Sumerian mythology... a mythological conception of the emergence of man, the universe, and God
The material of creation was clay from the waters of the depths
The myths of creation, or “formation” myths, are divided into three types: the myths of the creation of the gods (theogyna), the myths of the creation of the universe (cosmogonia), and the myths of the creation of humans (anthropogonia). These are myths that have continued to haunt human thought and spread throughout his artistic and poetic creations, which has motivated us to talk about them. Within this article, we devote it to looking at these three types that make up Sumerian mythology.
Sumerian myths are the first myths written in the history of human civilization. These are myths that have been passed down and preserved in the chests for thousands of years and have clearly contributed to the emergence of many human religions, beliefs and philosophies.
Creation of gods
It is likely that there are special myths revolving around the birth of each divine dynasty or group of gods, and if we go back and look at the genealogical tree of the Sumerian gods, we will imagine the number of myths that described the appearance and emergence of the gods. But the theogonic myths “concerning the creation of the gods” are not numerous in number to the extent that is proportional to the size of the divine births, as we see them in the tree. After the gods “Nammu” moved and the gods of the four elements appeared, the two great fathers of the gods, “Enlil” and “Enki,” formed the basis for the emergence of the remaining gods.
There are two theogonic myths, each one of which links a lineage of reproducing gods. We will talk about some of their theogonic myths, and we will suffice with the Enlilil theogonic myth, which is the myth of “Enlil and Ninlil and the birth of the god Nanna, the god of the moon,” which begins with a description of the city of Nefer. Then the mother of the gods, Ninlil, appears and is called “Nanbar Shakunu, who is the god.” Nisaba, the goddess of the south and knowledge, who advises her daughter not to take off her clothes and swim in the river for fear that Enlil will see her, but Nenlil does so, and Enlil sees her and is fascinated by her. Then he orders his minister, “Nisku,” to bring her to him in his boat, so he impales her, has sex with her in the boat, and sows the seed of the moon gods in her womb. "Nana". But when the council of gods learned of this, it considered it a crime of rape and decided to banish the god Enlil to the underworld.
When the god Enlil goes to the underworld, Ninlil follows him while she is pregnant with her son, the moon. At the gate of the underworld, Enlil finds the gatekeeper. He takes his form and orders him to hide, and he stands in his place as gatekeeper. When Ninlil comes, the disguised Enlil convinces her that if she wants to imbue the seed of the moon god, she must accept intercourse with him in order to give birth to a god who will be a substitute for the moon god, and then she can enter the underworld without sacrificing her child, so she accepts that.
This matter is repeated three times, and thus the goddess Ninlil gives birth to four sons: the moon god Nanna, the god Nergal “Maslamtia,” who is the god of the underworld, the gods Nanazu, who is the god of the tree and the god of medicine in the underworld, and the gods Al-Egbeel, who is the god of the underworld of fire.
Thus, the last three gods remain in the lower world, and it becomes possible for the three major gods to be liberated to the upper world: Enlil, Ninlil, and Nanna, because the provisions of the lower world stipulate that if the gods descend to the lower world, they will not leave it unless they bring divine alternatives to them, so they will remain in their place in the lower world.
This myth highlights how four important gods were born in the Enlil tree and carries within it precise causal relationships. It is a myth loaded with symbols and deep meanings.
Creation myths
The Sumerian blogs do not provide us with a special myth about the creation of the universe, but we know from the introductions to poems and other myths that the universe, in the eyes of the Sumerians, emerged from the first Sumerian mother gods, “Nammu,” which was a divine god in whom the will of creation moved and movement struggled with stillness, and as a result the universe was formed. “Ki” which means “Heaven-Earth” is a cosmic mountain floating in the waters of “Nammu”.
The Sumerians called the first time in which creation began “Uria”, and this means that the first triad of creation according to the Sumerians was complementary to each other, where the first matter was “growth”, the first time was “Uria”, and the first place was “An-ki”... and with this formative trinity existence moves. All of it, and its permanent restoration in religious rituals and rituals becomes the focus of these rituals.
“Numu” represents the darkness, “Chaos,” while “An-Ki” represents the universe, “Cosmose,” and the time of transition from the darkness to the universe is the first time, “Ria.”
The Sumerian New Year's holidays represented an attempt to restore the first time, "Uriah." Therefore, these holidays included restoring the story of creation again, and even included what indicated an exit from blindness into the universe by returning the world to chaos and then gradually returning to order.
Likewise, building temples, representing them with cosmic mountains, and calling them “a link between earth and heaven” meant restoring the creation of the first place. The Sumerian ziggurat was a revival of this cosmic mountain, “An-Ki.” The Sumerians viewed it as the center of the world and the navel of the universe. The term "Dur-an-ki", which referred to the ziggurats of Nefer, Larsa, Ur, and others, perfectly represented this trend, and temples were often built near or over water to represent the moment of the first creation and its restoration. See Eliade: 1988: 37.
The process of creation itself is completed when “An” represents the sky and “Ki” represents the earth in the cosmic mountain “An-Ki” and they are in a position of sexual intercourse and attachment, where “An” is the male element and “Ki” is the female element, and as a result their son “Enlil” is born, which means “ The Lord of the Air, who is born between them and grows until he separates them completely, where the god An, the god of the sky, rises to the top and the gods Ki, the goddess of the earth, descends to the bottom.
Then the god “An” fertilizes the god “Ki” again through rain, which is moved by the air, resulting in the birth of the god “Enki”, who is the god of water who will fill the earth and also becomes the god of the earth along with the god “Ki”.
With the birth of these four gods, the universe in its primitive sense was completed, as the gods “An, Ki, Enlil, and Enki” were distinguished and each of them became a god of one of the four aspects of nature, “the sky, the earth, the air, and the water,” which are the four basic elements of the entire universe.
Enki, the god of fertility in Sumer, emanates from his shoulders the rivers Tigris and Euphrates
Thus, the order of the universe in its details continues, as the eternal universe appears in the end floating or swimming on a helical sea of water represented by the Sumerian mother goddess, “Nammu.” As for the universe itself, it consists of five basic sections: “The Upper World,” “Anunna,” which is the space above the sky, where the gods reside in their headquarters called “Anunna,” which in Sumerian means “seeds of princely life,” and the sky “An,” which is a solid surface in the form of A dome surrounds the disk of the earth beneath it, and the Sumerians believe that it was made of tin because the meaning of the word tin in Sumerian is “the metal of the sky.”
Then the space is “Lil”, which is the space between the sky and the earth, which is filled with a substance called “Lil”, meaning air, which indicates darkness, and it also indicates the soul and spirit. Planets and stars swim in this substance, which are made of the same substance as air, except that they are bright and luminous.
And the underworld is “Kur”, which is the space that is located under the earth and the apsu and in which the gods of the underworld live, and inhabited by the souls of dead people in the form of dusty birds. The underworld consists of a large river surrounding it called “Khabar” and seven gates, and in the middle of it there is a palace. The gods Arishkal and the god Nergal.
Creation of man
The Sumerian “anthropogonic” creation myths are diverse and are indications of a wide range of mythological perception about the emergence and origin of man.
Perhaps the most famous of them is the Anthropogonia “Creation of Man” water-based clay embodied in the legend of “Enki, Nemmu, Nenmakh, and the Apsu Clay,” as this legend describes the young working gods who are bored with work and exhaustion, so they go to the god Enki, hoping that he will find a solution to their suffering, so the god Enki creates man and advises his mother. The gods “Nammu” supervise this creation and are assisted in this by the gods Nnamakh. That is, the god Enki decided on the form of man and decided to give him some of Enki’s wisdom. As for his birth, he left it first to the seven gods of birth, to the gods Ninmakh, and to the gods Nimu.
In a great divine ceremony, the gods Ninmakh created six types of humans, but when Enki examined them, he found them distorted, so he decided their fates and made them serve the gods and kings. Then Enki created a human being named “Omul,” which means “my day is far away,” and he also suffered from several disabilities in order to embarrass “Ninmakh” in how to determine his fate, and “Ninmakh” failed in this.
This myth seems to show the rivalry between Enki and Nenmakh in creating man and determining his fate. But the material of creation was the clay found in the waters of the depths, “Apsu”. Perhaps the idea of mutilation referred to the deficiency, illness, and lack of integration of the first human.
Source: websites