Enki and Ninhursag begot Ninsar, Lady of Plants, in the paradise of Dilmun, and Nanshe, goddess of social justice and dream interpretation, in the hymnic tradition of Lagash.
Anu and the primordial sea goddess Nammu begot Enki, lord of wisdom and the underground waters, in Sumerian tradition.
⚠ The Enuma Elish traces Enki's (Ea's) lineage differently, making him a descendant of Anshar and Kishar through a separate cosmogonic line.
In the Enuma Elish, Marduk is the son of Ea (Enki) and Damkina. They raised him in the Apsu, and Ea later proposed Marduk as champion against Tiamat.
Enki pursued his granddaughter Ninkurra as she walked along the riverbank in Dilmun, and from their nine-day union the weaving goddess Uttu was born.
Enki seduced his daughter Ninsar by the waterside in Dilmun, and after nine days she bore Ninkurra, goddess of mountain pastures — the second in a chain of generations sprung from the god's relentless desire.
Asarluhi, the god of exorcism from Kuara, was the son of Enki, inheriting his father's mastery of incantation and magic to drive out evil spirits and disease demons.
Enki wooed the weaving goddess Uttu with gifts of cucumbers, apples, and grapes, overcoming her resistance, and lay with her in Dilmun — though Ninhursag would soon undo what the union had sown.
Babylonian theologians declared 'Ea of the gods is Marduk of counsel,' absorbing the wisdom-god's incantatory and crafting powers into Marduk's supreme identity through the theological program that equated all divine functions with the patron of Babylon.
Enki (Ea), Marduk's father, slew Apsu and proposed Marduk as champion against Tiamat. Father and son cooperated throughout the Enuma Elish to establish divine order.
Enki warned Utnapishtim of the coming flood by speaking to the reed wall of his hut — a legal fiction to circumvent Enlil's oath of secrecy — allowing him to build a boat and survive (Atrahasis; Epic of Gilgamesh).
Enki kept the me, the divine decrees governing all civilized arts, in his temple the E-abzu at Eridu, holding them in trust until Inanna plied him with beer and carried the powers away to Uruk aboard the Boat of Heaven.
In the Enuma Elish, Enki (Ea) slew Apsu, the primordial freshwater ocean, after putting him to sleep with a powerful spell. Enki then built his temple upon Apsu's body.
Eridu was Enki's sacred city and site of the Abzu temple, where he kept the Me (divine decrees) and dispensed wisdom to humanity. Sumerian tradition held it as the first city where kingship descended from heaven.
Enki commands Isimud as his two-faced sukkal, dispatching him to pluck forbidden plants in Dilmun and to pursue Inanna's Boat of Heaven in a vain attempt to reclaim the me that Enki had drunkenly bestowed.
Enlil and Enki fashioned Ashnan, goddess of grain, in the gods' own chamber on the cosmic hill, because the Anunnaki hungered and neither bread nor beer yet existed in the world.
Enlil and Enki fashioned Lahar, goddess of cattle, in the gods' own chamber, because the Anunnaki had no flocks and knew neither wool for clothing nor milk for sustenance.
Enki devised the plan to create Lullu from clay mixed with the blood and flesh of the slain god We-ilu, while Ninhursag shaped the fourteen pieces of clay into the first seven pairs of men and women to bear the gods' labor.
The Anunnaki, the great gods of heaven and earth, assembled at Nippur to decree the fates of gods and mortals — their collective verdicts shaping the course of creation, sending floods to destroy mankind, and raising or casting down kings and deities alike.
After Anu took the heavens for himself, Enlil claimed the earth and atmosphere. This tripartite division of the cosmos — heaven to Anu, earth and air to Enlil, waters to Enki — established the fundamental order of Mesopotamian theology.
Enlil decreed the Great Flood to destroy humanity, whose noise kept him from sleep. Enki defied the decree by warning Utnapishtim through a reed wall, and when the waters receded and Enlil found a survivor, he was furious — but Enki's rebuke moved him to grant Utnapishtim and his wife immortality.
Ninhursag intervened to protect Uttu from Enki's advances, wiping his seed from the weaving goddess's body and planting it in the earth, where it grew into the eight sacred plants that Enki would later devour.
Enki created Adapa as the first of the seven sages and granted him wisdom but not eternal life. He then warned Adapa to refuse Anu's offered food, inadvertently costing him immortality.
At Ninsikila's plea, Enki commanded Utu to bring fresh water from the earth into Dilmun, transforming the parched paradise into a garden watered by sweet springs and irrigation channels.
Enki appointed Enbilulu as inspector of the Tigris and Euphrates when the god of wisdom organized the cosmos, placing the rivers and canals that fed all Mesopotamian cities under Enbilulu's watchful care.
Enki created the kurgarra and galatur from the dirt beneath his fingernails and sent them to the underworld to win Ereshkigal's sympathy. Echoing her groans of pain, they moved her to grant them Inanna's corpse, which they revived with the food and water of life.
Enki possessed the Me (divine decrees) and Inanna visited him at Eridu, where she persuaded him to give her the Me. She carried them back to Uruk, establishing her city's cultural supremacy.
After Ea cast his spell of sleep upon Apsu and slew him, Mummu was seized and led away bound by a nose-rope, his counsel undone and his master destroyed.
When the gods groaned under the burden of labor, Nammu gathered their tears and bore them to her sleeping son Enki in the Abzu, rousing him to devise a solution — the creation of humankind.
In the myth of Nergal and Ereshkigal, Enki (Ea) advises Nergal and provides him with magical staffs and fourteen demon companions to protect him during his descent to the underworld.
Enki appointed Ninagal over the forge and the smelting of ores, assigning him dominion over the craft of metalworking when the god of wisdom organized the arts of civilization.
After Enki ate eight sacred plants without permission, Ninhursag cursed him with eight afflictions and withdrew her gaze. She later relented and healed each ailment by birthing a healing deity for each organ.
Ninsikila went before Enki and lamented that her pure land Dilmun had no fresh water, whereupon Enki commanded Utu to draw sweet springs from the earth and fill the city's wells, transforming the barren paradise into a fertile garden.
Ninhursag created Ninti specifically to cure the pain in Enki's rib after he fell ill from eating the forbidden plants of Dilmun, her very name encoding the healing — ti meaning both "rib" and "life" in Sumerian.
Enki aided Ninurta against Anzu, devising the stratagem of severing its wings. But in Ninurta and the Turtle, Enki grew wary of Ninurta's ambition after he recovered the divine powers, creating a turtle that dragged the warrior god into a pit.
Enki placed the measuring rod and line in Nisaba's hands and appointed her over the scribal art, making the goddess of grain also the keeper of accounts, surveys, and all that is written on clay.
Enki, bound by oath not to reveal the gods' plan, whispered the secret of the Great Flood to a reed wall while his servant Atrahasis listened on the other side — circumventing Enlil's decree and ensuring that one righteous man would survive to preserve the seed of mankind.
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