The Epic of Gilgamesh - Anonymous [51]
EA: Sumerian Enki; god of the sweet waters, also of wisdom, a patron of arts and one of the creators of mankind, towards whom he is usually well-disposed. The chief god of Eridu, where he had a temple, he lived ‘in the deep’; his ancestry is uncertain, but he was probably a child of Anu. See p. 26.
EANNA: The temple precinct in Uruk sacred to Anu and Ishtar.
EGALMAH: The ‘Great Palace’ in Uruk, the home of the goddess Ninsun, the mother of Gilgamesh, See p. 15.
ENDUKUGGA: With Nindukugga, Sumerian gods living in the underworld; parents of Enlil.
ENKIDU: Moulded by Aruru, goddess of creation, out of clay in the image and ‘of the essence of Anu’, the sky-god, and of Ninurta the war-god. The companion of Gilgamesh, he is wild or natural man; he was later considered a patron or god of animals and may have been the hero of another cycle. See p. 30.
ENLIL: God of earth, wind, and the universal air, ultimately spirit; the executive of Anu. In the Sumerian cosmogony he was born of the union of An heaven, and Ki earth. These he separated, and he then carried off earth as his portion. In later times he supplanted Anu as chief god. He was the patron of the city of Nippur. See p. 24.
ENMUL: See Endukugga.
ENNUGI: God of irrigation and inspector of canals.
ENUMA ELISH: The Semitic creation epic which describes the creation of the gods, the defeat of the powers of chaos by the young god Marduk, and the creation of man from the blood of Kingu, the defeated champion of chaos. The title is taken from the first words of the epic ‘When on high’.
ERESHKIGAL: The Queen of the underworld, a counterpart of Persephone; probably once a sky-goddess. In the Sumerian cosmogony she was carried off to the underworld after the separation of heaven and earth. See p. 27.
ETANA: Legendary king of Kish who reigned after the flood; in the epic which bears his name he was carried to heaven on the back of an eagle.
GILGAMESH: The hero of the Epic; son of the goddess Ninsun and of a priest of Kullab, fifth king of Uruk after the flood, famous as a great builder and as a judge of the dead. A cycle of epic poems has collected round his name. See p. 20.
HANISH: A divine herald of storm and bad weather.
HUMBABA: Also Huwawa; a guardian of the cedar forest who opposes Gilgamesh and is killed by him and Enkidu. A nature divinity, perhaps an Anatolian, Elamite, or Syrian god. See p. 32.
IGIGI: Collective name for the great gods of heaven.
IRKALLA: Another name for Ereshkigal, the Queen of the underworld.
ISHTAR: Sumerian Inanna; the goddess of love and fertility, also goddess of war, called the Queen of Heaven. She is the daughter of Anu and patroness of Uruk, where she has a temple. See p. 25.
ISHULLANA: The gardener of Anu, once loved by Ishtar whom he rejected; he was turned by her into a mole or frog.
KI: The earth.
KULLAB: Part of Uruk.
LUGULBANDA: Third king of the post-diluvian dynasty of Uruk, a god and shepherd, and hero of a cycle of Sumerian poems; protector of Gilgamesh. See p. 19.
MAGAN: A land to the west of Mesopotamia, sometimes Egypt or Arabia, and sometimes the land of the dead, the underworld.
MAGILUM: Uncertain meaning, perhaps ‘the boat of the dead’.
MAMMETUM: Ancestral goddess responsible for destinies.
MAN-SCORPION: Guardian, with a similar female monster, of the mountain into which the sun descends at nightfall. Shown on sealings and ivory inlays as a figure with the upper part of the body human and the lower part ending in a scorpion’s tail. According to the Enuma Elish created by the primeval waters in order to fight the gods.
MASHU: The word means ‘twins’ in the Akkadian language. A mountain with twin peaks into which the sun descends at nightfall and from which it returns at dawn. Sometimes thought of as Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon.
NAMTAR: Fate, destiny in its evil aspect; pictured as a demon of the underworld, also a messenger and chief minister of Ereshkigal; a bringer of disease