Enbilulu

Also Known As: earlier written Ninbilulu; later compound names Enbilulu-Epadun, Enbilulu-Gugal and Enbilulu-Hegal; the element bilulu has no agreed meaning
Region/Culture: Mesopotamia and Ancient Near East
Mythos: Sumerian Mythology, Akkadian/Assyrian/Babylonian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Enbilulu governs the water of rivers and canals, measuring it out to fields and pastures so that the land yields grain.
Role in Mythos: He is the divine inspector of waterways, set over the Tigris and Euphrates by Enki, and in Babylon his name and office were later absorbed into Marduk.
Relation to Humans: Farmers depended on him for the water that reached their furrows, and a late ritual calls on him with three other gods to guard a field. A Hittite scribe far to the north signed himself as Enbilulu’s servant, which shows the name travelled well beyond the canal country.

In southern Mesopotamia the rain was never enough. What kept a city fed was a ditch: a brown thread of river water led off the Euphrates, split, split again, and walked out across flat ground until it ran between barley rows the width of a hand. Every one of those ditches silted up. Every one had to be dug out, banked, shared and argued over. The official who walked the levees and decided whose sluice opened first was the gugal, the canal inspector, and he was not a popular man in a dry year. The gods had one too. His name was Enbilulu.

He is among the oldest names in the record. Scribes at Fara and Abu Salabikh, in the middle of the third millennium BC, already wrote a deity called Ninbilulu into their god lists and gave it a short hymn. Whether that early figure was a goddess who later became the male Enbilulu, or a god all along under a title that only looks feminine, has not been settled. Nobody knows what bilulu means either. Storm clouds have been suggested, and so have rushes, the reeds that crowd a slow canal. The second guess suits him better. Enbilulu has very little to do with rain.

His birth is told in a Sumerian poem about Enlil and Ninlil, and it is not a dignified story. Enlil, chief of the gods, forces himself on the young goddess Ninlil at Nippur and is thrown out of the city for it. She follows him. At each stage of the road he hides behind a different face, the keeper of the city gate, then the man of the river that runs to the underworld, and each time she lies with the stranger and conceives another son. At the last crossing Enlil poses as the ferryman. From that meeting comes Enbilulu, whom the poem names at once by his trade: the inspector of canals. His three brothers are the moon god Nanna and two lords of the dead, Nergal and Ninazu. He is the only one of the four whose work is done in daylight, in mud.

A different tradition makes him a son of Enki, the god of sweet water, and it is Enki who gives him his post. In the poem of Enki and the world order, the god goes through creation handing out duties like a king staffing a new palace. He fills the Tigris with a rush of bright water, and then he needs somebody to manage it. Enbilulu is appointed inspector of waterways, with both great rivers placed in his hands, their plenty and their violence alike. Nearby in the same list the storm god receives the rain, and a farmer god named Enkimdu gets the ditches and dykes. Enbilulu stands between them, above the spade and below the sky, responsible for the flow.

The appointment is the whole myth. He fights nothing and steals nothing. One sees him instead as the inspectors themselves must have been seen: a figure on the bank at first light, the air still cool and smelling of wet clay, watching a gate lifted and the water shoulder its way into a dry channel with a low hiss. The grain comes later. His part is done when the ditch is full.

One odd tablet gives him more. A Babylonian incantation credits Enbilulu with setting out the days and the months, the ordering of the calendar, which every other text hands to the moon god. It stands alone, and it may simply show a priest reaching for a god of careful measurement and finding him.

Babylon was where he ended up. The city honoured him in the great temple of Esagil, where he shared a seat called the mound, the pure place, with the old god Enmesharra. Then the city’s own god swallowed him. When the Babylonian creation epic reaches its close, the assembled gods give Marduk fifty names, and several of them had once belonged to other deities. Enbilulu is one. The poem repeats it in three more forms, Enbilulu-Epadun for the lord of the irrigation ditch, Enbilulu-Gugal for the canal inspector of the gods, Enbilulu-Hegal for the one who heaps up abundance. A later god list glosses him flatly as Marduk of the canals. One hymn hands the name to Marduk’s son Nabu instead. The office survived. The officer became a title on someone else’s door.

He did keep a little independence. A ritual text of the last centuries BC, probably from the city of Der, still calls on Enbilulu by himself, beside Urash, Ennugi and Ningirsu, to stand guard over a field against vermin. And at the Hittite capital a scribe named Hanikkuili, copying tablets a long way from any canal Enbilulu ever inspected, described himself as the god’s servant.

What he could do follows from the water. He directs the rivers, shares them out, opens pasture and ploughland, and so stands behind every harvest in a country that could not eat without him. The texts that praise him under Marduk’s name speak of grain piled high and of wells and springs set in order.

His limits follow from the same source. He does not make the water. Enki fills the rivers and the storm god sends the rain, and Enbilulu only manages what arrives. His power is an appointment, and an appointment can be reassigned. That is exactly what happened to him.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Enbilulu in Mesopotamian mythology?

Enbilulu is the Sumerian god of irrigation and of the water in rivers and canals. He holds the title of inspector of canals among the gods. In later Babylonian religion his name became one of the fifty names of Marduk.

Who are the parents of Enbilulu?

In the Sumerian poem of Enlil and Ninlil, Enbilulu is the fourth son of Enlil and Ninlil, conceived when Enlil disguised himself as a ferryman. His brothers in that poem are Nanna, Nergal and Ninazu. A different tradition calls Enbilulu a son of Enki.

What job did Enki give Enbilulu?

In the poem of Enki and the world order, Enki fills the Tigris with water and then appoints Enbilulu inspector of waterways. Enbilulu is put in charge of both the Tigris and the Euphrates. Other gods in the same poem receive the rain and the ditches and dykes.

Is Enbilulu the same as Marduk?

Enbilulu began as a separate god and was later absorbed into Marduk. The Babylonian creation epic lists Enbilulu among Marduk’s fifty names, along with the forms Enbilulu-Epadun, Enbilulu-Gugal and Enbilulu-Hegal. A later god list calls Enbilulu the Marduk of the canals.

Was Enbilulu a god or a goddess?

Enbilulu is male in the myths, but the earliest lists write the name as Ninbilulu, which may point to a goddess. It is not settled whether an early goddess became a god or whether the deity was always male. The meaning of the word bilulu in the name is also unknown.