Origins of Enki

Origination

The deity Enki was born first into the world within the hearts and minds of the ancient Mesopotamian people, the Sumerians. Enki was the chief deity of the city of Eridu. According to the ancient Sumerian text, called the “king list”, Eridu was the first city in the world. Eridu was located just near the mouth of the Euphrates River, on the Persian Gulf. However, because of the gradual building up of silt and soil along the shoreline over many hundreds of years, Eridu is now located further away at Abu Shahrain in Iraq.

Enki was Eridu’s deity of wisdon, creation, and water. Later on, he became Ea, and more associated with the earth than the water. The original meaning of the name “Enki” is not entirely known. “En” is translated to mean “lord”, while “ki” is translated to “earth.” However, Ea –which is from Babylonian mythology, is supposed to have come from one, or perhaps both of two different regions. Ea is usually claimed to be Hurrian in origin, while other historians debate that it is instead West-Semitic in origin, and means something more along the lines of “lord of water.”

As previously mentioned, the people of Eridu lived in an area that was mostly wetlands at the time, so it comes as no surprise that their chief god would be of both water and earth. To illustrate the point, think of an old question you might have heard from school. “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” It’s the same here, whereas Earth was where life took place, and was born, but Water was the gift of life itself. It is hard to separate the two, and many systems of mythology instead pair the two elements as Mother & Father. However, the Sumerian belief was that Enki was in some ways, both. And in a swamp, where technically, the people of Eridu lived, water and earth are both.