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| Ur-Namma stands before Enlil and the Tree of Life. |
The name En-Lil is Sumerian, and means "Lord of Breath", which is to say the life-giving spiritus or creative urge, equivalent of RU'ACH HA CHAYIM (רוח החיים) which - feminine in Yehudit - hovered over the waters at the instant of Creation (Genesis 1:2), and the "Ru'ach Elohim" (רוּחַ אֱלֹהִים), the spirit of Elohim, which breathes life continuously into the universe. En-Lil also created vegetation, and later the spade and plough; he was responsible for all that was best in the world, but punished, as his name suggests, with hurricanes, typhoons and tornados.
Lil also connects to Lilit (Lilith), Adam's first wife according to Midrash, and the Lilim, the night spirits (in Yehudit LAILAH - לילה - whence also Shimshon-Samson's DELILAH).
At the time of the Mesopotamian Flood (the Epic of Gilgamesh from which the tale of No'ach in Genesis 6-9 is gleaned) only Enki disapproved of En-Lil's action in destroying the world.
En-Lil was the ruler of the Earth, and treated as the chief of the gods; in some other versions he was the son of Anu and Ishtar; and in the god list "AN (Anum)", he is simply "a descendant of Enki and Ninki". In all cases he was the firstborn, brother of the goddess Aruru (according to the Sumerian accounts of Enmerkar and En-suhgir-ana). His wife was Nin-Lil, his sons include Nin-Urta (see "Nin-Urta's return to Nibru", Nin-Girsu (according to the Gudea Cylinders), Nanna (see "Nanna-Suen's Journey to Nibru"), and Namtar, though a number of other deities are described as being his children - a problem in the Yehudit too, where BEN can mean a biological "son", or the relationship between "father" priest and "my son" the lay person, or a guild-member, or a citizen of a particular tribe or city (Beney New York or Beney Bei-Jing, in today's parlance): the deities so described are Nergal (in "En-Lil and Nin-Lil"), Nin-Azu (ibid), Inanna (in "Inanna's descent to the Nether World", Utu (in "A hymn to Utu"and Ishkur (in "Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta". Sud, the goddess of Shuruppag, a city-state in southern Mesopotamia, is equated with Nin-Lil, and made the wife of En-Lil, possibly as a mythological explanation for the absorption of Shuruppag into the pantheon of Nip-Ur (see "En-Lil and Sud".
En-Lil was regarded as the god of the air, while Anu, his father, was the god of the skies or heaven; his mother was Ki, elsewhere known as Ninhursag, the Earth goddess, though in other, later versions he was the son of Anu - a variation of An - and Ishtar. His vizier and messenger, an early form of what would become "angels" two millennia later, was Nusku.
Very much the Zeus/Jupiter of Mesopotamia, he led the final generation of divine rulers. An/Anu officially ruled, but in fact En-Lil had the executive power; a pattern reflected in the Kena'ani (Canaanite) cosmology, where El was, so to speak, the Chairman of the Board, but his son Ba'al had the executive power; and likewise the relationship of Zeus to Chronos in Greece, and Osher (Osiris) to Hor (Horus) in Mitsrayim (Egypt).
En-Lil lived in the holy city of Nip-Ur, usually rendered in English as Nippur, where he created and controlled the kingships of Sumer and Akkad. He decreed the fates; his command could not be altered; and he was the god who granted kingship. His temple, é-kur, the "Mountain House," was located at Nip-Ur, which therefore served as the religious centre of Mesopotamia up until the second millennium BCE, wile his temple was regarded as the most important temple in all of southern Mesopotamia. A description of that temple can be found in the Sumerian "Hymn to the Ekur"; it dates at least to the Akkadian period, and stood alongside a tower (ziggurat) known as the dur-an-ki, the "bond of heaven and earth", which was built by Ur-Namma and provides at least one source for the Biblical Tower of Babel. The é-kur was rebuilt/refurbished a number of times, most notably in the second millennium by either Kadašman-En-Lil I (1374-1360 BCE) or ibid II (1263-1255 BCE), both of the Kassite dynasty; and then again in the 1st millennium by Esarhaddon of Assyria (680-669 BCE), and one more time by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (604-562 BCE), that latter (to judge from the dates) probably with the assistance of slaves dragged against their will from Yehudah, which is why I have mentioned it, but more importantly is the likely reason why the Biblical Redactor mentioned it (Genesis 11).
En-Lil was also worshipped in other cities. Another ziggurat in his honour has been found in Ashur, built by Šamši-Adad I (1813-1781 BCE). Still another - both ziggurat and temple quarter on this occsion - dedicated to him at Dur-Kurigalzu in southern Mesopotamia (modern 'Aqar Quf), which was the capital of the Kassite dynasty; possibly a temple named for him outside Mesopotamia as well, in Eylam, or we would say Persia, and get in trouble for refusing to call it Iran. And of course the real Tower of Babel, the oldest of all the Old Babylonian temples, the one dedicated to En-Lil in Babylon itself.
Beneath En-Lil were the seven gods who determined fate and formed the governing pantheon of the universe, each one identified with a specific day of the week, and the number connected to the known number of planets, which each god also represented (click here for more background on the calendar).
ELLIL was the Babylonian name of En-Lil, kown by them as the god of the wind and the storms, and as the king of the gods until he was supplanted by Marduk.
Among his many titles, sobriquets,and epithets, cuneiform texts offer "The Great Mountain"; "King of all the lands" (this in a vase inscription from around 2370 BCE, from the time of King Lugalzagesi); "Father of the black headed people" (in "The Lament for Nibru"; the "black-headed people" are the Sag-Giga, for whom click the link under the name); "Father of the gods", (in "The Death of Gilgamesh"); and "Nunamnir", "The Well-Respected" (in "An Adab to En-Lil for Šulgi"); that last is only ever used in literary and religious texts, much as YHVH in the Jewish world: written, but never spoken. The concept of ellilūtu, or we might say "En-Lilship", became the stadard term for anyone, human or divine, who held paramount authority.
Among his many titles, sobriquets,and epithets, cuneiform texts offer "The Great Mountain"; "King of all the lands" (this in a vase inscription from around 2370 BCE, from the time of King Lugalzagesi); "Father of the black headed people" (in "The Lament for Nibru"; the "black-headed people" are the Sag-Giga, for whom click the link under the name); "Father of the gods", (in "The Death of Gilgamesh"); and "Nunamnir", "The Well-Respected" (in "An Adab to En-Lil for Šulgi"); that last is only ever used in literary and religious texts, much as YHVH in the Jewish world: written, but never spoken. The concept of ellilūtu, or we might say "En-Lilship", became the stadard term for anyone, human or divine, who held paramount authority.
And "paramount" meant "paramount" - no separation of Good from Evil in this monistic world; there may have been many deities, male and female, to represent all the many and varied forces of Nature, but "good" and "evil" were adjectives, not nouns, and either could come from any. So, like Biblical YHVH, En-Lilcould equally create or destroy. He is described as the "decreer of fates" (in a praise poem of Šulgi, circa 2050 BCE), and holds the "Tablet of Destinies" - equivalent to Mosheh's "Ten Commandments" - in the Akkadian "Anzu" myth. So, on that same vase, En-Lil gives the nam-lugal-kalam-ma, the "kingship of the land", to Lugalzagesi; and elsewhere "En-Lil ... bestowed kingship on me" ("Ur-Namma the Canal-Digger", circa 2050 BCE). According to the "The Lament for Urim", his command was unalterable; once he had made a decision, there was no way of changing it, although he did have to revise his decision to destroy Humankind through the flood, as is recounted in both the "Atra-hasīs" myth and the flood tablet of the Gilgameš epic
In addition, En-Lil was a provider, and as such he was declared the "Lord of abundance" in a hymn for Šu-Suen (2037-2029 BCE). However, En-Lil could also take such plenty away and devastate the land, e.g, in "The Lament for Urim, he is said to have "brought the storm of abundance away", to have "annihilated the land, silenced the city", and destroyed their houses and demolished their walls. Just like Biblical YHVH.
Some Sumerian myths narrate how other gods visited En-Lil to give him the "first-fruit offerings", e.g., Nanna (in "Nanna-Suen's Journey to Nibru"). This should be interpreted as a gesture of deference and acknowledgement of En-Lil's highest authority, but also gives us a prelude to the propitiatory sacrifices of the Tanach.
In the Akkadian accounts of En-Lil, this Yahwistic (this "almighty and beneficent but also malevolent") nature is often portrayed. In one devotional poem En-Lil is described as "king of heaven and the netherworld...whose command no god can set aside...the lord of destinies ... the nominator of kings", but other poems are specifically aimed at the appeasement of his anger, and his devastating side is clear in the myth of Atra-hasīs, where it is En-Lil who sends the drought, the plague, the flood.
From the Early Dynastic (2900-2350 BCE) through Ur III (2112-2004 BCE) periods En-Lil appears among the first of the listed deities on the various God Lists. There are instances of personal names composed with En-Lil, offering lists mentioning him, and his own temple officials. In the Early Dynastic literature and the Zá-mí, "praise" hymns from Abu Salabikh (near Nippur in southern Mesopotamia) En-Lil is already supreme among the gods, and on the Vase Inscription of Lugalzagesi, En-Lil is titled lugal-kur-kur-ra "King of all the lands".
The Akkadian period (ca. 2300-2150 BCE) provides the earliest definitive evidence for the é-kur, which was built by Šar-kali-šarri (2175-2150 BCE), and in the Ur III period, Ur-Namma builds the ziggurat for En-Lil (see above). En-Lil is paramount during the Ur III period, he regularly appears as the supreme and powerful deity in the Year Names of the period, and he is the major recipient of those offerings made at Nippur and administered at Puzriš-Dagan (ancient Drehem – the administrative hub of Ur III period, located south of Nippur). Additionally, En-Lil is frequently attested in the royal inscriptions of the period, and in the literature the Ur III kings are called the sons of En-Lil, e.g., Šulgi in The debate between Bird and Fish, ETCSL 5.3.5: 146.
Iddin-Dagan (1974–1954 BCE) and Išme-Dagan (1953–1935 BCE), kings of Isin, frequently exhalt En-Lil as their "principal deity" (ETCSL 2.5.4.01: 46), and even as their father (ETCSL 2.5.4.02: 29). Moreover, his cult at Nippur receives offerings throughout the Isin-Larsa period (Sigrist 1980). Roughly contemporary with these southern Mesopotamian kings, Šamši-Adad I (ca. 1808-1776 BCE) of Assyria builds a temple for En-Lil at Ashur.
With the ascendancy of Babylon in the second millennium, En-Lil begins to lose prominence to the ever more powerful and important Marduk, the city-deity of Babylon. Even prior to this, however, the Anzu myth relates the ascendancy of Nin-Urta at the expense of his father En-Lil (and in a different tradition it is Nin-Girsu of Lagash, who, being conflated with Nin-Urta, comes to prominence). En-Lil does, however, remain a significant deity throughout the second millennium. In the Old Babylonian period he continues to receive offerings at Nippur, appear in personal names e.g., En-Lil-ipuš, and is even considered to have granted Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE) victory over Rim-Sin I of Larsa (1822-1763 BCE). In the Lawcode of Hammurabi, the King is said to have been chosen by En-Lil, and even when Marduk's rise to power is described, he is said to have been given 'enlilship' over the people by En-Lil and An.
The rise of Marduk at the expense of En-Lil is a subject still muh to be worked on by the scholars. It is best known from the Creation Epic, Enūma Eliš, where it is only Marduk who dares to confront and then defeat the enemy Tiamat, an act which elevates him to the head of the pantheon. This myth has been thought by some to have been composed at the time of Kassite dynasty of Mesopotamia which was based at Babylonia, and to act as a metaphor/explanation for the supremacy of Babylon, but whenever this epic was composed En-Lil remained important enough to the Kassites for them to build a new temple quarter for him at Babylon, and for him to appear in royal names of the dynasty, suggesting a personal devotion of even the Kassite rulers to this great god.
In the first millennium the great gods Ashur, Marduk and Nabu were supreme, but En-Lil's power was clearly remembered for even they were referred to as the "Assyrian En-Lil" or the "En-Lil of the gods" (Edzard 1965: 61).
En-Lil is regularly represented wearing a horned helmet.
Copyright © 2019 David Prashker
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