Apsû
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The apsû (also known as abzu or engur, 
) 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 apsû.
The Sumerian god Enki (Ea in the Akkadian language) was believed to have lived in the apsû 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 apsû.
In the city Eridu, Enki's temple was known as E-abzu ("the abzu temple") and was located at the edge of a swamp, an apsû.[1]
Certain tanks of holy water in Babylonian and Assyrian temple courtyards were also called apsû or abzu (Black and Green 1992). Typical in religious washing, these tanks may be regarded as precursors to the washing pools of Islamic mosques, or the baptismal font in Christian churches.
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[edit] As a deity
- Main article: Enûma Elish
Apsû is depicted as a deity only in the Babylonian creation epic, the Enûma Elish, of which our surviving copy is from the library of Assurbanipal (died 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...
Many think that Abzu/Apsu or Engur/Enkur 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...."[2] The main intention of the cosmic genealogy was to effect a refutation of the claims of the earlier theology in favor of the gods and moral order of the later one. In Akkadian and neo-Babylonian times, Enki was identified as Ea, in this guise become the "conqueror" of apsû, in a way uncharacteristic of the nature of the earlier god. After Ea tore off Apsû's tiara and carried away his splendor, he killed Apsû, he 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. Marduk, though called "firstborn son of the apsû" is actually Ea's (Enki's) son, not Apsû's; the title is meant to be taken metaphorically, as Marduk was the first "child" born in the apsû. Others consider it (i.e. Engur/Enki) to demonstrate the older association of apsû and Enki, which would suggest that Abzu may have been the original name by which the divinity of Enki later became known.[clarify]
[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
[edit] Notes
- ^ Eridu in Sumerian Literature, Margaret Whitney Green, pages 180-182, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1975.
- ^ 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.
