E for Enki: The God of Idea
Enki, later referred to as Ea, is the Sumerian God of Creation (no less!), underground water, intelligence, crafts, fertility, wisdom, creativity, magic and even exorcism.
That sounds like a lot, but it’s all linked, in a way.
He is a witty problem solver and has a soft spot for humans: in fact, in Sumerian mythology, creating humanity was his idea.
We’re going way back in time: around -3000 BCE, in Mesopotamia. Enki was worshipped by ancient Sumerians, but also Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. This is when, as far as we know, written language was first invented, with the cuneiform alphabet carved into clay tablets.
In Sumerian, the name Enki comes from “En” which means Lord, and “Ki”, which means Earth — so I’m not just tackling a fable or a fairy tale here, but an ancient, important religious figure: the Lord of the Ground, in which water flows and life grows. Later, he was also called EA, literally “House of Water”.
In Sumerian cosmology, the realm ruled by Enki is believed to exist under the surface of the Earth, and above the Underworld (the land of the dead) — the realm in between, called the “Apsu”, or the Abyss…
