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121-406: In contrast to the incantation šēp lemutti ina bīt amēli parāsu , “to block the foot of evil into a man’s house,” which provides the ritual to be performed to protect a house from demonic attack, bīt mēseri prescribes the activities to be performed when someone has already become ill, which was assumed to be under demonic assault. The first tablet is extant in fragmentary form and probably included

242-691: A lingua franca of the empire, rather than it being eclipsed by Akkadian. Texts written 'exclusively' in Neo-Assyrian disappear within 10 years of Nineveh 's destruction in 612 BC. Under the Achaemenids , Aramaic continued to prosper, but Assyrian continued its decline. The language's final demise came about during the Hellenistic period when it was further marginalized by Koine Greek , even though Neo-Assyrian cuneiform remained in use in literary tradition well into Parthian times. Similarly,

363-650: A voiced alveolar trill /r/ but its pattern of alternation with ⟨ ḫ ⟩ suggests it was a fricative (either uvular /ʁ/ or velar /ɣ/ ). In the Hellenistic period, Akkadian ⟨ r ⟩ was transcribed using the Greek ρ, indicating it was pronounced similarly as an alveolar sound (though Greeks may also have perceived a uvular trill as ρ). Several Proto-Semitic phonemes are lost in Akkadian. The Proto-Semitic glottal stop *ʔ , as well as

484-400: A boat in order to rescue his family and other living creatures from the coming deluge. After the seven-day deluge, the flood hero frees a swallow, a raven and a dove in an effort to find if the flood waters have receded. Upon landing, a sacrifice is made to the gods. Enlil is angry his will has been thwarted yet again, and Enki is named as the culprit. Enki explains that Enlil is unfair to punish

605-517: A comparison with other Semitic languages, and the resulting picture was gradually amended using internal linguistic evidence from Akkadian sources, especially deriving from so-called plene spellings (spellings with an extra vowel). According to this widely accepted system, the place of stress in Akkadian is completely predictable and sensitive to syllable weight . There are three syllable weights: light (ending in -V); heavy (ending in -V̄ or -VC), and superheavy (ending in -V̂, -V̄C or -V̂C). If

726-641: A dragon from É-Ninkiagnunna, the Ištar temple of Šulgi ; The four apkallus , of human descent, whom the Lord Ea has endowed with broad understanding. At the end of the third tablet, the statues are discarded in the river and the drawings erased from the walls. The fourth tablet is fragmentary. Enki Enki ( Sumerian : 𒀭𒂗𒆠 EN-KI ) is the Sumerian god of water , knowledge ( gestú ), crafts ( gašam ), and creation ( nudimmud ), and one of

847-667: A family native to Middle East , Arabian Peninsula , parts of Anatolia , parts of the Horn of Africa , North Africa , Malta , Canary Islands and parts of West Africa ( Hausa ). Akkadian is only ever attested in Mesopotamia and neighboring regions in the Near East. Within the Near Eastern Semitic languages, Akkadian forms an East Semitic subgroup (with Eblaite and perhaps Dilmunite ). This group differs from

968-403: A good fate is decreed. Enmegalamma , who was born in a house. Enmebulugga , who grew up in a pasture land. Anenlida , the conjuror from Eridu . Utuabzu , "who ascended to heaven." ( ša ana šamê ilū ) The pure purādu -fishes, the purādu -fishes from the sea, the seven of them, the seven apkallus , born in the river, who control the plans of heaven and earth. Nungalpiriggaldim ,

1089-468: A locative ending in -um in the singular and the resulting forms serve as adverbials . These forms are generally not productive, but in the Neo-Babylonian the um -locative replaces several constructions with the preposition ina . In the later stages of Akkadian, the mimation (word-final -m ) and nunation (dual final -n ) that occurred at the end of most case endings disappeared, except in

1210-486: A loss to know what to do; chagrined they "sit in the dust". As Enki lacks a birth canal through which to give birth, he seems to be dying with swellings. The fox then asks Enlil , King of the Gods , "If I bring Ninhursag before thee, what shall be my reward?" Ninhursag's sacred fox then fetches the goddess. Ninhursag relents and takes Enki's Ab (water, or semen) into her body, and gives birth to gods of healing of each part of

1331-502: A part merely in association with her lord. Generally, however, Enki seems to be a reflection of pre-patriarchal times, in which relations between the sexes were characterised by a situation of greater gender equality . In his character, he prefers persuasion to conflict, which he seeks to avoid if possible. In 1964, a team of Italian archaeologists under the direction of Paolo Matthiae of the University of Rome La Sapienza performed

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1452-672: A place where "the raven uttered no cries" and "the lion killed not, the wolf snatched not the lamb, unknown was the kid-killing dog, unknown was the grain devouring boar", Dilmun had no water and Enki heard the cries of its goddess, Ninsikil, and orders the sun-god Utu to bring fresh water from the Earth for Dilmun. As a result, Her City Drinks the Water of Abundance, Dilmun Drinks the Water of Abundance, Her wells of bitter water, behold they are become wells of good water, Her fields and farms produced crops and grain, Her city, behold it has become

1573-403: A separate East Semitic language. Because Akkadian as a spoken language is extinct and no contemporary descriptions of the pronunciation are known, little can be said with certainty about the phonetics and phonology of Akkadian. Some conclusions can be made, however, due to the relationship to the other Semitic languages and variant spellings of Akkadian words. The following table presents

1694-563: A series of excavations of material from the third-millennium BCE city of Ebla . Much of the written material found in these digs was later translated by Giovanni Pettinato . Among other conclusions, he found a tendency among the inhabitants of Ebla, after the reign of Sargon of Akkad , to replace the name of El , king of the gods of the Canaanite pantheon (found in names such as Mikael and Ishmael), with Ia (Mikaia, Ishmaia). Jean Bottéro (1952) and others suggested that Ia in this case

1815-611: A team of divinities to help him, creating a host of "good and princely fashioners". He tells his mother: Oh my mother, the creature whose name thou has uttered, it exists, Bind upon it the (will?) of the Gods; Mix the heart of clay that is over the Abyss, The good and princely fashioners will thicken the clay Thou, do thou bring the limbs into existence; Ninmah (Ninhursag, his wife and consort) will work above thee ( Nintu ?) (goddess of birth) will stand by thy fashioning; Oh my mother, decree thou its (the new born's) fate. Adapa,

1936-499: A written language, adapting Sumerian cuneiform orthography for the purpose. During the Middle Bronze Age (Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian period), the language virtually displaced Sumerian, which is assumed to have been extinct as a living language by the 18th century BC. Old Akkadian, which was used until the end of the 3rd millennium BC, differed from both Babylonian and Assyrian, and was displaced by these dialects. By

2057-609: Is PaRiStum (< *PaRiS-at-um ). Additionally there is a general tendency of syncope of short vowels in the later stages of Akkadian. Most roots of the Akkadian language consist of three consonants, called the radicals, but some roots are composed of four consonants, so-called quadriradicals. The radicals are occasionally represented in transcription in upper-case letters, for example PRS (to decide). Between and around these radicals various infixes , suffixes and prefixes , having word generating or grammatical functions, are inserted. The resulting consonant-vowel pattern differentiates

2178-588: Is a fusional language with grammatical case . Like all Semitic languages, Akkadian uses the system of consonantal roots . The Kültepe texts , which were written in Old Assyrian , include Hittite loanwords and names, which constitute the oldest record of any Indo-European language . Akkadian belongs with the other Semitic languages in the Near Eastern branch of the Afroasiatic languages ,

2299-572: Is a West Semitic (Canaanite) way of pronouncing the Akkadian name Ea . Scholars largely reject the theory identifying this Ia with the Israelite theonym YHWH , while explaining how it might have been misinterpreted. Ia has also been compared by William Hallo with the Ugaritic god Yamm ("Sea"), (also called Judge Nahar, or Judge River) whose earlier name in at least one ancient source

2420-497: Is an interesting change of gender symbolism, the fertilising agent is also water, Sumerian "a" or "Ab" which also means "semen". In one evocative passage in a Sumerian hymn, Enki stands at the empty riverbeds and fills them with his 'water'". The cosmogenic myth common in Sumer was that of the hieros gamos , a sacred marriage where divine principles in the form of dualistic opposites came together as male and female to give birth to

2541-442: Is divided into several varieties based on geography and historical period : One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur , addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur ( c.  2485 –2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad. The Akkadian Empire , established by Sargon of Akkad , introduced the Akkadian language (the "language of Akkad ") as

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2662-462: Is generally termed the son of Ea, who derives his powers from the voluntary abdication of the father in favour of his son. Accordingly, the incantations originally composed for the Ea cult were re-edited by the priests of Babylon and adapted to the worship of Marduk , and, similarly, the hymns to Marduk betray traces of the transfer to Marduk of attributes which originally belonged to Ea. It is, however, as

2783-463: Is marked by the Kassite invasion of Babylonia around 1550 BC. The Kassites, who reigned for 300 years, gave up their own language in favor of Akkadian, but they had little influence on the language. At its apogee, Middle Babylonian was the written language of diplomacy of the entire Ancient Near East , including Egypt ( Amarna Period ). During this period, a large number of loan words were included in

2904-606: Is often shown with the horned crown of divinity. On the Adda Seal, Enki is depicted with two streams of water flowing into each of his shoulders: one the Tigris, the other the Euphrates. Alongside him are two trees, symbolizing the male and female aspects of nature. He is shown wearing a flounced skirt and a cone-shaped hat. An eagle descends from above to land upon his outstretched right arm. This portrayal reflects Enki's role as

3025-507: Is preserved on clay tablets dating back to c.  2500 BC . It was written using cuneiform , a script adopted from the Sumerians using wedge-shaped symbols pressed in wet clay. As employed by Akkadian scribes, the adapted cuneiform script could represent either (a) Sumerian logograms ( i.e. , picture-based characters representing entire words), (b) Sumerian syllables, (c) Akkadian syllables, or (d) phonetic complements . In Akkadian

3146-660: Is required to bring plants to fruit. It also counsels balance and responsibility, nothing to excess. Ninti, the title of Ninhursag, also means "the mother of all living", and was a title later given to the Hurrian goddess Kheba . This is also the title given in the Bible to Eve , the Hebrew and Aramaic Ḥawwah (חוה), who was made from the rib of Adam, in a strange reflection of the Sumerian myth, in which Adam – not Enki – walks in

3267-501: Is then [awat+su] > /awatt͡su/ . In this vein, an alternative transcription of ⟨ š ⟩ is ⟨ s̱ ⟩, with the macron below indicating a soft (lenis) articulation in Semitic transcription. Other interpretations are possible. /ʃ/ could have been assimilated to the preceding /t/ , yielding /ts/ , which would later have been simplified to /ss/ . The rhotic ⟨ r ⟩ has traditionally been interpreted as

3388-684: Is translated as a title equivalent to " lord " and was originally a title given to the High Priest. Ki means "earth", but there are theories that ki in this name has another origin, possibly kig of unknown meaning, or kur meaning "mound". The name Ea is allegedly Hurrian in origin while others claim that his name 'Ea' is possibly of Semitic origin and may be a derivation from the West-Semitic root *hyy meaning "life" in this case used for "spring", "running water". In Sumerian E-A means "the house of water", and it has been suggested that this

3509-526: The mes . The next morning, when Enki awakes with a hangover, he asks his servant Isimud for the mes , only to be informed that he has given them to Inanna. Upset, he sends Galla to recover them. Inanna sails away in the boat of heaven and arrives safely back at the quay of Uruk. Eventually, Enki admits his defeat and accepts a peace treaty with Uruk. Politically, this myth would seem to indicate events of an early period when political authority passed from Enki's city of Eridu to Inanna's city of Uruk. In

3630-456: The Anunnaki . He was later known as Ea ( Akkadian : 𒀭𒂍𒀀 ) or Ae in Akkadian ( Assyrian - Babylonian ) religion , and is identified by some scholars with Ia in Canaanite religion . The name was rendered Aos in Greek sources (e.g. Damascius ). He was originally the patron god of the city of Eridu , but later the influence of his cult spread throughout Mesopotamia and to

3751-410: The Canaanite 'ilhm pantheon . He is also found in Hurrian and Hittite mythology as a god of contracts, and is particularly favourable to humankind. It has been suggested that etymologically the name Ea comes from the term *hyy (life), referring to Enki's waters as life-giving. Enki/Ea is essentially a god of civilization, wisdom, and culture. He was also the creator and protector of man, and of

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3872-614: The Canaanites , Hittites and Hurrians . He was associated with the southern band of constellations called stars of Ea , but also with the constellation AŠ-IKU , the Field ( Square of Pegasus ). Beginning around the second millennium BCE, he was sometimes referred to in writing by the numeric ideogram for "40", occasionally referred to as his "sacred number". The planet Mercury , associated with Babylonian Nabu (the son of Marduk ) was, in Sumerian times, identified with Enki, as

3993-542: The Northwest Semitic languages and South Semitic languages in its subject–object–verb word order, while the other Semitic languages usually have either a verb–subject–object or subject–verb–object order. Additionally Akkadian is the only Semitic language to use the prepositions ina and ana ( locative case , English in / on / with , and dative -locative case, for / to , respectively). Other Semitic languages like Arabic , Hebrew and Aramaic have

4114-465: The Old Babylonian period . The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Akkadian, Modern Standard Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew : The existence of a back mid-vowel /o/ has been proposed, but the cuneiform writing gives no good proof for this. There is limited contrast between different u-signs in lexical texts, but this scribal differentiation may reflect

4235-656: The Persian conquest of the Mesopotamian kingdoms contributed to the decline of Babylonian, from that point on known as Late Babylonian, as a popular language. However, the language was still used in its written form. Even after the Greek invasion under Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, Akkadian was still a contender as a written language, but spoken Akkadian was likely extinct by this time, or at least rarely used. The last positively identified Akkadian text comes from

4356-557: The apkallu of Enmerkar , who brought down Ištar from heaven into the sanctuary. Piriggalnungal , born in Kiš , who angered the god Adad in heaven, so he allowed neither rain nor growth in the land for three years. Piriggalabzu , born in Adab , who hung his seal on a “goat fish” and thereby angered the god Ea in the fresh water sea, so that a fuller struck him with his own seal. The fourth, Lu-Nanna , two-thirds apkallu , who expelled

4477-598: The consonants of the Akkadian language, as distinguished in Akkadian cuneiform. The reconstructed phonetic value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, alongside its standard ( DMG-Umschrift ) transliteration in angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ . Evidence from borrowings from and to Sumerian has been interpreted as indicating that the Akkadian voiceless non-emphatic stops were originally unaspirated, but became aspirated around 2000 BCE. Akkadian emphatic consonants are typically reconstructed as ejectives , which are thought to be

4598-400: The status absolutus (the absolute state ) and the status constructus ( construct state ). The latter is found in all other Semitic languages, while the former appears only in Akkadian and some dialects of Aramaic. The status absolutus is characterised by the loss of a noun's case ending (e.g. awīl < awīlum , šar < šarrum ). It is relatively uncommon, and is used chiefly to mark

4719-535: The third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from the 8th century BC. Akkadian, which is the earliest documented Semitic language , is named after the city of Akkad , a major centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire ( c.  2334 –2154 BC). It was written using the cuneiform script , originally used for Sumerian , but also used to write multiple languages in

4840-407: The āšipu is the very image of Marduk." It describes the events (deaths, confusion and unhappiness) which have befallen the house and led to the selection of this ritual and then provides a lengthy list of figures and incantations. The text describes in detail how figurines should be formed and paintings drawn of the apkallus , "sages," and the invocation to make them incarnate. They are arranged in

4961-596: The 10th century BC when the Assyrian kingdom became a major power with the Neo-Assyrian Empire . During the existence of that empire, however, Neo-Assyrian began to turn into a chancellery language, being marginalized by Old Aramaic . The dominance of the Neo-Assyrian Empire under Tiglath-Pileser III over Aram-Damascus in the middle of the 8th century led to the establishment of Aramaic as

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5082-561: The 1st century AD. The latest known text in cuneiform Babylonian is an astronomical almanac dated to 79/80 AD. However, the latest cuneiform texts are almost entirely written in Sumerian logograms. The Akkadian language began to be rediscovered when Carsten Niebuhr in 1767 was able to make extensive copies of cuneiform texts and published them in Denmark. The deciphering of the texts started immediately, and bilinguals, in particular Old Persian -Akkadian bilinguals, were of great help. Since

5203-701: The 20th century BC, two variant dialectic forms of the same language were in use in Assyria and Babylonia, known as Assyrian and Babylonian respectively. The bulk of preserved material is from this later period, corresponding to the Near Eastern Iron Age . In total, hundreds of thousands of texts and text fragments have been excavated, covering a vast textual tradition of religious and mythological narrative, legal texts, scientific works, personal correspondence, political, civil and military events, economic tracts and many other examples. Centuries after

5324-524: The 21st century BC Babylonian and Assyrian, which were to become the primary dialects, were easily distinguishable. Old Babylonian, along with the closely related dialect Mariotic , is clearly more innovative than the Old Assyrian dialect and the more distantly related Eblaite language . For this reason, forms like lu-prus ('I will decide') were first encountered in Old Babylonian instead of

5445-647: The Garden of Paradise. After six generations of gods, in the Babylonian Enûma Eliš , in the seventh generation, (Akkadian "shapattu" or sabath), the younger Igigi gods, the sons and daughters of Enlil and Ninlil, go on strike and refuse their duties of keeping creation working. Abzu , god of fresh water, co-creator of the cosmos, threatens to destroy the world with his waters, and the gods gather in terror. Enki promises to help and puts Abzu to sleep, confining him in irrigation canals and places him in

5566-456: The Gods, may they produce their (bread?). Enki then advises that they create a servant of the gods, humankind, out of clay and blood. Against Enki's wish, the gods decide to slay Kingu, and Enki finally consents to use Kingu's blood to make the first human, with whom Enki always later has a close relationship, the first of the seven sages, seven wise men or "Abgallu" ( ab = water, gal = great, lu = man), also known as Adapa . Enki assembles

5687-487: The Iron Age, during the Neo-Assyrian Empire when in the mid-eighth century BC Tiglath-Pileser III introduced Imperial Aramaic as a lingua franca of the Assyrian empire. By the Hellenistic period , the language was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last known Akkadian cuneiform document dates from the 1st century AD. Mandaic spoken by Mandean Gnostics and

5808-453: The Kur, beneath his city of Eridu . But the universe is still threatened, as Tiamat , angry at the imprisonment of Abzu and at the prompting of her son and vizier Kingu , decides to take back creation herself. The gods gather again in terror and turn to Enki for help, but Enki – who harnessed Abzu , Tiamat's consort, for irrigation – refuses to get involved. The gods then seek help elsewhere, and

5929-572: The ancient Persian Gulf coastline at Eridu . It was the first temple known to have been built in Southern Iraq. Four separate excavations at the site of Eridu have demonstrated the existence of a shrine dating back to the earliest Ubaid period , more than 6,500 years ago. Over the following 4,500 years, the temple was expanded 18 times, until it was abandoned during the Persian period. On this basis Thorkild Jacobsen has hypothesized that

6050-404: The archaeological evidence is typical of Anatolia rather than of Assyria, but the use both of cuneiform and the dialect is the best indication of Assyrian presence. Old Babylonian was the language of king Hammurabi and his code , which is one of the oldest collections of laws in the world. (see Code of Ur-Nammu .) Old Assyrian developed as well during the second millennium BC, but because it

6171-457: The bed. It concludes with a lengthy prayer to the god Nusku , who is entreated to "expel the Demon, overcome Evil, and Šulak , the nightly wanderer, whose touch is death." The third tablet of the series is perhaps why the incantation series is considered significant as it includes the earliest extant list of the apkallus . These come in three forms – ūmu-, fish- and bird- apkallus , where

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6292-411: The body: Abu for the jaw, Nanshe for the throat, Nintul for the hip, Ninsutu for the tooth, Ninkasi for the mouth, Dazimua for the side, Enshagag for the limbs. The last one, Ninti (Lady Rib), is also a pun on Lady Life, a title of Ninhursag herself. The story thus symbolically reflects the way in which life is brought forth through the addition of water to the land, and once it grows, water

6413-458: The city walls, where the dead or sick were often carried. This links Enki to the Kur or underworld of Sumerian mythology . In another even older tradition, Nammu , the goddess of the primeval creative matter and the mother-goddess portrayed as having "given birth to the great gods," was the mother of Enki, and as the watery creative force, was said to preexist Ea-Enki. Benito states "With Enki it

6534-632: The city where Inanna will not be able to find him. Enki, as the protector of whoever comes to seek his help, and as the empowerer of Inanna, here challenges the young impetuous goddess to control her anger so as to be better able to function as a great judge. Eventually, after cooling her anger, she too seeks the help of Enki, as spokesperson of the "assembly of the gods", the Igigi and the Anunnaki. After she presents her case, Enki sees that justice needs to be done and promises help, delivering knowledge of where

6655-457: The coming of irrigation water (from Sumerian a , ab , water or semen). The early inscriptions of Urukagina in fact go so far as to suggest that the divine pair, Enki and Ninki, were the progenitors of seven pairs of gods, including Enki as god of Eridu , Enlil of Nippur , and Su'en (or Sin ) of Ur , and were themselves the children of An (sky, heaven) and Ki (earth). The pool of the Abzu at

6776-465: The cosmos. In the epic Enki and Ninhursag , Enki, as lord of Ab or fresh water, is living with his wife in the paradise of Dilmun where The land of Dilmun is a pure place, the land of Dilmun is a clean place, The land of Dilmun is a clean place, the land of Dilmun is a bright place; He who is alone laid himself down in Dilmun, The place, after Enki is clean, that place is bright. Despite being

6897-485: The dialects of Akkadian identified with certainty so far. Some researchers (such as W. Sommerfeld 2003) believe that the Old Akkadian variant used in the older texts is not an ancestor of the later Assyrian and Babylonian dialects, but rather a separate dialect that was replaced by these two dialects and which died out early. Eblaite , formerly thought of as yet another Akkadian dialect, is now generally considered

7018-457: The dialects spoken by the extant Assyrians ( Suret ) are three extant Neo-Aramaic languages that retain Akkadian vocabulary and grammatical features, as well as personal and family names. These are spoken by Assyrians and Mandeans mainly in northern Iraq , southeast Turkey , northeast Syria , northwest Iran , the southern Caucasus and by communities in the Assyrian diaspora . Akkadian

7139-401: The earlier stages of the language, the dual number is vestigial, and its use is largely confined to natural pairs (eyes, ears, etc.). Adjectives are never found in the dual. In the dual and plural, the accusative and genitive are merged into a single oblique case . Akkadian, unlike Arabic , has only "sound" plurals formed by means of a plural ending. Broken plurals are not formed by changing

7260-568: The earth where eight plants rapidly germinate. With his two-faced servant and steward Isimud , "Enki, in the swampland, in the swampland lies stretched out, 'What is this (plant), what is this (plant).' His messenger Isimud, answers him; 'My king, this is the tree-plant', he says to him. He cuts it off for him and he (Enki) eats it". And so, despite warnings, Enki consumes the other seven fruit. Consuming his own semen, he falls pregnant (ill with swellings) in his jaw, his teeth, his mouth, his hip, his throat, his limbs, his side and his rib. The gods are at

7381-592: The fall of the Akkadian Empire, Akkadian, in its Assyrian and Babylonian varieties, was the native language of the Mesopotamian empires ( Old Assyrian Empire , Babylonia , Middle Assyrian Empire ) throughout the later Bronze Age, and became the lingua franca of much of the Ancient Near East by the time of the Bronze Age collapse c.  1150 BC . However, its gradual decline began in

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7502-619: The first man fashioned, later goes and acts as the advisor to the King of Eridu, when in the Sumerian King-List, the me of "kingship descends on Eridu". Samuel Noah Kramer believes that behind this myth of Enki's confinement of Abzu lies an older one of the struggle between Enki and the Dragon Kur (the underworld). The Atrahasis-Epos has it that Enlil requested from Nammu the creation of humans. And Nammu told him that with

7623-420: The first one bears stress. A rule of Akkadian phonology is that certain short (and probably unstressed) vowels are dropped. The rule is that the last vowel of a succession of syllables that end in a short vowel is dropped, for example the declinational root of the verbal adjective of a root PRS is PaRiS- . Thus the masculine singular nominative is PaRS-um (< *PaRiS-um ) but the feminine singular nominative

7744-403: The former may mean light and/or day and seem to be of human descent. In contrast to the other extant lists, there are eleven of these primordial beings, in two distinct groups, seven antediluvian and four postdiluvian: Incantation: Uanna , "who accomplishes the plans of heaven and earth." ( mušaklil uṣurāt šamê u erṣeti ). Uannedugga , who is given broad understanding. Enmedugga , to whom

7865-484: The fricatives *ʕ , *h , *ḥ are lost as consonants, either by sound change or orthographically, but they gave rise to the vowel quality e not exhibited in Proto-Semitic. The voiceless lateral fricatives ( *ś , *ṣ́ ) merged with the sibilants as in Canaanite , leaving 19 consonantal phonemes. Old Akkadian preserved the /*ś/ phoneme longest but it eventually merged with /*š/ , beginning in

7986-593: The front of his temple was adopted also at the temple to Nanna ( Akkadian Sin ) the Moon, at Ur , and spread from there throughout the Middle East. It is believed to remain today as the sacred pool at Mosques , or as the holy water font in Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches. Whether Eridu at one time also played an important political role in Sumerian affairs is not certain, though not improbable. At all events

8107-581: The god of water, life, and replenishment. Considered the master shaper of the world, god of wisdom and of all magic , Enki was characterized as the lord of the Abzu (Apsu in Akkadian), the freshwater sea or groundwater located within the earth . In the later Babylonian epic Enûma Eliš , Abzu, the "begetter of the gods", is inert and sleepy but finds his peace disturbed by the younger gods, so sets out to destroy them. His grandson Enki, chosen to represent

8228-458: The god. Of his cult at Eridu, which goes back to the oldest period of Mesopotamian history, nothing definite is known except that his temple was also associated with Ninhursag's temple which was called Esaggila , "the lofty head house" ( E , house, sag , head, ila , high; or Akkadian goddess = Ila), a name shared with Marduk's temple in Babylon, pointing to a staged tower or ziggurat (as with

8349-540: The goddess's strength and her ability to take care of herself. While Enlil tells Ninshubur he is busy running the cosmos, Enki immediately expresses concern and dispatches his Galla (Galaturra or Kurgarra, sexless beings created from the dirt from beneath the god's finger-nails) to recover the young goddess. These beings may be the origin of the Greco-Roman Galli , androgynous beings of the third sex who played an important part in early religious ritual. In

8470-470: The gods, Endowed with wisdom, the lord of Eridu Changed the speech in their mouths, [brought] contention into it, Into the speech of man that (until then) had been one. In the Sumerian version of the flood myth , the causes of the flood and the reasons for the hero's survival are unknown due to the fact that the beginning of the tablet describing the story has been destroyed. Nonetheless, Kramer has stated that it can probably be reasonably inferred that

8591-435: The guiltless, and the gods institute measures to ensure that humanity does not become too populous in the future. This is one of the oldest of the surviving Middle Eastern deluge myths . The myth Enki and Inanna tells the story of how the young goddess of the É-anna temple of Uruk feasts with her father Enki. The two deities participate in a drinking competition; then, Enki, thoroughly inebriated, gives Inanna all of

8712-488: The help of Enki (her son) she can create humans in the image of gods. In the Sumerian epic entitled Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta , in a speech of Enmerkar , an introductory spell appears, recounting Enki having had mankind communicate in one language (following Jay Crisostomo 2019); or, in other accounts, it is a hymn imploring Enki to do so. In either case, Enki "facilitated the debates between [the two kings] by allowing

8833-464: The hero Ziusudra survives due to Enki's aid because that is what happens in the later Akkadian and Babylonian versions of the story. In the later Legend of Atrahasis , Enlil, the King of the Gods, sets out to eliminate humanity, whose noise is disturbing his rest. He successively sends drought, famine and plague to eliminate humanity, but Enki thwarts his half-brother's plans by teaching Atrahasis how to counter these threats. Each time, Atrahasis asks

8954-643: The house of the banks and quays of the land. Dilmun was identified with Bahrain , whose name in Arabic means "two seas", where the fresh waters of the Arabian aquifer mingle with the salt waters of the Persian Gulf . This mingling of waters was known in Sumerian as Nammu , and was identified as the mother of Enki. The subsequent tale, with similarities to the Biblical story of the forbidden fruit, repeats

9075-406: The incipits to the incantations on the other three tablets. Offerings are made to Ea , Šamaš and Marduk and there is a purification of “all the statues of wood and [clay] that you have made.” The second tablet includes an instruction for the āšipu conducting the ritual – to impersonate the god Marduk: šiptu šipat Marduk āšipu ṣalam Marduk , "The incantation is the incantation of Marduk,

9196-437: The land, the expert of all the gods, the chosen in wisdom, the lord of Eridu, [Enki] placed an alteration of the language in their mouths. The speech of humanity is one. S.N. Kramer's 1940 translation is as follows: Once upon a time there was no snake, there was no scorpion, There was no hyena, there was no lion, There was no wild dog, no wolf, There was no fear, no terror, Man had no rival. In those days,

9317-405: The lands of Subur (and) Hamazi, Harmony-tongued Sumer, the great land of the decrees of princeship, Uri, the land having all that is appropriate, The land Martu , resting in security, The whole universe, the people in unison To Enlil in one tongue [spoke]. (Then) Enki, the lord of abundance (whose) commands are trustworthy, The lord of wisdom, who understands the land, The leader of

9438-789: The language from Northwest Semitic languages and Hurrian . However, the use of these words was confined to the fringes of the Akkadian-speaking territory. From 1500 BC onwards, the Assyrian language is termed Middle Assyrian. It was the language of the Middle Assyrian Empire . However, the Babylonian cultural influence was strong and the Assyrians wrote royal inscriptions, religious and most scholarly texts in Middle Babylonian, whereas Middle Assyrian

9559-482: The languages as a Sprachbund . Akkadian proper names are first attested in Sumerian texts in the mid-3rd millennium BC, and inscriptions ostensibly written in Sumerian but whose character order reveals that they were intended to be read in East Semitic (presumably early Akkadian) date back to as early as c.  2600 BC . From about the 25th century BC, texts fully written in Akkadian begin to appear. By

9680-454: The last syllable is superheavy, it is stressed, otherwise the rightmost heavy non-final syllable is stressed. If a word contains only light syllables, the first syllable is stressed. It has also been argued that monosyllabic words generally are not stressed but rather function as clitics . The special behaviour of /V̂/ syllables is explained by their functioning, in accordance with their historical origin, as sequences of two syllables, of which

9801-404: The latter being used for long vowels arising from the contraction of vowels in hiatus. The distinction between long and short is phonemic , and is used in the grammar; for example, iprusu ('that he decided') versus iprusū ('they decided'). There is broad agreement among most Assyriologists about Akkadian stress patterns. The rules of Akkadian stress were originally reconstructed by means of

9922-434: The locative. Later, the nominative and accusative singular of masculine nouns collapsed to -u and in Neo-Babylonian most word-final short vowels were dropped. As a result, case differentiation disappeared from all forms except masculine plural nouns. However, many texts continued the practice of writing the case endings, although often sporadically and incorrectly. As the most important contact language throughout this period

10043-429: The miscreant is hiding. Enki and later Ea were apparently depicted, sometimes, as a man covered with the skin of a fish, and this representation, as likewise the name of his temple E-apsu, "house of the watery deep", points decidedly to his original character as a god of the waters (see Oannes ). Around the excavation of the 18 shrines found on the spot, thousands of carp bones were found, consumed possibly in feasts to

10164-529: The myth of Inanna's Descent , Inanna, in order to console her grieving sister Ereshkigal , who is mourning the death of her husband Gugalana ( gu 'bull', gal 'big', ana 'sky/heaven'), slain by Gilgamesh and Enkidu , sets out to visit her sister. Inanna tells her servant Ninshubur ('Lady Evening', a reference to Inanna's role as the evening star ) to get help from Anu , Enlil or Enki if she does not return in three days. After Inanna has not come back, Ninshubur approaches Anu, only to be told that he knows

10285-536: The older la-prus . While generally more archaic, Assyrian developed certain innovations as well, such as the "Assyrian vowel harmony ". Eblaite was even more so, retaining a productive dual and a relative pronoun declined in case, number and gender. Both of these had already disappeared in Old Akkadian. Over 20,000 cuneiform tablets in Old Assyrian have been recovered from the Kültepe site in Anatolia . Most of

10406-516: The oldest realization of emphatics across the Semitic languages. One piece of evidence for this is that Akkadian shows a development known as Geers's law , where one of two emphatic consonants dissimilates to the corresponding non-emphatic consonant. For the sibilants, traditionally ⟨ š ⟩ has been held to be postalveolar /ʃ/ , and ⟨ s ⟩, ⟨ z ⟩, ⟨ ṣ ⟩ analyzed as fricatives; but attested assimilations in Akkadian suggest otherwise. For example, when

10527-453: The original deity of the temple was Abzu, with his attributes later being taken by Enki over time. P. Steinkeller believes that, during the earliest period, Enki had a subordinate position to a goddess (possibly Ninhursag ), taking the role of divine consort or high priest, later taking priority. The Enki temple had at its entrance a pool of fresh water, and excavation has found numerous carp bones, suggesting collective feasts. Carp are shown in

10648-464: The original meaning of the root. The middle radical can be geminated, which is represented by a doubled consonant in transcription, and sometimes in the cuneiform writing itself. The consonants ʔ , w , j and n are termed "weak radicals" and roots containing these radicals give rise to irregular forms. Formally, Akkadian has three numbers (singular, dual and plural) and three cases ( nominative , accusative and genitive ). However, even in

10769-497: The patriarchal Enlil , their father, god of Nippur , promises to solve the problem if they make him King of the Gods. In the Babylonian tale, Enlil's role is taken by Marduk , Enki's son, and in the Assyrian version it is Ashur . After dispatching Tiamat with the "arrows of his winds" down her throat and constructing the heavens with the arch of her ribs, Enlil places her tail in the sky as the Milky Way, and her crying eyes become

10890-431: The population to abandon worship of all gods except the one responsible for the calamity, and this seems to shame them into relenting. Humans, however, proliferate a fourth time. Enraged, Enlil convenes a Council of Deities and gets them to promise not to tell humankind that he plans their total annihilation. Enki does not tell Atrahasis directly, but speaks to him in secret via a reed wall. He instructs Atrahasis to build

11011-463: The possessive suffix -šu is added to the root awat ('word'), it is written awassu ('his word') even though šš would be expected. The most straightforward interpretation of this shift from tš to ss , is that ⟨ s, ṣ ⟩ form a pair of voiceless alveolar affricates /t͡s/ /t͡sʼ/ , ⟨ š ⟩ is a voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ , and ⟨ z ⟩ is a voiced alveolar affricate or fricative /d͡z/~/z/ . The assimilation

11132-461: The prepositions bi/bə and li/lə (locative and dative, respectively). The origin of the Akkadian spatial prepositions is unknown. In contrast to most other Semitic languages, Akkadian has only one non-sibilant fricative : ḫ [x] . Akkadian lost both the glottal and pharyngeal fricatives, which are characteristic of the other Semitic languages. Until the Old Babylonian period, the Akkadian sibilants were exclusively affricated . Old Akkadian

11253-613: The prominence of "Ea" led, as in the case of Nippur, to the survival of Eridu as a sacred city, long after it had ceased to have any significance as a political center. Myths in which Ea figures prominently have been found in Assurbanipal 's library, and in the Hattusas archive in Hittite Anatolia . As Ea, Enki had a wide influence outside of Sumer, being equated with El (at Ugarit ) and possibly Yah (at Ebla ) in

11374-413: The region including Eblaite , Hurrian , Elamite , Old Persian and Hittite . The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian went beyond just the cuneiform script; owing to their close proximity, a lengthy span of contact and the prestige held by the former, Sumerian significantly impacted Akkadian phonology, vocabulary and syntax. This mutual influence of Akkadian and Sumerian has also led scholars to describe

11495-483: The same syllable in the same text. Cuneiform was in many ways unsuited to Akkadian: among its flaws was its inability to represent important phonemes in Semitic, including a glottal stop , pharyngeals , and emphatic consonants . In addition, cuneiform was a syllabary writing system—i.e., a consonant plus vowel comprised one writing unit—frequently inappropriate for a Semitic language made up of triconsonantal roots (i.e., three consonants plus any vowels). Akkadian

11616-404: The script practically became a fully fledged syllabic script , and the original logographic nature of cuneiform became secondary , though logograms for frequent words such as 'god' and 'temple' continued to be used. For this reason, the sign AN can on the one hand be a logogram for the word ilum ('god') and on the other signify the god Anu or even the syllable -an- . Additionally, this sign

11737-403: The sick person’s room, close to his bed: To the seven figures of purādu-apkallus , painted with gypsum and black paste that are drawn at the side of the bedroom at the wall. To the seven figures of the consecrates cornel; they stand in the gate of the bedroom nearest the sick man at the head of the bed. To the seven figures of apkallus or tamarisk, kneeling, that stand at the foot of

11858-416: The source of the Tigris and Euphrates. But there is still the problem of "who will keep the cosmos working". Enki, who might have otherwise come to their aid, is lying in a deep sleep and fails to hear their cries. His mother Nammu (creatrix also of Abzu and Tiamat) "brings the tears of the gods" before Enki and says Oh my son, arise from thy bed, from thy (slumber), work what is wise, Fashion servants for

11979-434: The story Inanna and Shukaletuda , Shukaletuda , the gardener, set by Enki to care for the date palm he had created, finds Inanna sleeping under the palm tree and rapes the goddess in her sleep. Awaking, she discovers that she has been violated and seeks to punish the miscreant. Shukaletuda seeks protection from Enki, whom Bottéro believes to be his father. In classic Enkian fashion, the father advises Shukaletuda to hide in

12100-832: The story of how fresh water brings life to a barren land. Enki, the Water-Lord then "caused to flow the 'water of the heart" and having fertilised his consort Ninhursag , also known as Ki or Earth, after "Nine days being her nine months, the months of 'womanhood'... like good butter, Nintu, the mother of the land, ...like good butter, gave birth to Ninsar , (Lady Greenery)". When Ninhursag left him, as Water-Lord he came upon Ninsar (Lady Greenery). Not knowing her to be his daughter, and because she reminds him of his absent consort, Enki then seduces and has intercourse with her. Ninsar then gave birth to Ninkurra (Lady Fruitfulness or Lady Pasture), and leaves Enki alone again. A second time, Enki, in his loneliness finds and seduces Ninkurra, and from

12221-407: The superimposition of the Sumerian phonological system (for which an /o/ phoneme has also been proposed), rather than a separate phoneme in Akkadian. All consonants and vowels appear in long and short forms. Long consonants are transliterated as double consonants, and inconsistently written as such in cuneiform. Long vowels are transliterated with a macron (ā, ē, ī, ū) or a circumflex (â, ê, î, û),

12342-411: The temple of Enlil at Nippur , which was known as E-kur ( kur , hill)), and that incantations, involving ceremonial rites in which water as a sacred element played a prominent part, formed a feature of his worship. This seems also implicated in the epic of the hieros gamos or sacred marriage of Enki and Ninhursag (above), which seems an etiological myth of the fertilisation of the dry ground by

12463-459: The temple were built. With some Sumerian deity names as Enlil there are variations like Elil. En means "Lord" and E means "temple". It is likely that E-A is the Sumerian short form for "Lord of Water", as Enki is a god of water. Ab in Abzu also means water. The main temple to Enki was called E-abzu , meaning " abzu temple" (also E-en-gur-a , meaning "house of the subterranean waters"), a ziggurat temple surrounded by Euphratean marshlands near

12584-591: The texts contained several royal names, isolated signs could be identified, and were presented in 1802 by Georg Friedrich Grotefend . By this time it was already evident that Akkadian was a Semitic language, and the final breakthrough in deciphering the language came from Edward Hincks , Henry Rawlinson and Jules Oppert in the middle of the 19th century. In the early 21st century it was shown that automatic high-quality translation of Akkadian can be achieved using natural language processing methods such as convolutional neural networks . The following table summarises

12705-455: The third figure in the triad (the two other members of which were Anu and Enlil ) that Ea acquires his permanent place in the pantheon. To him was assigned the control of the watery element, and in this capacity he becomes the shar apsi ; i.e. king of the Apsu or "the abyss". The Apsu was figured as the abyss of water beneath the earth, and since the gathering place of the dead, known as Aralu,

12826-418: The twin water flows running into the later God Enki, suggesting continuity of these features over a very long period. These features were found at all subsequent Sumerian temples, suggesting that this temple established the pattern for all subsequent Sumerian temples. "All rules laid down at Eridu were faithfully observed". Enki was the keeper of the divine powers called Me , the gifts of civilization . He

12947-480: The union Ninkurra gave birth to Uttu (weaver or spider, the weaver of the web of life). A third time Enki succumbs to temptation, and attempts seduction of Uttu. Upset about Enki's reputation, Uttu consults Ninhursag, who, upset at the promiscuous wayward nature of her spouse, advises Uttu to avoid the riverbanks, the places likely to be affected by flooding, the home of Enki. In another version of this myth, Ninhursag takes Enki's semen from Uttu's womb and plants it in

13068-411: The various forms under which the god appears, alike bear witness to the popularity which he enjoyed from the earliest to the latest period of Babylonian-Assyrian history. The consort of Ea, known as Ninhursag, Ki, Uriash Damkina , "lady of that which is below", or Damgalnunna , "big lady of the waters", originally was fully equal with Ea, but in more patriarchal Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian times plays

13189-434: The word stem. As in all Semitic languages, some masculine nouns take the prototypically feminine plural ending ( -āt ). The nouns šarrum (king) and šarratum (queen) and the adjective dannum (strong) will serve to illustrate the case system of Akkadian. As is clear from the above table, the adjective and noun endings differ only in the masculine plural. Certain nouns, primarily those referring to geography, can also form

13310-506: The world in general. Traces of this version of Ea appear in the Marduk epic celebrating the achievements of this god and the close connection between the Ea cult at Eridu and that of Marduk. The correlation between the two rises from two other important connections: (1) that the name of Marduk's sanctuary at Babylon bears the same name, Esaggila , as that of a temple in Eridu, and (2) that Marduk

13431-399: The world to speak one language," the presumed superior language of the tablet, i.e. Sumerian. Jay Crisostomo's 2019 translation, based on the recent work of C. Mittermayer is: At that time, as there was no snake, as there was no scorpion, as there was no hyena, as there was no lion, as there was no dog or wolf, as there was no fear or trembling  — as humans had no rival. It

13552-501: The younger gods, puts a spell on Abzu "casting him into a deep sleep", thereby confining him deep underground. Enki subsequently sets up his home " in the depths of the Abzu ." Enki thus takes on all of the functions of the Abzu, including his fertilising powers as lord of the waters and lord of semen . Early royal inscriptions from the third millennium BCE mention "the reeds of Enki". Reeds were an important local building material, used for baskets and containers, and collected outside

13673-476: Was Aramaic , which itself lacks case distinctions, it is possible that Akkadian's loss of cases was an areal as well as phonological phenomenon. As is also the case in other Semitic languages, Akkadian nouns may appear in a variety of "states" depending on their grammatical function in a sentence. The basic form of the noun is the status rectus (the governed state), which is the form as described above, complete with case endings. In addition to this, Akkadian has

13794-504: Was Yaw or Ya'a . Ea was also known as Dagon and Uanna (Grecised Oannes ), the first of the Seven Sages. Akkadian language Akkadian ( / ə ˈ k eɪ d i ən / ə- KAY -dee-ən ; Akkadian: 𒀝𒅗𒁺𒌑(𒌝) , romanized:  Akkadû(m) ) is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia ( Akkad , Assyria , Isin , Larsa , Babylonia and perhaps Dilmun ) from

13915-461: Was a purely popular language — kings wrote in Babylonian — few long texts are preserved. It was, however, notably used in the correspondence of Assyrian traders in Anatolia in the 20th-18th centuries BC and that even led to its temporary adoption as a diplomatic language by various local Anatolian polities during that time. The Middle Babylonian period started in the 16th century BC. The division

14036-454: Was originally the name for the shrine to the god at Eridu . It has also been suggested that the original non-anthropomorphic divinity at Eridu was not Enki but Abzu . The emergence of Enki as the divine lover of Ninhursag , and the divine battle between the younger Igigi divinities and Abzu, saw the Abzu, the underground waters of the Aquifer, becoming the place in which the foundations of

14157-416: Was situated near the confines of the Apsu, he was also designated as En -Ki ; i.e. "lord of that which is below", in contrast to Anu, who was the lord of the "above" or the heavens. The cult of Ea extended throughout Babylonia and Assyria . We find temples and shrines erected in his honour, e.g. at Nippur , Girsu , Ur , Babylon , Sippar , and Nineveh , and the numerous epithets given to him, as well as

14278-476: Was the star Canopus . Many myths about Enki have been collected from various sites, stretching from Southern Iraq to the Levantine coast. He is mentioned in the earliest extant cuneiform inscriptions throughout the region and was prominent from the third millennium down to the Hellenistic period . The exact meaning of Enki's name is uncertain: the common translation is "Lord of the Earth". The Sumerian En

14399-418: Was then that the lands of Subur [and] Hamazi , the distinctly-tongued, Sumer, the great mountain, the essence of nobility, Akkad, the land possessing the befitting, and the land of Martu, lying in safety — the totality of heaven and earth, the well-guarded people, [all] proclaimed Enlil in a single language. Enki, the lord of abundance and true word, the lord chosen in wisdom who watches over

14520-441: Was used as a determinative for divine names. Another peculiarity of Akkadian cuneiform is that many signs do not have a well defined phonetic value. Certain signs, such as AḪ , do not distinguish between the different vowel qualities. Nor is there any coordination in the other direction; the syllable -ša- , for example, is rendered by the sign ŠA , but also by the sign NĪĜ . Both of these are often used for

14641-505: Was used mostly in letters and administrative documents. During the first millennium BC, Akkadian progressively lost its status as a lingua franca . In the beginning, from around 1000 BC, Akkadian and Aramaic were of equal status, as can be seen in the number of copied texts: clay tablets were written in Akkadian, while scribes writing on papyrus and leather used Aramaic. From this period on, one speaks of Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian . Neo-Assyrian received an upswing in popularity in

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