Enki = Cunning

Enki personifies the numinous powers in the sweet waters in rivers and marshes or rain.

Enki is usually pictured with two streams, the Euphrates and the Tigris, flowing out of his shoulders or from a vase he holds. Frequently fish are swimming in these streams. Occasionally he holds an eaglelike bird, the thunderbird, Imdugud, signifying the clouds rising from the waters, and his foot may rest on an ibex, emblem of sweet underground springs, the Apsu.

His name Enki (en-ki), "Lord (i.e., productive manager) of the soil," reflects the role of water in fructifying the earth. Other names such as Lugal-id, "Owner of the river", Lugal-absu "Owner of the Apsu" and the Akkadian Naqbu, "Source," present him as the specific power in rivers or underground waters.

The power in water that makes the soil produce was thought to be of a kind with the engendering power in male semen. Sumerian does not differentiate semen and water: one word stands for both. It is therefore natural that Enki is the power to fecundate. Another connection between productivity and water is the "birth water" which precedes and announces birth. As the power in amniotic fluid Enki is celebrated in a passage that reads:

O Father Enki, go forth out of the seeded country,

And may it sprout good seed!

The third power of water is to cleanse, and Enki is the god of ritual lustration and purification from polluting evil. In the series called "The Bathhouse" (bit rimki) used to purify the king from the evil that threatens during an eclipse of the moon, the rite takes the form of a lawsuit before the assembly of the gods at sunrise with the sun god as judge. Enki has the role of "overshadowing the case," i.e., of guaranteeing that judgment is executed. This duty he performs as the power in the cleansing waters of the lustrations for which the rite is named.

The role of executor of judgments which Enki fills in the "Bathhouse" ritual is an unusual one for him, for force is not his way. Rather, he exerts his will through diplomacy or guile.

His most frequent opponent in the myths is Ninhursaga in one form or other: as goddess of the stony ground of the western desert, or as goddess of birth. But though she is outwitted time and again by the clever Enki she oddly enough does not lose dignity, rather, one had the impression that she is, when all is said and done, the more noble and the more powerful deity of the two.

It is not his nature to overwhelm; rather, he persuades, tricks, or evades to gain his ends. He is the cleverest of the gods, the one who can plan and organize and think of ways out when no one else can. He is the counsellor and adviser, the expert and the trouble-shooter, or manipulator, of the ruler; not the ruler himself. He organizes and runs the world, but at the behest of An and Enlil, not for himself; he saves mankind and the animals from extinction in the flood, but does not challenge Enlil’s continued rule. His aim is a workable compromise, avoiding extremes. Generally friendly to man, he does not to go extremes for him: when Ninmah makes freaks he moderates the evil, finds ways for them to support themselves, but does not try to stop her -and he himself does worse than she. Similarly, while he saves man in the flood stories, he does not try to prevent the floor itself. He is a trimmer, a moderator, but not a wielder of ultimate power.