help of his courier he approaches her when she is bathing and rapes her, leaving her
pregnant with Sin, the moon-god. Banished from the community for this crime by the
other gods, Enlil disguises himself as one of his own servants and arranges to meet
Ninlil three more times while she follows him into exile, impregnating her each time
with yet another deity. Sin becomes a god in heaven; the other three become
netherworld deities. Young Ninlil’s devotion to her abuser is a haunting psychological
insight in this disturbing tale, for which no Akkadian parallel exists.
In Enlil and Sud(Civil 1983 ; Bottéro and Kramer 1989 : 115 – 128 ; Black et al. 2004 :
106 – 111 ), Sud is an attractive young woman whom Enlil mistakes for or hopes to treat
as a prostitute. When she refuses his advances, he sends his courier to her mother,
proposing marriage. Her mother accepts, and Enlil showers his prospective bride with
presents. The wedding is celebrated with great splendor. In Sud, Enlil finds the ideal
royal mate: she is a mistress of love, birth, and womanly arts, abundant harvests,
accounting and household management, and, finally, his queen, Ninlil.
These two stories offer mirror images of how Enlil, a king, acquires his queen. In
each case, the plot turns on Enlil’s uncontrollable desire for a young woman, one of
whom he rapes and the other of whom he cannot possess until he marries her. In the
major Akkadian composition in which royal lust is a factor, the Epic of Gilgamesh
(George 2000 ; B. Foster 2001 ), Gilgamesh, the king, does not find a queen, and, in
fact, royal lust drops from the story. In the Akkadian Nergal and Ereshkigal(B. Foster
2005 : 506 – 524 ), it is the queen who wants a mate, whom Ea finds a way to provide.
These stories explore in different ways intersections of power and desire, exampled in
more modern societies through the amply chronicled amours of royalty and their
political consequences. One cannot know if their tenor was weakness or strength of the
flesh writ large, as some critics today might read them, or if they had a wholly different
intent that lies beyond our ken.
Nanna-Suen’s Journey to Nippur(Bottéro and Kramer 1989 : 128 – 142 ; Black et al.
2004 : 147 – 154 ) tells how the moon-god decides to visit his father, Enlil, in order to
enhance their bonds of mutual loyalty. He builds a wonderful boat, loads it down with
gifts, and sets forth on his voyage. At five points along the journey gods try to take the
cargo for themselves, among them Inanna at Uruk and Ninlil herself, near Nippur.
These efforts are unsuccessful and the moon-god arrives with his gifts, including fish,
precious oils, and livestock. Enlil gives a banquet in his son’s honor, in which his dutiful
guest asks his father’s blessing on his city, Ur, and long life for himself. Some modern
readers would see in this story a theological allegory for the interdependence of Nippur
and Ur under the Third Dynasty of Ur, when Ur was the political capital and Nippur
enjoyed special status as a kind of religious capital and center of learning, but others
might read it differently, perhaps as a celebration of a ritual.
EnkiEnki is perhaps the most important deity in the Sumerian mythological poems. Insofar
as they involve conflict, he is most often the one who invents a resolution for it. His
wisdom is not proof against alcohol or desire, but in terms of sheer intelligence and
knowledge he has no rival among the gods.
In Enki’s Journey to Nippur(Bottéro and Kramer 1989 : 142 – 150 ; Black et al. 2004 :
330 – 333 ), Enki builds himself a splendid palace at his own city, Eridu, which is praised
–– Benjamin R. Foster ––