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Today's
Topics
Coursepackets
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One
hundred packets were sent to KSU on Thursday for 137 students,
meaning that you may need to place a special order
to receive yours. Please read the statement
about the packets in case you need to special order
yours.
I
will post links to next week's readings, but I will not past
any coursepacket documents after September 7th.
If
you did not locate the Mesopotamian Character Glossary on
previous postings, here it is:
4
Mesopotamian
Character Glossary (47-52)
Finally,
I would love to have you print and fill out the following
Student Information form and turn it in when we meet for class
next. It is a way for me to get to know you and your interests
in this class.
4
Student
Information Form
Enki
and Ninmah
This
story seems to take place later than Enki and the World
Order. Creation has been completed, and the gods have
been assigned their tasks and duties. However, after working
at these assignments for some time, they begin to grow weary
and go on strike, tossing their weapons to the ground. They
complain to Enki, who is sleeping soundly in his underground
home, the Apsu. When he wakes, he consults with Namma,
the primordial waters, given the identity as a mother figure
in this myth. Namma (also called Nammu) is sometimes referred
to as a male deity in other myths, implying the union of dualities
from the earliest time. We will see Nu (or Nun)
as an Egyptian counterpart later in the semester, having both
male and female identities, representing the primordial ocean.
Namma
discusses with Enki the prospects of creating a new race of
creatures that can relieve the gods of their labors of digging
canals and building temples. They decide to create mankind
for this purpose, and we'll see a few more stories later that
play on the same motif. Enki assigns a few goddesses to assist
Namma with the creation, including Ninmah,
who boasts that she too can create like Enki can. Enki, who
knows otherwise, decides to play a game with Ninmah to test
her creation abilities. They decide, after imbibing heavily,
that each will create a misshapen man whom the other must
designate a fate, or purpose, to compensate for the deformity.
This episode shows us how the Sumerians explained the occurrence
of deformed children.
Ninmah
creates six different malformed men, but Enki provides for
them a somewhat dignified place in society, such as serving
the king or becoming a poet. The sixth man created by Ninmah
was androgynous, having neither male or female organs, reflecting
the Sumerian confusion regarding birth defects. One in every
two thousand babies born, by the way, have some form or another
of deformity involving the sex organs. Imagine how much more
difficult life would have been 6,000 years ago, when understanding
of genetics and medicine were never known, for people born
with deformed or missing sex organs in a society that boils
everything down to the male/female duality. By Enki providing
a purpose for each of these disfigured people, he is sending
the message that society must find a place and purpose for
all of its citizens, unlike the mentality of the hunters/gatherers
who would have killed any children who could not contribute
to the hunt or work in the fields.
Enki
then takes his turn, creating a completely inadequate man
whom Ninmah cannot correct. Acting as the young girl that
she is, she gives up, telling Enki that his creation is beyond
hope. Enki wins the contest, but Ninmah will become more powerful.
In the previous story, Enki and Ninhursag, you saw
Enki hooking up with Mother Earth, Ninhursag, who is the same
character as Ninmah. Their different names reveal their different
powers or purposes in these stories.
"Ninmah"
means "reverent lady" while Ninhursag means "lady
of the foothills," so these names simply reflect the
specific roles that the god or goddess plays. A god with more
names will be a more powerful god because he can do more things.
A Babylonian god, Marduk, will be assigned 50 names in The
Epic of Creation, which we will read in the second unit.
Enki
and Ninhursag
Enki
and Ninhursag is a fertility/creation
story that describes yet another timeline and sequence for
creation, when compared with the other two stories that you
read for today. Remember that mythological cultures usually
had more than one creation story. The Hebrews, for example,
had two (Genesis
1 and Genesis 2-3).
Dilmun,
the setting of the story "east in Eden," is a place of purity,
where no disease, pain, or suffering exists (mainly because
no life has yet been created, being the winter season).
"Eden" means "delight," and a location to the East of this
place of delight must be more delightful (the East symbolizes
birth and youth, while the west implies death and suffering).
Dilmun is thought to have existed on the eastern side of the
Arabian Peninsula, perhaps in Bahrain, a smaller peninsula
extending into the Persian Gulf, south of Sumeria.
Enki,
the sweet waters god, makes a natural match with the Mother
Goddess, Ninhursag, who also could be called Mother Earth.
Since these personas represent natural identities, their interest
in each other makes a lot of sense. The waters will
penetrate the sand in a similar way as Enki makes love to
Ninhursag. When you see these characters making love,
remember that it is symbolic of natural events.
In the
first section, Dilmun is referred to as "pure," which may
refer to the primordial world before creation had been
completed. We will see many references to purity, and
we will see many more references to the purity of the clay
to create the humans, such as you will read in Atrahasis.
You can see references to the area being one of peace and
tranquility, with no sickness, no pain, and no death.
The wolf and lion do not harm other creatures, and no harm
seems to come to anyone there. This
version of Eden might seem familiar to you, but you probably
have not contemplated the mythology behind this location.
If you recognize that the world has not yet been completed,
and further see that no humans exist, we see a world that
has not yet been introduced to dualities.
The story
begins in the season of winter, and Ninhursag's job will be
to usher in the springtime. If we view winter as a starting
point of creation, then we must also acknowledge that "life"
as we understand it must not have yet begun. Only after
Enki and Ninhursag join together will we see life exist in
the dual forms. If we translate this further, we might
see the "purity" referring to the idea of Eden not yet being
corrupted. In other words, before the dualities have
been set in motion, there was no movement, no action, no life,
no cycles, no routines, no order, no death, no pain, and no
suffering, etc. In other words, purity of Dilmun might
refer to the absence of real life.
Enki has
become very aroused with the Mother Goddess, and they make
love. Miraculously, Ninhursag gives birth in nine days'
time to a daughter, Ninsar, Mistress of Vegetation.
Through the union of water and earth, vegetation is born.
However, the season begins to change, from winter to spring,
forcing Ninhursag to depart from Dilmun (the Middle World
-- the earth -- that is situated between the heavens and the
underworld) so that she can give birth to other parts of the
world. She leaves Enki behind to tend to the waters,
and also leaves her daughter Ninsar, who also has magically
grown into a full goddess in nine short days.
"Ninsar"
means "vegetation," so her birth reflects the new plants that
grew after the first combination of water and soil.
This reminds me of early Spring, when suddenly an abundance
of life springs open. Plants also grow faster than humans
do, so the time frame is realistic (to a point). Remember
that these ancient cultures placed these gods and natural
forces into personified human forms. A human fetus incubates
for 9 months, so the plants are given similar timetables,
couched into human terms. This is a good time to remind
you that Enki is not a person, but the water, and Ninhursag
is simply Mother Earth, not a real woman. Taken literally,
this is a story appears to be about incest and rape.
Metaphorically, it's about the changing of the seasons and
the beauty of the interaction of creative dualities. It's
a story about watering the plants.
One day
Enki is traveling on the Euphrates River when he sees Ninsar
in the distance. He asks his two-faced oarsman, Isimud,
to drift toward this woman who reminds him of Ninhursag.
He advances on his daughter, who is "curious and eager" to
discover sexual relations. They make love, and Ninkura
is born, goddess of mountain pastures. If you look more
closely at these metaphors, then their union makes logical
sense -- if Enki is the water, and Ninsar represents the plants,
don't we want the water to seep into BOTH the soil AND the
plants? Enki is not an immoral criminal (those are judgments
from society, not nature) but he is simply watering
the plants.
What could
be more natural? Don't we have to water the plants to
make them grow? Should one plant be jealous that another
receives rain water as well? Ninsar grows with child,
and quickly gives birth to Ninkura (mountain pastures).
In other words, watering the plants creates a whole field
of plants! Not only is this natural, it is necessary.
Perhaps this is akin to the season of summer, when the spring
plants have had a chance to flourish and dominate an entire
field.
Similarly,
Ninkura is charmed by Enki's wiles when she becomes curious
about a pool of well water in Part 2. Enki makes love
to Ninkura, and their union creates another child, Ninimma,
a birth goddess and a goddess of female genitalia. Following
the repeating patterns of the earlier daughters, Ninimma too
grows in nine days and then also gets "watered"
by Enki, giving birth to Uttu,
the Spider and weaver of patterns and life desires.
(NOTE: try to avoid confusing
Uttu with another character, Utu, the sun god,
who is also called Shamash.)
By Part
3, Ninhursag realizes that she should warn Uttu about Enki's
lusty advances to prevent her from falling victim to him.
She does not appear to be jealous that Enki has been impregnating
his children with his seed, perhaps similarly to how the flowers
are not jealous that the same bee that pollinates one flower
eventually makes it around to hundreds of others, cross-pollinating
an entire field of flowers in a single day. Remember,
Enki is not a person ... he is water.
Interestingly,
Uttu is a spider, the weaver of dreams -- not a plant.
Perhaps this reflects the evolution found in Genesis,
where water and earth first make a connection, followed by
the appearance of the plants, and then the animals.
Maybe Uttu is the representative of the higher-order creatures
coming into existence. The spider also spins a web,
usually connecting plants to each other,
perhaps showing the interconnectivity of progressively diverse
creations. The spider also
has eight legs that tendril outward, perhaps symbolizing that
life extends out in all directions, creating more diversity.
Because
Uttu is so much different than the others, Enki uses a different
approach to charm her. He knocks on her door and asks
if he can do anything for her. She tells him to fetch
her some cucumbers, apples with their stems sticking out,
and grapes in their clusters. So he visits the gardener,
collects the food, and returns to Uttu's house. He sleeps
with her too, but she does not feel very well afterward, so
she runs to Ninhursag for help. Ninhursag, if you recall,
had warned Uttu about Enki's advances.
Why does
Enki bring Uttu these particular plants? Well, cucumbers,
apples, and grapes all had sexual connotations. The
cucumber may resemble the phallus, while the bunch of grapes
might parallel the bountiful quantity of eggs inside a female
(I like to think of roe, a clump of fish eggs, that collects
into a bunch). The apple has long been associated with
fertility, perhaps when we look at the stem imbedded into
the top of the apple's flesh (an overt sexual reference --
the stem is inserted into the plump, meaty flesh of the fruit,
a reference to the vagina). Also, these three plants
all contain seeds inside their flesh, perhaps suggesting that
the male force will penetrate the flesh to make use of the
seeds. If Uttu didn't get the hint before, she certainly
found out what Enki wanted soon enough. Let's not place
all of the blame on Enki, though, because Uttu asks him to
deliver these fruits and vegetables, and she would have only
done this to explore her own sexuality.
Interestingly,
this story is where the Garden of Eden gets its apples.
I am not aware of a translation of Genesis where Adam
and Eve eat an "apple" (the first Christian reference
that I am aware of is found in John Milton's epic poem Paradise
Lost, published in 1667) . The Bible translations
that I see use the word "fruit" exclusively -- never "apple."
So, why do we say that Adam and Eve ate an apple?
Perhaps its origin comes from this very Sumerian myth.
Joseph
Campbell discusses the motif of the "one forbidden thing,"
and all of us as kids became tempted to do something only
after our parents told us to avoid it. It is human nature
to explore our curiosity, and this is exactly the issue with
both Adam and Eve as well as Enki and his lovers. Remember
that many literary connections exist between the world's literature
and the origins of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
In Part
4, Ninhursag removes the semen from Uttu's body (we don't
know how) and buries it in the ground. In nine days,
eight different types of plants pop out of the soil. The
birth mother strikes again! Soon afterward, Enki is once again
riding in his boat when he spies the new vegetation.
Curious about these new plants, Enki devours them all voraciously,
and then starts to feel very sick. Ninhursag now leaves
Dilmun.
Soon enough,
Enki begins to die, and the gods are helpless. A kindly
fox (another intermediary) decides to search out Ninhursag
himself and convince her to assist the lord of the sweet waters.
After all, if all the fresh water (Enki) were to "die," then
life itself would come to an end. However, Enki will
not be allowed to pass away. The gods are immortal,
but not because the storytellers simply say so. Rather,
Enki MUST survive, because life depends on him providing flowing
waters to Dilmun.
Some students
inquire about the fox. Although we never saw the creation
of foxes, lions, and ravens, all are mentioned in this story.
Remember that these tales are not intended to be scientific
explanations of the details, but rather models for the ways
in which the world around us operates. But what is the
reputation of the fox? Typically, the fox is a slippery,
sneaky, and sly character. The fox has been used in
fables and folktales countless times, and it almost always
carries this reputation.
However,
would we expect to see a crafty character in Eden? Of
course. In Genesis, the serpent plays this role.
In Enki and Ninhursag, Enki is called sneaky in several
locations. This is another theme that we will see in
mythology -- the sneaky, tricky god figure who uses his/her
craftiness to establish order in the world. Campbell
discussed the story of the god who walked between the fields
wearing a two-colored hat that would be seen differently depending
on the farmer's vantage point. In mythology, many of
the greatest characters will be considered sneaky and unpredictable.
In fact, Enki (Ea) acts this way in Atrahasis as well
when he disobeys his promise to his fellow gods and reveals
the secret plans to Atrahasis about the great flood.
We also saw the Hindu gods play tricks on the demons in "The
Churning of the Milky Ocean." Watch for this motif later.
Ninhursag
lovingly embraces the dying Enki. She carefully places
Enki's head "on her vagina" in a symbolic representation of
a birthing posture. Ninhursag, the Earth Mother, will
essentially "give birth" to Enki. Recall Joseph Campbell's
comments about the universal motif of being "twice born" or
"born again." This is what is occurring here.
Near the
end of the story, Ninhursag asks Enki where he hurts, and
he replies with eight different areas of pain (from the eight
plants that he consumed). Amongst this list is a reference
to the mouth (ka). Look for a parallel
in the Egyptian unit, where Ka will be one of
three forms of a human soul as it leaves the body (through
the mouth) on its journey to the afterlife.
Also of
note is the reference to Enki's pain in his ribs (ti
is the Sumerian words for "rib"). When Ninhursag cures
Enki of each disease, she "gives birth" to this energy in
different forms. When she rebirths Enki's rib pain,
it arrives in the form of a goddess Ninti, which is
an interesting play on words in its original language.
"Ninti" means three things: "lady of the rib," "queen of the
months," and "she who makes live." Although we don't
appreciate these puns since we don't speak Sumerian, there
is a clear connection to the creation story in Genesis
2. Eve (who was
born of Adam's rib) is
also referred to as "she who makes life" or "mother of
all living things." Remember that the Enki story
is two or three thousand years older than Genesis (which
was written between 1200-400 BCE). We don't know how
long these stories existed in the oral tradition of prehistory.
Such references are scattered throughout the literature of
the Near East, and a few of them find their way into the Old
Testament too. Watch for more connections like these.
Enki is
eventually cured and humbled. He vows to be more modest
in his behavior, and he learns a valuable lesson about being
responsible. Although we can see a lesson at the end
here about respecting one's limits, we should not look for
too many morals in these myths. Mythology is not dogmatic,
and the authors are not interested in teaching people lessons
of proper behavior (except in the ways that we are supposed
to manage the dualities). Myths teach us how the
world around us operates, not the ways that we should behave
in a society. This myth is likely instructing farmers that
too much or too little irrigation can harm the crops.
What may surprise
you is the fact that Sumerian children practiced their grammar
by writing this story. In fact, archaeologists have
uncovered thousands of practice tablets in old ruins of Sumerian
schools. Young schoolchildren would rehearse their grammar
by writing out passages from Enki and Ninhursag, much
like students in the European Middle Ages rehearsed their
language skills by writing out Bible quotes.
Announcements
We did not cover
The Power of Myth in class due to time constraints.
We will examine some of its contents in class on Tuesday,
so please bring the book. We are now caught up with the syllabus.
Once again,
please read the important
statement regarding the coursepackets in case
you need to place a special order.
The readings
linked below will be the LAST coursepacket documents that
I provide for you online. Please acquire your coursepackets
this week to acquire the documents for all future readings.
Finally, remember
that I have expectations of you CITING
YOUR SOURCES on your quizzes. If you have not yet
read this document, please do.
The following
readings are due next Tuesday and Thursday (they are to be
read before entering class). Please print
the links designated with a green
arrow, annotate them, and bring them to class. The quiz
is marked with a red arrow.
Due
Tuesday 5 September
Due
Thursday 7 September
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