Abzu
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The abzu (𒍪 𒀊, Akkadian: apsû also engur, 𒇉, Akkadian: engurru) from the Sumerian ab 'far' and zu 'water' was the name for fresh water from underground aquifers that was given a religious quality in Sumerian and Akkadian mythology. Lakes, springs, rivers, wells, and other sources of fresh water were thought to draw their water from the abzu.
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[edit] In sumerian cosmology
The Sumerian god Enki (Ea in the Akkadian language) was believed to have lived in the abzu since before human beings were created. His wife Damgalnuna, his mother Nammu, his advisor Isimud and a variety of subservient creatures, such as the gatekeeper Lahmu, also lived in the abzu. In the city Eridu, Enki's temple was known as E2-abzu (house of the cosmic waters) and was located at the edge of a swamp, an abzu.[1] Certain tanks of holy water in Babylonian and Assyrian temple courtyards were also called abzu (apsû).[2] Typical in religious washing, these tanks are precursors to the washing pools of Islamic mosques, or the baptismal font in Christian churches.
[edit] As a deity
Abzu (apsû) is depicted as a deity only in the Babylonian creation epic, the Enûma Elish, taken from the library of Assurbanipal (c 630 BCE) but which is a millennium older. In this story, he was a primal being made of fresh water and a lover to another primal deity, Tiamat, who was a creature of salt water. The Enuma Elish begins:
When above the heavens did not yet exist nor the earth below, Apsu the freshwater ocean was there, the first, the begetter, and Tiamat, the saltwater sea, she who bore them all; they were still mixing their waters, and no pasture land had yet been formed, nor even a reed marsh...
It is believed Abzu or Engur was the original divinity later known as Enki. Joseph Campbell follows the mainstream in a sociopolitical reading: "Such a mythology represents an actual historical substitution of cult...."[3] The main intention of the cosmic genealogy was to change an earlier theology in favor of the gods and moral order of a later one. In Akkadian and Neo-Babylonian times, Enki identified as Ea, in this guise become the 'conqueror' of Abzu, in a way uncharacteristic of the earlier god. After Enki (Ea) tore off Abzu's (Apsû's) tiara and carried away his splendor, he killed Abzu (Apsû), and set up his dwelling upon the dead god. This is considered as the origin of the apsû where Ea lives in myths set during later time periods. It is also thought the myth demonstrates an older association of abzu and Enki, which would suggest that Abzu may have been the original name by which the divinity of Enki later became known.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Eridu in Sumerian Literature, Margaret Whitney Green, pages 180-182, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1975.
- ^ Black and Green 1992
- ^ Campbell, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology 1964, p 76. Campbell's further assertion, that a matriarchal culture was overtaken by a patriarchal one, however, is fiercely debated.
[edit] References
- Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, 1992. Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: an illustrated dictionary, s.v. "abzu, apsû". ISBN 0-292-70794-0
