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Enki and Ninhursag: The Trickster in Paradise

Article in Journal of Near Eastern Studies · January 2007

DOI: 10.1086/512211

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 Enki & Ninhursag: The Trickster in “Paradise”

(Only) after you have eaten the bread you

have made (?) is its nature decided.
Sumerian proverb (Alster 1997: SP1.26)

Since its first published editions and translations early in the last century, i the

Sumerian narrative now generally known as “Enki and Ninhursag” (EN) 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 interpretations 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.

NARRATIVE SEQUENCE

A bare summary of the narrative follows, based principally on the edition of

Attinger (1984), on whom (along with others identified in the notes) I rely both for the

text and also for its translation(s) from Sumerian.ii Given the fact that as recently as

1995, interpretations of the narrative continue to be guided by much older rather than

more contemporary readings,iii 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. iv For the most
 2

part, this is a division that the text itself exhibits; its justification as an interpretative

measure will emerge during the course of the subsequent commentary.

A. City (1-64)v

(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 salt water 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.vi

B. Marsh (65-89)

(B1) With his penis, Enki digs channels in the marsh and “waters” the reedbeds. His

penis bursts out of his clothing (?).

 3

(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.

C. Riverbank (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.vii

(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.viii

D. Garden (153-167)

(D1) Enki raises sweet water “a second time” (cf. A3). A grateful gardener brings Enki

cucumbers, apples (apricots?), and grapes.

 4

E. House (168-195)

(E1) Enki goes to Uttu’s house, having first made his face attractive.ix 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. x

F. Riverbank (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.

G. Temple (220-250)

(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.

 5

(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 (251-278)

(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.

COMMENTARY

(A1-A4) Dilmun the 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 (1945) to accept the classification of the narrative as a “paradise myth.” xi This is

of course a loaded choice of terms — a choice already made in Langdon’s much-flawed

interpretation of the myth three decades earlierxii — and certainly also a

 6

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 investment. As Lambert and

Tournay (1949:122) are quick to note, 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 Genesisxiii — in such a way that the

Sumerian story comes to be seen as at least genetically affiliated if not, directly or

otherwise, the authentic parent of the Old Testament account. xiv Among other things,

the assumption that EN 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 (1961:102f.) 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. 2:6f.);

(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
 7

Rib”) in response to the pain Enki feels in his rib (Sumerian ti), to which Kramer

predictably compares the Biblical origin of Eve.xv

Lambert and Tournay (1949) are among the first to call attention to the difficulty

in regarding the Dilmun of EN 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.”xvi 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 (19f.) 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.xvii 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 (1983:54) neatly defines it — Dilmun here is most

expressly problematic; and it is indeed as a sequence of problems for which solutions

must be found that the narrative as a whole proceeds. Dilmun may lack the sound of
 8

wailing (30), but that does not mean it is free from complaint (31-36). Without water to

drink and for irrigation, it is “une vaste machine toute monté, mais qui ne tourne pas”

(Lambert and Tournay 1949:123). 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.”xviii Specifically, the main issue on which EN 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 salt 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 20 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 “irrigation” as a vast urban center into which flow luxurious goods from around

the world.xix It is unclear whether the verbs of this passage are to be translated as

indicative or optative,xx 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
 9

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. xxi

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 expensive 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 post-lapsarian 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 (1983:54-58) is

surely correct in noting that “paradise” in Kramer’s Edenic sense is in fact quite alien to

Sumerian — and, for that matter, Mesopotamian — 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.” xxii Dilmun, really no “paradise” at all, is

here instead envisioned as a thoroughly urban space, state-of-the-art, modern, vibrant,

and vigorously merchantile. 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
 10

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,xxiii this is a categorical as much as a

topographic 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 different 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 organized, 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.xxiv

 11

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 intercourse virtually interchangeable tropes.xxv Although the first scene in

the narrative is not 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.xxvi 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.xxvii 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,xxviii 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

 12

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 Copper (1989:88) delightedly notes — probably not the sort of

“first” Kramer (1981) would have wanted to include in his impressive list of other

Sumerian precedents! Literal collides with figural reference in the terms that describe

the god’s appearance and behavior here, and (at least among interpreters) the

meanings compete with one another for precedence.xxix The detail — just as in A1 — is

once again vivid and in its own way quite compelling: Enki’s clothing grotesquely bulges

at the groin. His erection tears through the fabric in an image that suggests to Attinger

(1984:15n33) “la croissance soudaine de la végétation,” but which even more strongly
 13

insists on being understood directly at first, without allegorical refraction, namely as a

coarse instance of sexual exposure.xxx Copper and Leick emphasize the bawdy humor in

this passage, and likewise draw attention to the “raw [and] often violent” phallocentric

sexuality that characterizes Enki both here and elsewhere in Sumerian literature. xxxi This

is especially by contrast with what is found to be the softer and more sensuous language

of Inanna-Dumuzi poetry, with its primary focus on the vulva.xxxii To be sure, Enki’s

priapism is of course a gesture simultaneously “low” and also deeply sacred, given the

genuinely religious function 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.xxxiii Enki’s sexual romp in the Marsh is in fact the first clear

indication of his primary function in EN, 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 characterized, 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,”xxxiv “beneficent” vs. “malicious,” “good” vs. “evil,” and so on —

which in turn endows him with vast creative (and destructive) powers. Two reflexes of
 14

his character are especially relevant to an understanding of Enki’s behavior in EN. First,

the trickster’s multivalent, 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 most part simply inhabit one space or

another; each is the merely static occupant of a single locale.xxxv 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 EN — to which much scholarly attention has been drawn, especially

since Kirk’s reading (1970:90-107) of the myth — this latter trait seems to emerge as

particularly significant.
 15

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 rapexxxvi — 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 (65, 87), Damgalnuna (74f.), and

Ninhursag (75f.). The first and third names most certainly refer to the same mother-

goddess figure. For Lambert and Tournay (1949:125n1), 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).xxxvii 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

interpretation of the story as a whole.xxxviii It is more than likely the case, however — as

Attinger notes, though with some reservations xxxix — 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 three — whether individuals or a unity — is clear from the statements that Enki
 16

“waters” Damgalnuna (74) and pours out his semen into Ninhursag’s lap, which receives

it (75f.); this later (87f.) 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 (1971:20-22) 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.xl

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” (Alster 1978:19), in whose initial

stage “an abnormal reversed order” (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.xli 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; xlii the earlier ban on trespassing

would in this case apply to all but the one whom Enki now proceeds to invite. Next, the
 17

language used to describe their sexual act (75-76) is formulaically repeated in all the

subsequent (three or four) occasions of intercourse in the narrative, namely 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.xliii Finally, Attinger’s remark

(1984:39 ad loc.) 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. 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 Kramer as additional ground for the claim of affiliation between EN 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 world (Alster 1978:17,

1983:59), or at least of the privileges — including an accelerated period of gestation —

that female deities enjoy over female mortals (Lambert and Tournay 1949:125f.,

Rosengarten 1971:22). Whatever its comparative value, the significance of painless birth
 18

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 (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.xliv If, in its

most general terms, the overall theme of EN 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 triumphalist. 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

 19

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 EN, along with the

analogy between his activities in both episodes, that helps us make the passage from

City to Marshland.xlv The second episode (B1-2) enjoys no such closure, however, since

intercourse with Nintu/Damgalnuna/Ninhursag and the birth of Ninsar are only prelude

to other narrative sequences. Like the fluid power he symbolizes, 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 movements back and forth between 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 EN, as I suggested above, the site

of that juxtaposition (Riverbank) is precisely 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,
 20

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 (89f.

~ 109f. ~ C3f.) 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 EN has been taken as further evidence that the

entire narrative itself is perhaps a series of independent tales with no strong intrinsic

relation to each other.xlvi On the other hand, Isimud’s presence also serves to draw

attention to the theme of (physical, sexual, moral) border-crossing that runs throughout

EN. 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

entendrexlvii — 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
 21

he stepped on dry land” (98f. ~ 118f. ~ C11f.) — 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. xlviii

Generally speaking, formulaic repetition in traditional narratives tends to serve two

main classes of functions, depending on whether we view it from outside or inside the

narrative.xlix From the outside, namely 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 narrative 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 unsuccessful 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 episodes in C1-3 belong to this last category, namely that they

serve to highlight an issue as problematic.

 22

Enki’s rapes indeed form a recursive loop. In the Nippur version of the story, he

mates with two of his offpring — 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-

grandaughter.l 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 narratological and, as it were, the genealogical shape of Enki’s

matings is viciously cyclical, not linear. In particular, the formula of accelerated gestation

(77-88 ~ 103-108 ~ 123-127; cf. C 1f. ~ C16-28) following each mating contributes to an

odd sense of narrated time as proceeding through a series of rapid skips to precisely

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
 23

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 instead cyclic. Despite the text’s

apparent claim to the contrary, each act 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.li 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;
 24

in turn, both the speaker and addressee of the lines (148ff.) that resume after the break

are also uncertain.lii 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

(1970:95) 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. 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 (1978:18) 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.” 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 (1987),

Lambert and Tournay (1949:123), and Rosengarten (1971:23-25) — 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, namely the purchase 0f sex.

(D1) Garden
 25

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 — that of the Garden.liii 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” (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 to

which the fruits of the Garden are to be put — namely, as barter for sexliv — 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 emphasized, however, the Garden is a site in which the focus is

chiefly on the production of goods meant for 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 channelling 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
 26

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.” lv Here Dumuzi the shepherd prevails over Inanna’s

initial preference 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 EN

narrative, if for no other reason than that the lacuna in which it should fit (some 10-15
 27

lines, in Attinger’s reconstruction) 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 background of oral and textual traditions might

nonetheless be implicit here. Given the fragmentary 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 (148ff.), 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,lvi Enki’s subsequent impersonation of the Gardener

in D1 (171f.) 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

(168),lvii with cosmetics and bearing an armful of fruit, just like a “refined” suitor. One

way or another, thanks to Nintu’s intervention, 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
 28

rivalry, namely 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 response 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/Ninhursag, 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 formalities that initially sublimate sexual desire: role-

playing, decoration of the body, formulas of question and answer (171f.),lviii the offering

of gifts, and possibly also the institution of a shared meal. lix Unlike the Riverbank, the

House is the space of institutionalized (not impulsive) sexual exchange — of proper

courtship, not rape.lx

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 seduction, 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 186f. For after a somewhat more explicit account of sexual activity than is

found in the earlier rape episodes (C1-3) — specifically, of prolonged foreplay (179-183)
 29

leading to formulaic intercourse (184f.) — 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 (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 (1984:43 ad loc.) draws attention to

the play on words in this passage between Sumerian /a/ (“ah! hélas!”) and /á/ (“bras;

force”), noting “Enki a certainment abusé d’Uttu.” lxi 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.lxii 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 (77 ~ 103 ~ 123 ~ C17), the first day/month of pregnancy follows directly upon

consummation of the act (75f. ~ 101f. ~ 121f. ~ C15f.) 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. lxiii
 30

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 (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 her to the eight plants as genetrix to

offspring, would suggest she does not;lxiv and this in turn might lend apparent strength

to the claim that Ninhursag (187) removes Enki’s semen from within Uttu’s body and

with it somehow impregnates herself.lxv 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 EN have felt comfortable linking Enki’s later eating of the eight plants

(F1) to the Greek myth of cannibal Kronos in the Hesiodic version; lxvi 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
 31

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. lxvii 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 excitedly

ejaculates on her thigh. She wipes off the semen with a piece of wool (erion) and throws

in 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.

Knowing less about what specifically motivates the scene in E2 — and perhaps

even less than that about what the text of EN might actually say at this pointlxviii – I can

only suggest that a similar narrative pattern might structure this episode. Superficially,
 32

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

(186), of the fact that Uttu is an inappropriate mate, possibly because of her age.lxix 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 interpretation 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 (1978) term? In that case, is the semen on

her thighs due to spillage after Enki has withdrawn his penis, or — as Leick

(1994:280n20) suggests — to an overflow of the vast quantity of sperm with which he

has filled her? 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.
 33

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 adviseable

to press too hard for consistency here. The question of where the myth aims may in fact

raise the more important 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 instance, 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 EN, 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 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.
 34

(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), namely 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,lxx Enki is in the Marsh again (196 ~ 90 ~ 110 ~ C4) and back on the prowl, this time

spying not on his daughters and granddaughters, but instead 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? (92f. ~ 112f. ~ C7f.) — his request is now (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 earlierlxxi —

means to culminate. At least superficially, 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’ eating of the first generation

of Olympian gods, and also as figurative of Enki’s incest with Ninsar and the others. The
 35

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.lxxii There the suppression of offspring instead unfolds within the specific

context of intergenerational conflict 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 unsuccessful — 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 reproductive powers, only to lose it after

swallowing the abortifacient stone that is Zeus. lxxiii

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 offpring, Enki’s stated purpose, on the contrary, is to “determine the

destiny” of the plants (198, 217). lxxiv 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 dismissed.lxxv 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-determinati0n” 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.lxxvi If only in this

sense, the concluding episodes (E3-H3) in the narrative are rigorously etiological. In
 36

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

associations 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 (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.lxxvii If “knowing their hearts” and “fixing their destinies” is Enki’s professed

aim (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
 37

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 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 BCE 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.” lxxviii In Celtic

tradition, much the same basic story is taken up into a far more complicated narrative of

intergenerational rivalry.lxxix 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 three hundred and sixty-five 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. lxxx 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 EN.

If Enki’s avowed purpose in eating the plants has a certain mythic legitimacy,

then, how relate it to the issues of incest and punishment, which enjoy central place in

most interpretations of EN? 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,lxxxi the fact
 38

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. lxxxii 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. lxxxiii The cycle of fruitless, incestuous sex that characterized

episodes C1-3 and 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 (1970:96) argues, 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 towards 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
 39

must (somehow) become pregnant; in order for his 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.lxxxiv 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 (251-268) — 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 experience — 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 pregnancy 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

focuslxxxv —than with the transformation of the plants into gods, linked to one another

and to specific parts of the body etymologically and therefore, one assumes, also in
 40

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 presumably 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 its essence. In EN, 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.lxxxvi 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

metamorphosis, 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 (220). The goddess herself has withdrawn somewhere, with consequences
 41

presumably more widespread than the immediate effect her curse has on Enki alone.

The threat is in fact cosmological — no less than the undoing of everything that has

been accomplished so far.lxxxvii 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 laspes into the merely virtual,

dormant state of Dilmun prior to its initial irrigation by Enki (A1) — a dreamlike 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.lxxxviii This is a place of resolution. It serves at one and the same time as the locus

of the authority invested 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
 42

radically affected by the events in the story. The tale of the trickster’s immanent death

bodes the death of all culture. The demise of this world in turn spells disaster for the

gods’ world too, since both are intimately intertwined. 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 (229-244) describing the fox’s successful attempt to bring

Ninhursag 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 replacing 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,lxxxix 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, xc 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

(226-28), Fox too apparently “goes a-courtin’” in his attempt to win Ninhursag back,
 43

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 (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:xci (1) Fox offers help on condition of recompense (221f.). (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 bexcii — and also social, in the form of a

promise to celebrate Fox’s name (223-225). (3) Fox then passes through — or at least

subsequently narrates — a series of unsuccessful attempts (233-236), 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.

(H1-H3) Vulva

Her 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
 44

than just static backdrops for the action. Each space instead tends to embody a specific

character 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 transformative: 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 desireability and her lover’s own sublimated desire. xciii

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

Riverbank, 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 other
 45

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 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
 46

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 questions 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
 47

— a major tenet of all myths, if least acceptable to modern sensibilities xciv — 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 (250) “before” or “by” or else “within” her vulva.

Commentators 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’” (1945:30), Kramer opts for “by (?) her vulva” (6) in his translation of the text;xcv

in his study of Enki published more than four decades later, this has become “in her

vulva” (1989:29), though the translation “sur son giron” in Bottéro and Kramer

(1989:158) returns us outside the body.xcvi 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” (1971:31), but in any case once

again appears to move the text (and Enki too) farther from the goddess. Kirk (1970:92,

97), on the other hand, squarely places Enki inside Ninhursag’s body, as does Alster,

who translates the phrase first as “in her womb” (1978:19) and later “in her vulva”

(1983:59, 1994:223); xcvii Evers (1995:37), following Kirk, concurs. Attinger (1984:31 with

note 54), 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 (45 ad

loc.) he admits that “dans” may well be correct after all, glossing that choice as an
 48

“expression raccourcie pour: <<(…) fit asseoir Enki (et fit pénétrer le pénis) dans sa

vulve>>.”

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’ incorporation of his Titan aunt Metis. xcviii 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 instead 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 rechannelled 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’ ingestion of Metis, like Kronos’ 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 EN narrative. A kind of
 49

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

Teshub. 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 (253) remains

somewhat unclear.xcix Attinger (1984:46 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

Ninhursag 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.c Despite the location of the scene within the space of her Vulva,

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
 50

he has eaten, Enki brings them to term from within the matrix of life itself, with

Ninhursag’s role in this “unnatural” procedure a curious blend of mother and midwife.

Her maieusis is weird and unworldly. Teshub’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.ci 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?cii 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,
 51

Enki is once more a creator, a father/mother of divinities, this time in some strange

conjunction 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.ciii 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 ailments. Scholars are unanimous in finding the proposed

resemblances rather less than convincing, to say the very least.civ 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. cv It is safe

to assume that the author(s) of EN 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 (1978:19) 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;” Jacobsen in turn (1987:185) identifies it as “a brilliant

jeu d’esprit.” While amusement is certainly part of the issue — as in all trickster-tales —
 52

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.cvi 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.cvii 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. cviii

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. cix What

results from their birth at the closure of the myth are aspects of a stable world held
 53

together by correspondences expressly fixed in the language that names them and

anchored in Enki’s own body. cx Implanted 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 (259f., 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 Ninhursag, 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” (Lambert and Tournay 1949:123); 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 — transformations

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
 54

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. cxi The eight gods born into Dilmun are presumably

followed by Enki’s own re-emergence from inside the female space of Ninhursag. This

re-emergence is itself transformative; it coincides, as the myth itself implies in its final,

hymnic formula of praise (278), with Enki’s healing and the continuance of a world

whose life still depends on his volatile, fluid health.

NOTES

i For bibliography of scholarship prior to Kramer’s 1945 edition, see Weidner 1922, Nrs.

984-1012, and Kramer 1945:3nn1,3. For brief summaries of interpretations since Kramer

1945, see Kirk 1970:90-96, Alster 1978:109f., Leick 1994:36f., and Evers 1995:35-37.

ii The standard translations are those of Attinger 1984, Jacobsen 1987:181-204, Kramer

and Maier 1989:22-30, Bottéro and Kramer 1989:152-180, and Römer 1993; online

resources are available at the Electronic Corpus of Sumerian Literature

(http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk). Alster (1983:61-65) offers edition and translation of the

first 63 lines of the narrative, along with the 20 lines of interpolation from the so-called

Ur version, on which see below, note 6.

 55

iii Evers’ 1995 structuralist approach, for instance, seems to be unaware of Attinger’s

1984 edition of EN, resulting in significant differences in readings and therefore in the

interpretation of the narrative. See also below, notes 12 and 39.

iv The episodic character of the narrative is obvious, leading Lambert and Tournay 1949

to posit the existence of six independent narratives — “La légende de Dilmun,” “La

legende de l’ambar,” “Le mythe du gú-íd,” “En-ki et Uttu,” “Enki et les huit plantes,”

“Ninhursag et les huit divinités” — that were at some later point stiched together by a

single poet. Others acknowledge the divisions but assume a consistent intention

throughout the narrative, which forms the basis for a literary/cultural interpretation of

the myth as a whole.

v I follow the enumeration in Attinger 1984.

vi The precise location of this passage of some 20 lines is problematic. Also at issue is

whether the mood of the verbs is optative or indicative. See Attinger 1984:13n28.

vii A fragment of some 20 lines from an independent source identifies Ninimma instead

as daughter of Ninkura and Enki, then describes his formulaic rape of Ninimma, who in

turn gives birth to Uttu. See Attinger 1984:19.

viii Alternately, it is the Gardener from whom Uttu makes such a demand. See Attinger

1984:21n41 and 23n46.

ix See Attinger 1984:23n44. By contrast, Kramer 1945:17 and 1989:27 translates “his

face turned green,” and glosses (1945:28) as “the gardener’s action must have

displeased and troubled him in some way.”

 56

x Attinger 1984:25nn48 and 49.

xi Kramer remains true to this interpretation throughout his subsequent scholarship on

the narrative; see Kramer 1963, 1972, 1989.

xii Langdon 1914, 1915. On the egregious errors in Langdon’s methods and conclusions,

see Jastrow 1917 — itself a chastening lesson in the fragility of interpretation, since the

text on which he too bases his understanding has subsequently proved to be just as

flawed.

xiii For examples, see e.g. the refences in Heidel 1946. Lambert and Tournay (1949:122)

remark: “On devine facilement le but de cette interprétation: il s’agit d’établir des

relations entre la Bible et les récits les plus anciens de la Mésopotamie; parce que des

mythes relativement plus récents, ainsi celui du déluge, en ont fourni quelquesunes, on

est autorisé, semble-t-il, à en chercher dans des récits antérieurs.”

xiv See Kramer’s qualification 1945:9n29.

xv Kramer 1945:9, 1961:103. Kramer also draws attention (1945:8) to the effortlessness

of childbirth as index of a prelapsarian world.

xvi Lambert and Tournay 1949:123. Attinger 1984:33 concurs: “Ce passage célèbre,

considéré longtemps comme la description paradisiaque de Dilmun, dépeint en fait

Dilmun avant l’apparition de toute vie…” Cf. also Rosengarten 1971:9f.,14f.; Alster

1978:21f. and 1983:55; Bottéro and Kramer 1989:160.

xvii Lambert and Tournay (1949:123) hedge somewhat, in that they imagine a Dilmun

indeed populated with creatures, but creatures who do not yet act: “Le lion ne tuait
 57

pas… [signifie] qui’il n’avait pas encore commencé à tuer, à faire son métier de lion.” See

also Alster 1983:55-58

xviii Cf. Rosengarten 1971:7f. (relying on Eliade): “Les mythes d’origine prolongent et

complètent le mythe cosomogonique: ils racontent comment le Monde a été modifié,

enrichi et appauvri.” For Alster (1983:59), the narrative has the status of a “creation

myth.”

xix On the various textual sources for EN, see Attinger 1984:5.

xx Attinger 1984:13n28.

xxi See Alster 1983 on the rich archaeological evidence supporting the role of ancient

Dilmun (Bahrain) as an international center of trade.

xxii See Alster (1983:52-58), who remarks (55): “…it should be reasonably clear that if by

the term ‘paradise’ we understand an original happy state in the beginning of the

creation of mankind, then this term is misleading when used in connection with

Mesopotamian beliefs. The term ought not to be used in this context at all. According to

Mesopotamian thought it was the ideal ruler, the Sumerian king, who was responsible

for creating a happy and well-organized society. The society did not live by innocence

and piety, but by palpable financial prosterity.” The triumphalist language of the Ur-

interpolation (A4) is certainly best understood in this context. On the celebration of

invention in Sumerian literature, see Komoroczy 1975.

xxiii Cf. e.g. Lévi-Strauss 1968:206-231. Evers 1995 offers a consistent if somewhat rigid

structuralist reading of the myth.

 58

xxiv Lambert and Tournay (1949:124f.) consider this an entirely independent narrative, in

fact, describing an alternate myth of origin (“une autre explication de la vie”); see also

Jacobsen 1987:182f. For Kirk 1970:95, the change in venue instead marks a topographic

extension of Enki’s domain outward from the city towards (by the end of the story) the

desert.

xxv See Kirk 1970:84-107, Copper 1989, Leick 1994. Jacobsen (1987:183) more explicitly

allegorizes the connection when he notes that the reeds into which Enki plunges his

penis in B1 should “probably … be understood mythopoeically as the pubic hairs of the

earth mother.”

xxvi See Leick 1994 on the often neglected sexual dimension of traditional Sumerian

literature.

xxvii Lambert and Tournay (1949:124): “Seul Enki revient, mais si dissemblable qu’il n’a

avec le dieu du passage précédent que le nom seul de commun; ce n’est plus le seigneur

de l’eau, mais l’engendreur primordial…” See also Jacobsen (1987:183): “Even the

identity of the Enki of the first story with the one of the second one may not be beyond

doubt.”

xxviii On the analogy between water and seminal fluid in Sumerian literature, see Copper

1989, Leick 1994:21-29. Leick makes “the double meaning of the Sumerian sign a,

denoting ‘sperm’ as well as ‘water’” (39) the foundation of her reading of the story as a

whole.
 59

xxix For a different but less convincing view of this passage, based on a reading that

would substitute the term “agency” — “ ‘(par) son dresser’, c’est-à-dire: ‘par son action’

” — for “penis,” see Rosengarten 1971:20n3.

xxx Bottéro and Kramer (1989:153) translate as: “déchirant de son pénis le vêtement/qui

recouvrait le giron de la terre!” Similar allegorization characterizes Jacobsen’s approach

as a whole. Note his synopsis of the myth (1987:184): “Water and the foothills, Enki and

Ninhursaga, produce the mountain verdure (Ninnisiga) which in turn produces the high

mountains behind (Ninkirra), and they, as pasture for sheep, produce the goddess of

weaving, Uttu…” On nature allegory and Jacobsen’s methodology in general, see Kirk

1970:88-94.

xxxi Compare the narrative “Enki and the World Order,” in which Enki ejaculates the

Tigris and Euphrates; and see Copper 1989:88n9, Leick 1994:21-29, 48-54.

xxxii See also Mindlin 1987, Leick 1994:90-96.

xxxiii On tricksters in general, see Brown 1947, Radin 1956, Hynes and Doty 1993, Erdoes

and Ortiz 1998. On Enki as trickster, see Kramer and Maier 1989, Leick 1994:40.

xxxiv In this context, one wonders whether the epithet in line 65 (gestu-ge tuku-a) that

Attinger (1984:15, with 37 ad loc.) translates as “l’intelligent” is not itself a semantic

marker of Enki as Trickster.

xxxv The major exception is the fox — another folktale border-crosser — who is perhaps

a doublet of Enki; see below.

 60

xxxvi Cf. the locale for the rape scene in “Enlil and Ninlil” (Black 2005:102f.), along with

Kirk 1970 and Copper 1989:89n12, who claims (with perhaps too much confidence) that

“Enki’s multiple rapes of his young offspring here provide the model, both in terms of

theme (rape of young girls, aquatic setting, use of boat, initial violation of prohibition)

and phraseology, for Enlil’s rape of Ninlil in Enlil and Ninlil.” See also Leick 1994:32ff.

xxxvii For criticism of this interpretation, see Rosengarten 1971:20-22.

xxxviii
Alster 1978:17: “When the text states that he lets flow the semen of Damgalnunna,

otherwise known to be his wife, the point is certainly to tell that he is doing something

unnatural.” This understanding in turn fuels an interpretation of the narrative that is

somewhat difficult to follow but that hinges on the claim that Ninhursag “steals” Enki’s

semen; essentially the same interpretation is assumed in Alster 1983:55-59. See also

Leick 1994:36.

xxxix Attinger 1984:38: “Nous admettons, non sans hésitation, que Nintu/

Damgalnuna/Ninhursaga ne sont, dans ce texte, que d’autres noms de Ninsikila…”

Bottéro and Kramer 1989:160f. assume that the mate is Damgalnuna, with the other

names serving as epithets.

xl Her argument here recalls the suggestion of Lambert and Tournay (1949:125n1) that

the different names “marquent…des temps particuliers dans la vie de la déesse.” See

also Attinger 1984:39.

 61

xli The issue of sexual reversals also figures prominently in Kirk’s 1970 reading, as well as

in that of Evers 1995, who leans heavily on Kirk. On Alster’s 1978 interpretation,

presented again in Alster 1983:59f., see Leick 1994:34f.

xlii See Attinger 1984:38 ad loc. The alternate construction he cites (attributed to

Wilcke), in which the statement is taken to be declarative rather than an invitation,

nonetheless still assumes that Enki mates with the goddess. Evers 1995:38f. likewise

takes Enki’s statement to be prohibition, not invitation. It should be noted that Evers

relies on Kramer’s text and translations (Pritchard 1955); Attinger’s 1984 edition is

apparently unknown to him.

xliii Copper 1989:88f. follows Alster in claiming that Enki “releases his semen into the

water for Ninhursag to take into her womb herself.”

xliv See Leick 1994:21-29.

xlv Lambert and Tournay (1949:124): “Tout ce passage, lignes 14-64, forme donc un tout

complet d’une parfaite unité; unité d’action: il s’agit d’éveiller le monde à la vie; unité

de lieu: la scène se passe à Dilmun; trois personnages interviennent: Nin-Sikil, Enki et

son serviteur Utu.” See also Jacobsen 1987:182f.

xlvi Lambert and Tournay 1949, Jacobsen 1987.

xlvii Leick 1994:33. Leick reads the reference to Enki’s “reaching out” from the marsh as

double entendre for his erection, and also finds sexual play in the reference to boat and

foot.
 62

xlviii I use the term “rape” advisedly, as a kind of shorthand for intercourse initiated by

one partner without any apparent willingness on the part of the other; in context, it

need not necessarily imply moral transgression. See Leick (1994:51): “The concept of

rape is inappropriate here since these myths are not concerned with social customs and

institutions but portray the activities of deities in a world largely devoid of human

regulations.”

xlix On formulaic language in general, see e.g. Foley 1988 and Finnegan 1992.

l Attinger 1984:5. See also Leick 1994:34 for parallels between this scene and an episode

in “Enlil and Ninlil.”

li See Alster (1978:20): “…the world is still abnormal in that the creator can only beget

children in incest relations with his own daughters. In a way we return to the original

state of things as the creator swallows his own offspring, thus again creating a

paradoxical unit of unity and binarity.”

lii Kramer 1948:60f., Lambert and Tournay 1949:128, Attinger 1984:21 ad loc.

liii
On the garden in Sumerian literature, see Leick 1994:73-75, 121f., and references.

liv See Copper 1989 and especially Lambert 1987 on metaphors of fruit in erotic

language in Mesopotamian literature.

lv See Lambert and Tournay 1949:128f. and Attinger 1984. For a critical edition of the

songs, see Sefati 1998. Leick 1994:34n18 notes the folktale signature of this theme; see

also her treatment of bridal songs, 1994:64-89.

lvi Attinger 1984:21n41, 22n46.

 63

lvii Attinger 1984:23n44, with references.

lviii Note what appears to be a similar ritual in the broken section of the text (159f.),

where the Gardener asks Enki his name.

lix Jacobsen’s translation (1987:199) includes beer on the menu, an item lacking in

Attinger. If Jacobsen is correct, this would suggest not only another Sumerian “first” —

specifically, date-rape — but also and more importantly another instance (along with

the fruits of the Garden) of a product whose appearance in this episode speaks to the

issue of the acculturation of nature.

lx On the narrative patterns for courtship in Sumerian literature, see Sefati 1998, esp.

102ff. Jacobsen 1987:199n22 observes: “The symbolic act that concluded a Sumerian

marriage consisted in the bride opening the door to the groom who was bringing the

specified wedding gifts. It was followed by the consummation of the marriage and a

wedding banquet the next morning.”

lxi Kramer 1989:28 translates these lines as “Oh, the power [in my] body! Oh, the power

inside! Oh, my power on the outside!” but remarks (n24) that “If it could be assumed

that the á of our text is a variant writing of a, the rendering of the line would read: Uttu,

the fair lady, says ‘Oh, my loins,’ says ‘Oh, my outside! Oh, my inside,’ which would

indicate that Enki’s semen had made Uttu ill in some way.” Compare Jacobsen

(1987:200): “Woe, my underbelly! Woe, my outsides! Woe, my innards!” Bottéro and

Kramer 1989:157 translate: “<<Oh! mes cuisses! Oh! mon corps! Oh! mon

coeur>>.”Leick 1994:35n20 (with which cf. Bottéro and Kramer 1989:161) remarks: “the
 64

exclamation á is homophonous with a, ‘sperm’, ‘water’. [Uttu] may well have received a

surfeit of the latter, which now covers now only her ‘insides’ but also her ‘outside’ and

thighs.”

lxii This interpretation might also raise the question of the exact sense of the phrase in

178, descriptive of Uttu, which Attinger translates as “battre les mains.” He speculates

(1984:43 ad 178) whether it might be a “geste exprimant la joie.”

lxiii Attinger 1984:25n49, with commentary ad loc.

lxiv For Leick 1994:35, Uttu does not conceive; this is despite Leick’s claim (280n20) that

Uttu is indeed filled to overflow with Enki’s sperm.

lxv Attinger 1984:25n48. On the difffering view, see Alster 1978:18, where the argument

is apparently self-contradictory: “[Ninhursag] succeeds in picking up the semen from

Uttu’s thighs, and, apparently, spreads it on the ground… This is the reversed order from

what happened when [i.e. B2] originally the mother goddess picked his semen up from

the water. This time it is he who pours it into someone, and she who takes it out.” See

also Jacobsen 1987:184, Bottéro and Kramer 1989:157, and Evers 1995:37. It is hard to

see how the text (at least in Attinger’s recension) supports this view.

lxvi See Lambert and Tournay 1948:130, Kirk 1970:95f., Alster 1978, Copper 1989:20f.

lxvii For the text, see Apollodorus, Library 3.14.6 (Hard 1997:132f.), with Peradotto’s

elegant 1977 analysis of the myth.

lxviii Attinger 1984:25n48 and 43 ad loc.

 65

lxix Compare Ninlil’s initial response to Enlil’s sexual overture in “Enlil and Ninlil” (31-34):

“My vagina is too small, it does not know pregnancy. My lips are young, they do not

know kissing…” (Black 2005:103).

lxx See Alster 1978:18.

lxxi Note that the tag-line in each of the earlier formulas anticipates the theme of naming

by including the name of each of his offspring (93 ~ 113 ~ C8): Should I not embrace that

lovely <NAME>?

lxxii For the text, see Hesiod, Theogony 156-206, 453-500 (Athanassakis 1983). For

interpretation, see Penglase 1994.

lxxiii In the related Hittite myth of Kumarbi and Teshub, the motive is intergenerational

conflict, with Kumarbi devouring the penis of his father Alalush. For the text of the

myth, see Güterbock 1961:155-165.

lxxiv Lambert and Tournay 1948:129n4 prefer to render the phrase as “destroy their

destiny,” as do Bottéro and Kramer (1989:157), who translate: “Ainsi Enki connut-t-il la

nature de ces plantes/et en arrêta-t-il le destin!”

lxxv See “Enki and the World Order” (Black 2005:215-24). Alster 1978:18 finds the

reference to Enki’s determination of their destiny “ironic.” Bottéro and Kramer

(1989:157) likewise see a contrast: “Enki veut les leur assigner en <<arrêtant leur

destin>>. Mais, auparavant, il entend les goûter.” They seem alone in suggesting (ibid.)

that Enki only samples the plants (“et de lui en tailler un morceau, qu’il goûta”) instead

of eating each entirely.

 66

lxxvi For Alster 1983, the myth’s primary aim is in fact genealogical, namely to establish a

familial, cultic link between Ur and the historical Dilmun/Bahrain.

lxxvii On the theme in general, see e.g. Thompson 1955-58, types D551ff., D1357.1,

1358.1. Note also the traditional Sumerian proverb quoted by Alster (1997:11 [SP 1.26]):

“(Only) after you have eaten the bread you have made(?) is its nature decided.” While

this may mean little more than “the proof’s in the pudding,” its linking of eating with

acquisition of knowledge about the nature of a thing is nonetheless intriguing.

lxxviii See Birrell 1993:47-50 for this and other sources for Shen Nong.

lxxix The myth is preserved in the Cath Maige Tuired; for the text, see Gray 1982. On the

theme relating the god’s death to the appearance of herbs, see also Detienne’s 1972

analysis of the Greek myth of Adonis.

lxxx A similar kind of displacement occurs in the case of Enki, whose suffering after eating

the plants appears overdetermined. On the one hand, it is expressly due to Ninhursag’s

angry withdrawal of the “look of life” in F2 that he falls ill; she curses him, and both

literally and figuratively removes herself from his presence. Here responsibility for his

immanent death is displaced onto Ninhursag, as in the Celtic tale in which Dian Cécht is

the agent for Miach’s death. On the other hand, both the events leading up to her curse

and also the comparative evidence suggest that this is a case of “poisoning,” namely

that Enki becomes sick precisely because of what he has eaten, just as the Chinese Shen

Nong does repeatedly. These etiologies are not mutually exclusive, of course; and both
 67

are certainly also compatible with the third alternative, namely that Enki’s condition is a

kind of “morning sickness” due to pregnancy.

lxxxi Kramer 1945, 1961:102f.

lxxxii Rosengarten 1971:29f. argues that Enki is punished not for cannibalism per se but

instead for having usurped from Ninhursag/Nintu the prerogative of “fixing their

destiny;” Bottéro and Kramer 1989:162f. concur. Leick 1994:40 remarks: “I do not

believe that incest or rape has anything to do with her anger; it is more likely his

untoward assumption of responsibility regarding the plants — [Ninhursag] (remember

that she represents Earth) considers them as belonging to her domain.”

lxxxiii On the homology between eating and sex, see Leach 1963.

lxxxiv Kirk 1970:95f., Penglase 1994:185ff.

lxxxv Evers (1995:40), while apparently acknowledging the incest, dismisses what he

considers the overly “moral” judgment of Kirk and other commentators. See also Leick,

quoted above, note 82.

lxxxvi
See Gadd 1946. Kramer (e.g. 1989:29) consistently refers to the octet as “healing

deities;” see also Bottéro and Kramer 1989:162f.

lxxxvii Leick 1994:40 still acknowledges the seriousness of this episode despite her

emphasis on absurd comedy as the key to the interpretation of the story, noting (39)

“We do not get the impression of great religious intensity. A work such as Enki and

Ninhursaga therefore makes no sense as ‘myth’ or a deeply significant theological

treatise.”
 68

lxxxviii Lambert and Tournay 1948:130n4.

lxxxix On the fox in Sumerian literature, see Alster 1975, 1976:125n52, and especially

1997:56-60 (SP 1.58-70).

xc Lambert and Tournay 1948:130n5. Rosengarten 1978:30f. refers to the animal as

“messager d’En-lil.”

xci See Cohen 1988:19-25 on the motif.

xcii
Attinger 1984:44 ad loc. notes the association of the kishkanu with Enki and Eridu,

and remarks that it “joue un rôle important dans les rituals.” This link would in itself

seem to strengthen the claim made earlier linking Enki with Fox. Note also that Enlil

promises to plant such a tree in his own city of Nippur.

xciii On the allegedly aphrodisiac qualities of fruit, see Leick 1994:34 with references; and

above, note 54.

xciv See e.g. Cassirer 1953:44-62.

xcv Gadd’s review (1946:266) of that edition in the following year seconds that rendition

by having Ninhursag lay Enki “beside her.”

xcvi Compare Bottéro and Kramer “sur son giron” (1989:158) with their translation “en

son giron” in the formulaic references to sexual penetration (at lines 75, 101, 122, and

185).

xcvii Without further explanation, Alster (1983:59) remarks that the placement of Enki is

“probably a hint at the ritualistic birth of a king.”

xcviii Hesiod, Theogony 886-926 (Athanassakis 1983:35f.).

 69

xcix Attinger 1984:24n49 and 43 ad loc. Bottéro and Kramer (1989:158f.) are more

certain, translating the formulaic line as “je [sc. Ninhursag] crée pour toi [Enki] la

déesse…”

c Attinger 1984:46 ad loc. translates: “<<Elle (Ninhursaga) fit naître (X) de là (de sa

vulve).>> … Ninhursaga n’est pas à proprement parler la mère (au sens biologique du

terme) des diverses divinités et peut, sans danger d’inceste, épouser Ensaag.”

ci
Göterbock 1961:157f.

cii Compare Leick 1994:38f., who (taking Jacobsen’s lead) emphasizes the absurd humor

of the story as a whole: “…what could be more risible than a male made pregnant by his

own sperm? To say nothing of the humiliation of being at the mercy of the Wife and

having to borrow her sexual equipment to rid himself of his painful progeny.”

ciii See Civil 1973; Attinger 1984:45-47 ad loc. and chart p. 48. The dialogue between

Ninhursag and the embedded Enki suggestively calls to mind Hesiod’s claim (Theogony

899-900 ) that after being swallowed by Zeus, Metis remains within him to provide [lit.,

“speak to”] him with advice.

civ Lambert and Tournay 1948:132 speak of “étymologies bizarres.” Kramer 1972:59

perhaps summarizes the position best with these comments: “…the superficiality and

barren artificiality of the concepts implied in this closing passage of our myth…are

brought out quite clearly by the Sumerian original. For the fact is that the actual

relationship between each of the “healing” deities and the sickness which it is supposed

to cure, is verbal and nominal only; this relationship manifests itself in the fact that the
 70

name of the deity contains in it part or all of the word signifying the corresponding

aching part of Enki’s body. In brief, it is only because the name of the deity sounded like

the sick body-member that the makers of this myth were induced to associate the two;

actually there is no organic relationship between them.” See also Bottéro and Kramer

1989:163.

cv Cassirer 1955.

cvi This is clearly the assumption of Bottéro and Kramer (1989:163), who remark: “C’est

en <<créant>> pour chacune d’elles [the eight plants] une <<divinité mineure>>…que

Ninhursag en fait autant de spécifiques des divers malaises qui ont attaqué son

époux…et qui…s’en pourront prendre à tous les hommes.”

cvii On the “doctrine of signatures,” see e.g. Foucault 1973.

cviii See Scarborough 1987 for extensive references.

cix On the ambiguity over agency, see Attinger 1984:31n56; on the specific

correspondences, see Attinger’s chart p. 48.

cx
The extent to which the present myth can be understood in terms of the typology of

cosmogonic narratives set forth by Lincoln 1986 is matter for further study; see Dickson

2007 (forthcoming).

cxi See especially Hyde 1998.

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