulva” (6) in his translation of the text;114 in his study of Enki pub-
lished more than four decades later, this has become “in her vulva,” though the translation
“sur son giron” in Bottéro and Kramer returns us outside the body.115 Some twenty-five years
after Kramer’s first edition, Rosengarten no doubt unintentionally makes the scene resemble
the Pietà in having Ninhursag “prend sur ses genoux le dieu malade,”116 but in any case once
again appears to move the text (and Enki, too) farther from the goddess. Kirk, on the other
hand, squarely places Enki inside Ninhursag’s body,117 as does Alster, who translates the
113 See, for example, E. Cassirer, Language and 115 Compare Bottéro and Kramer, p. 158, “sur
Myth (New York, 1953), pp. 44–62. son giron,” with their translation “en son giron” in the
114 Kramer, p. 30; Gadd’s review (see n. 105 formulaic references to sexual penetration (at lines 75,
above) of that edition in the following year seconds 101, 122, and 185).
that rendition by having Ninhursag lay Enki “beside 116 Rosengarten, p. 31.
her” (p. 266). 117 Kirk, pp. 92, 97.
One Line Short
phrase first as “in her womb” and later “in her vulva”;118 Evers, following Kirk, concurs.119
Attinger, finally, seems at first to return to Kramer’s initial position by rendering the
preposition as “devant,” but also has explicit reservations. In his commentary (line 45 ad
loc.) he admits that “dans” may well be correct after all, glossing that choice as an “ex-
pression raccourcie pour: ‘(. . .) fit asseoir Enki (et fit pénétrer le pénis) dans sa vulve’.”120
Textual and social misgivings aside, there would seem to be no good reason not to take
the text at face value, so to speak, and place Enki’s entire body directly inside the female
body of Ninhursag. Attinger’s apparent hesitation to do so completely, his understanding of
the preposition as a kind of shorthand for “normal” sexual intercourse—“(et fit pénétrer le
pénis)”—is possibly a response to the literal crudeness of the scene. There is no denying
that myths can be unflinchingly direct, however, and if precedent is needed for one gravid
deity within the body of another, one need look no farther than the Hesiodic myth of Zeus’s
incorporation of his Titan aunt Metis.121 The myth itself, of course, prefers to discount the
fact that it is Metis who gives birth after Zeus swallows her, since its primary motive is in-
stead to represent Athene’s birth as an instance of triumphant male parthenogenesis rather
than just some kind of sleight of hand. At any rate, here, too, we have an instance of birth
from the body of one character being as it were redirected and rechanneled through the body
of another (of opposite gender) before the offspring actually enters the world. That in both
cases the rechanneling also involves a switch in the gender of the enclosing body—female
(Metis) to male (Zeus) in Greek, male (Enki) to female (Ninhursag) in Sumerian—makes
for an interesting symmetry between these two stories.
Zeus’s ingestion of Metis, like Kronos’s of his children, is a deliberate tactic that aims—in
this case, more successfully—at subordinating female to male power. This does not seem to
be matched (in reversed form) in the Enki and Ninhursag narrative. A kind of subordinated
birthing is certainly also at play here, but there is not as much overt emphasis either on the
issue of male/female antagonism, as in the Greek tale, or on intergenerational rivalry, which
fuels the conflict in the Hittite myth of Kumarbi and Teshshup. Instead, Enki’s entry into
Ninhursag appears to result in their collaborative effort in giving birth to the eight deities.
Just as with the origin of the plants in E3, the specific manner in which the octet of gods
is actually born in H2 (line 253) remains somewhat unclear.122 Attinger (line 46 ad loc.) notes
that they either come into existence passively—“X is born”—or else, as he prefers in his
translation, through a process by which Ninhursag somehow causes them to be born from
within [Enki from within] herself without herself really giving birth to them—this expressed
through a syntax that “permettrait d’insister sur le caractère non-naturel de la naissance.”
Attinger’s motivation in stressing the abnormal method of their birth is to insulate Nin-
hursag from a charge of incest stemming from the fact that the last child born in the
present sequence—Ensaag, “Lord of Dilmun”—is elsewhere in the tradition identified as
Ninhursag’s spouse.123 Despite the location of the scene within the space of her Vulva,
118 Without further explanation, Alster, p. 59, re- 122 Attinger, p. 24, n. 49 and p. 43 ad loc. Bottéro
marks that the placement of Enki is “probably a hint at and Kramer, pp. 158 f., are more certain, translating
the ritualistic birth of a king.” the formulaic line as “je [sc., Ninhursag] crée pour toi
119 Evers, Myth and Narrative, p. 37. [Enki] la déesse. . . .”
120 Attinger, p. 31 with n. 54. 123 Attinger, p. 46 ad loc., translates: “«Elle (Nin-
121 Hesiod Theogony, lines 886–926 (= Atha- hursaga) fit naître (X) de là (de sa vulve).» . . . Nin-
nassakis, Hesiod, pp. 35 f.). hursaga n’est pas à proprement parler la mère (au sens
Ninhursag is thus, in some sense, less engaged with the actual birth of the eight gods than
if she were their mother “au sense biologique du terme.” What this reservation apparently
affirms is Enki’s own closer involvement as genuine birth parent. If the mode of birthing
exhibits a “caractère non-naturel,” it is precisely because the offspring that seem to issue
from Ninhursag in fact instead really issue from the pregnant male god Enki lodged inside
the vulva of the female goddess. Painfully gravid with the eight plants he has eaten, Enki
brings them to term from within the matrix of life itself, with Ninhursag’s role in this “un-
natural” procedure a curious blend of mother and midwife.
Her maieusis is weird and unworldly. Teshshup’s debate with himself in the Hittite myth
over how exactly to exit the male body of the pregnant Kumarbi—by the anus, by the penis,
by the mouth?—possibly captures some of the unnatural quality Attinger has in mind with
respect to the birth of these deities.124 Is the issue here one of Enki’s needing to borrow a
vulva, so to speak, in order to have an orifice through which these new offspring can come
into the world? Is that why he actually needs to be implanted, pregnant, within—not “next
to” or “before” or “on the knees of ”—Ninhursag for the blessed event(s) to occur?125 The
myth culminates in Enki’s passage into a space into which he has (partly) entered many
times before but never inhabited as fully since before his own birth. What is wrought there
in mythic terms, just as in the case of Metis, is an act of genuine incorporation, thanks to
which a kind of merger takes place, and the power of birth specific to one is (temporarily)
transferred to the other. However we picture it, the abnormality of the procedure corroborates
the miraculous character of the transformation it effects: from plants grown (somehow) on
the Riverbank out of Enki’s sperm to offspring whose hearts are known and whose destinies
are fixed by an act of cannibalistic ingestion, and finally to gods somehow brought into
being from out of a body simultaneously female and male. From the folktale story of the
stupid or greedy trickster sick to death from his meal and rescued by the intervention of
the plucky fox, we return to something again resembling “sacred myth.” As in A3 and D1,
Enki is once more a creator, a father/mother of divinities, this time in some strange con-
junction with Ninhursag.
The procedure is much involved with acts of naming. A narrative already marked by the
rhetorical trope of enumeration—whether of everything Dilmun as yet is not (A1) or of all
it has (or will) become after Enki’s touch (A4); of Uttu’s pains, either in intercourse or
labor (E2); or else of the plants Isimud names for Enki as the god devours them one by
one (F1)—now culminates in two final litanies. The first (H1) is the list of emergent gods,
each expressly associated with a part of the body in which Enki feels pain and brought into
existence by collaborative, punning interplay between Enki and Ninhursag.126 The verbal
correspondences, based on what strike the modern reader as at best “folk” etymologies,
provide the glue for the network of associations linking gods and body parts to plants and
biologique du terme) des diverses divinités et peut, sans of his painful progeny.”
danger d’inceste, épouser Ensaag.” 126 See M. Civil, “From Enki’s Headaches to Pho-
124 See Güterbock, “Hittite Mythology,” pp. 157 f. nology,” JNES 32 (1973): 567–61; Attinger, pp. 45–
125 Compare Leick, pp. 38 f., who (taking Jacobsen’s 47 ad loc. and chart p. 48. The dialogue between
lead) emphasizes the absurd humor of the story as a Ninhursag and the embedded Enki suggestively calls
whole: “. . . what could be more risible than a man to mind Hesiod’s claim (Theogony, lines 899–900) that
made pregnant by his own sperm? To say nothing of after being swallowed by Zeus, Metis remains within
the humiliation of being at the mercy of the Wife and him to provide [lit., “speak to”] him with advice.
having to borrow her sexual equipment to rid himself
ailments. Scholars are unanimous in finding the proposed resemblances rather less than
convincing, to say the very least.127 This is, of course, unsurprising in an audience for
whom the connection between words and things is considered for the most part (excepting
onomatopoeia) a purely artificial one.128 It is safe to assume that the author(s) of Enki and
Ninhursag and its intended audience(s) do not share this view of language, however, or at
least are more tolerant of the kinds of associations the text promotes.
Alster reads the intent behind this wordplay as light-hearted, remarking that “the selection
[of gods and body-parts] is influenced by the wish to provide laughter-provoking puns”;129
Jacobsen, in turn, identifies it as “a brilliant jeu d’esprit.”130 While amusement is certainly
part of the issue—as in all trickster tales—we should not lose sight of a somewhat more
serious intent, on the assumption that the correspondences established in the narrative are
meant to have some practical value in the course of magico-medical therapy.131 From a
position outside their specific cultural context (or subcontext) such systematizations always
seem arbitrary at best, as do many of the elements of ancient Greek humoral theory and the
so-called doctrine of signatures that dominated much of European Renaissance thinking.132
Within such contexts, however, the “strained” links spell out the terms of a system held in
place by the interrelated “essences” and “destinies” of things, bestowed by the gods or by
nature and thereafter indwelling them as part of their henceforth inalterable constitutions.
Knowledge of a thing’s essence, often bound up closely with its name, allows for its
manipulation in the interest either of healing or harming. The Celtic myth recounted
earlier offers a similar model, in which the herbs that spring up on the slain Miach’s grave
correspond “to the number of his joints and sinews.” Presumably there, too, as in most
traditional pharmacopoeia, a roughly iconic resemblance holds between the plant or herb
and the ailment or part it reputedly has the power to cure, and its power, of course, derives
precisely from that presumed resemblance.133
The narrative’s final litany is the one in which the destinies of these newborn and newly
named gods are fixed, just as were those of the named plants Enki first ate in F1; the two
scenes are surely analogous at the very least, if not, in some mythic sense, identical. The
pronouncement is either that of Enki alone or Ninhursag—or of both conjointly—granting
each divine offspring a sphere of influence or a spouse.134 What results from their birth at
127 Lambert and Tournay, p. 132, speak of “éty- 128 See Cassirer, Language, pp. 44–62.
mologies bizarres.” Kramer, Mythology, p. 59, perhaps 129 Alster, p. 19.
summarizes the position best with these comments: 130 Jacobsen, p. 185.
131 This is clearly the assumption of Bottéro and
. . . the superficiality and barren artificiality of the
Kramer, p. 163, who remark: “C’est en «créant» pour
concepts implied in this closing passage of our myth . . .
chacune d’elles [the eight plants] une «divinité mi-
are brought out quite clearly by the Sumerian original.
neure» . . . que Ninhursag en fait autant des spécifiques
For the fact is that the actual relationship between each
des divers malaises qui ont attaqué son époux . . .et
of the “healing” deities and the sickness which it is
qui . . . s’en pourront prendre à tous les hommes.”
supposed to cure, is verbal and nominal only; this re- 132 On the “doctrine of signatures,” see, for ex-
lationship manifests itself in the fact that the name of
ample, M. Foucault, The Order of Things (New York,
the deity contains in it part or all of the word signifying
1973).
the corresponding aching part of Enki’s body. In brief, 133 See J. Scarborough, ed., Folklore and Folk
it is only because the name of the deity sounded like
Medicines (Madison, 1987), for extensive references.
the sick body-member that the makers of this myth 134 On the ambiguity over agency, see Attinger,
were induced to associate the two; actually there is no
p. 31, n. 56; on the specific correspondences, see
organic relationship between them.
Attinger’s chart, p. 48.
See also Bottéro and Kramer, p. 163.
the closure of the myth are aspects of a stable world held together by correspondences
expressly fixed in the language that names them and anchored in Enki’s own body.135 Im-
planted in the body of the female, his male body is the ultimate guarantor of that world’s
stability, at least insofar as his body lends the names of its own spaces—head, hair, nose,
mouth, throat, arm, ribs, and sides—to the names these new gods bear: this one is Nin-ka-si,
for instance (lines 259 f., 273), “She Who Fills the Mouth” (ka) with beer (kash) and thereby
satisfies desire (níg-shà si), precisely because she was born from Enki’s own mouth (ka).
His trickster body thus both gives rise (somehow) to their existence and also underwrites
their respective essences and functions.
The acts and tribulations of Enki’s body traversing, modifying, and being modified in
turn by female bodily space have in a sense been the subject of the myth all along. The
stable world that emerges at closure is presided over by a chief god, Ensaag, spouse of Nin-
hursag, the Lord of a Dilmun that at the beginning of the story was at best merely virtual,
no “paradise” but instead a merely rhetorical space that “n’existe vraiment”;136 by the end,
that space now encompasses vast networks of economic, sexual, social, cultic, technological,
and magico-medical commerce, all defined by Enki’s transgressions. The entire series of
transformations of its aboriginally “pure, bright,” and arid space wrought by Enki in the
course of his passage through City, Marsh, Riverbank, Garden, House, and Temple—trans-
formations reflected in the weird alchemy of semen into plants into deities—culminates in
Enki’s own transformation within the space of the Vulva into a suffering male trickster
who has power to know, to name, and to give birth. If Ensaag is Lord, Enki is (somehow)
Father of Dilmun. The nascent world comes fully into being and is maintained through
Trickster’s exuberant sexual and culinary hunger, through his violence, his deception, his
knowledge, his bellyache, his ridiculous and magical pregnancy, his status as simultaneously
sacred and cursed.137 The eight gods born into Dilmun are presumably followed by Enki’s
own reemergence from inside the female space of Ninhursag. This reemergence is itself
transformative; it coincides, as the myth itself implies in its final, hymnic formula of praise
(line 278), with Enki’s healing and the continuance of a world whose life still depends on
his volatile, fluid health.
135 The extent to which the present myth can be and the Embodied World,” Journal of the American
understood in terms of the typology of cosmogonic Oriental Society (2007).
narratives set forth by B. Lincoln, in Myth, Cosmos, and 136 Lambert and Tournay, p. 123.
Society: Indo-European Themes of Creation and De- 137 See especially L. Hyde, Trickster Makes This
struction (Cambridge, Mass., 1986) is the subject of an World (New York, 1998).
independent study; see my forthcoming article, “Enki

Enki and Ninhursag The Trickster in Paradise

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Enki and Ninhursag: The Trickster in Paradise

Author(s): Keith Dickson

KEITH DICKSON, Purdue University

II. Narrative Sequence

A. City (lines 1–64)6

B. Marsh (lines 65–89)

D. O. Edzard, and O. Kaiser, eds., Mythen und Epen 1: and 47 below.

One Line Short

C. Riverbank (lines 90–167)

D. Garden (lines 153–67)

E. House (lines 168–95)

F. Riverbank (lines 196–219)

8 A fragment of some twenty lines from an inde- p. 23, n. 46.

G. Temple (lines 220–50)

H. Vulva (lines 251–78)

One Line Short

22Lambert and Tournay, p. 123. hursag, see Attinger, p. 5.

no “paradise” at all, is here instead envisioned as a thoroughly urban space, state-of-the-art,

One Line Short

42 The major exception is the fox—another folktale garten, pp. 20–22.

One Line Long

112 On the allegedly aphrodisiac qualities of fruit,

One Line Short

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