Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [71]
In another story, Enki broght water to the barren isle of Dilmun, which many biblical scholars associate with the real Persian Gulf island of Bahrain, off the coast of Saudi Arabia. After this, Dilmun was transformed into an idyllic paradise where animals did not harm each other and there was no sickness or old age. Many scholars feel that this Mesopotamian paradise might have provided some inspiration for the biblical Garden of Eden, but there are also significant differences between these earthly paradises.
In a somewhat obscure but intriguing story, Enki went on to father a group of goddesses through a series of incestuous unions with his daughters and granddaughters. But when his wife, the mother goddess Ninhursaga, discovered Enki pursuing their daughters, she became angry, and cursed him so sickness attacked eight parts of his body. He was then cured by having sex with Ninhursaga. This myth is believed to be a warning against incestuous rape and unbridled sexuality.
As the water god, Enki also figures prominently in a pair of Mesopotamian flood narratives. (See below, Who came first, Gilgamesh or Noah?)
Enlil (Ellil) The son of An and brother of Enki, the god of wind and air, and for a time replaces his father as king of the gods and chief god of the Sumerians. As lord of the wind, he can be either destructive or benevolent. In one story, he watches Ninlil (see Ninhursaga), the grain goddess, as she bathes, and, unable to resist, rapes her. For this sexual assault, he is banished from his cult city Nippur by the assembly of gods.
Enlil descends to the underworld, but the pregnant Ninlil follows him there so their son can be born in his presence. The child becomes the moon god Nanna, but before they can leave the underworld, they must have other children who can survive there, which would allow Nanna to leave. This story of Enlil “dying” and then returning to earth is another of the earliest examples of the widespread concept of a dying and reborn god—the concept that so trans-fixed James Frazer in The Golden Bough—which is repeated many times in other myths.
Inanna (Ishtar) “Lady of Heaven” is the most complex and in many ways influential Mesopotamian deity. The Sumerian goddess of love, sex appeal, and battle, she is significant not only in Sumer but in other, later mythologies. She is described in one text as the one whom not even 120 lovers could exhaust. She is adapted in later myths of Western Asia and reappears in other cultures as Astarte (Canaan), Cybele (Anatolia), Aphrodite (Greece), and Venus (Rome). Patron goddess of the city of Uruk, she is also identified with the planet Venus, the brightest object in the night sky, and the disappearance and reappearance of the planet were explained by Inanna’s descent into the underworld in one of the oldest versions of the universal myth of the journey of souls from the land of the living to the land of the dead. (This central Mesopotamia myth of Inanna and her husband Dumuzi is told in detail below. See How did an angry goddess make the seasons?)
Inanna also figures prominently in Gilgamesh, and as the patron goddess of prostitutes, she is the most significant figure in the annual rite on New Year’s Day in which a priestess representing Inanna couples with the real-life king. This ritual was probably enacted by the living king with a temple prostitute who represented the goddess.
Marduk The son of Enki; later emerges as the chief god of Babylon after defeating Tiamat, the she-dragon, in the epic battle described in the Enuma Elish.
Known in the Bible as Merodach and later as Bel (or Baal), Marduk essentially became one of the chief adversaries of the Hebrew God. Several actual kings with names related to Marduk (Evil-Merodach, Merodach-baladan) appear in biblical records.
After the conquest of Sumer by the Akkadians,