The prominence of Enlil in royal inscriptions would derive from his role as a patron of kingship rather than his unquestionable superiority, which would also explain his secondary role in other textual sources (onomastics, hymns, myths, etc.) where Enki’s presence as a more caring, benevolent god, is quite pronounced. The discussion of the mythological texts concludes with cautious statements about the fluid nature of the Sumerian pantheon -it is impossible to identify a single deity as the uncontested head of the divine hierarchy, given that Early Mesopotamian religion emerged as a palimpsest of numerous local and tribal beliefs (p. 189). Having revisited the mythological accounts, the book posits that neither can one detect a true rivalry between Enki and Enlil in the earlier texts, nor can any one of these significant deities be identified as “intrusive” into the Sumerian religion. The author provides a good overview of the long history of the scholarly discussion surrounding this theory. ix discusses the supposed conflict between the gods Enki and Enlil, often interpreted as an echo of a rivalry between the temples of Eridu and Nippur. Despite the seemingly wide semantic range of the former and the dearth of sources for the latter, P. Espak is able to convincingly demonstrate that while abzu was originally fathomed as a terrestrial, underground realm, engur was more closely associated with marshes and sweetwater. Section 8.3 is a more indepth discussion of the Sumerian concepts of abzu and engur, two mythical entities closely related to Enki. The author’s analysis of the mythological texts allows him to discuss interesting connections between Mesopotamian literature and the later Biblical traditions. Section 8.5 focuses on Enki the Engenderer, describing his relationship with different mother-goddess figures and copulation motifs. Sections 8.2 and 8.4 describe Enki’s role as the creator of the natural world and mankind. viii and ix deal almost entirely with mythological texts. If the ordering of divine names in inscriptions can indeed be dictated by phonetics, one cannot help but wonder how valuable these sources can be for reconstructing past belief systems, let alone sociopolitical realities.ģChap. Yet, for example, in his discussion of an inscription of Iahdun-Lim (p. 120), he notes that the still separate gods Ea and Ayya are mentioned together, probably due to similarities in their names. Despite acknowledging the limitations of the material, P. Espak extensively uses the frequency and ordering of the divine names as a proxy for the changes in the hierarchy of the ancient pantheon and political history.
On the one hand, highly formulaic and often laconic, on the other seemingly susceptible to personal preferences of individual rulers, the royal inscriptions allow for little but general statements regarding the ancient religion. Nonetheless, long discussions about the order of divine names in the invocations is where the book reveals its only major flaw. This diachronic structure of the argument also lets him trace the relationship between the Sumerian god Enki and the Semitic Ayya/Ea. For example, P. Espak fails to find evidence for seeing Enki as a patron of sweetwater and irrigation, rather highlighting the deity’s connections to the chthonic cult and the Underworld.
An indepth analysis and interpretation of this body of material allows the author to address and criticise some of the longstanding assumptions within Ancient Near Eastern Studies. i to vii are an exhaustive survey of royal inscriptions mentioning Enki/Ea from the successive historical periods (from the Early Dynastic to the First Dynasty of Babylon). References to other sources of information regarding ancient beliefs and worship, such as archaeology, onomastics, religious texts and wisdom literature, appear scattered across the volume where deemed relevant to the argument.ĢThe book opens with a concise introduction which explains the work’s structure and clearly states the author’s goals, methodology and scope.
The author focuses on two main bodies of evidence: royal inscriptions and mythological texts. 1P. Espak’s book The God Enki is a daring attempt to compile and interpret the available Sumerian sources pertaining to the all-important figure of the god Enki/Ea and related deities.