| Fertile Crescent myth series |
|
|---|---|
| Mesopotamian | |
| Levantine | |
| Arabian | |
| Mesopotamia | |
| 7 gods who decree | |
| The great gods | |
| Demigods & heroes | |
| Spirits & monsters | |
| Tales from Babylon | |
| Primordial Beings | |
Laḫmu is a deity from Akkadian mythology.
Lahmu, "Hairy" is the name of a protective and beneficent deity is a first-born son of Apsu and Tiamat. He and his sister Laḫamu are the parents of Anshar and Kishar, the sky father and earth mother, who birthed the gods of the Mesopotamian Pantheon. Laḫmu is depicted as a bearded man with a red sash-usually with three strands- and four to six curls on his head. He is often associated with the kusarikku or Bull-Man. In Sumerian times Laḫmu may have meant "the muddy one". Lahmu guarded the gates of the Abzu temple of Enki at Eridu. He and his sister Laḫamu are primordial deities in the Babylonian Epic of Creation –Enuma Elis and Lahmu may be related to - or identical with- 'Lahamu' one of Tiamat's Creatures in that epic.
Some scholars have speculated that the name of Bethlehem actually originally contained a reference to a Canaanite form of Laḫmu, rather than to the Canaanite word for "bread" lehem.