The AbzuorApsu (Sumerian: 𒀊𒍪abzu; Akkadian: 𒀊𒍪apsû), also called engur (Cuneiform:𒇉, LAGAB×HAL; Sumerian: engur; Akkadian: engurru—lit. ab='water' zu='deep', recorded in Greek as ἈπασώνApasṓn[1]), is the name for fresh water from underground aquifers which was given a religious fertilising quality in ancient near eastern cosmology, including Sumerian and Akkadian mythology. Lakes, springs, rivers, wells, and other sources of fresh water were thought to draw their water from the abzu. In Sumerian and Akkadian mythology, it is referred to as the primeval sea below the void space of the underworld (Kur) and the earth (Ma) above.
The Sumerian god Enki (Ea in the Akkadian language) was believed to have lived in the abzu 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 abzu.[4][5][6][7][8]
Abzu (apsû) is depicted as a deity[9] only in the Babylonian creationepic, the Enūma Eliš, taken from the library of Assurbanipal (c. 630 BCE) but which is about 500 years older. In this story, he was a primal being made of fresh water and a lover to another primal deity, Tiamat, a creature of salt water. The Enūma Eliš begins:『When above the heavens (e-nu-ma e-liš) 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.』This resulted in the birth of the younger gods, one, Enki, would later contain Apsu when he plotted to kill them because of their noise. Enraged, Tiamat gives birth to monsters, filling their bodies with "venom instead of blood", and made war upon her treacherous children, only to be slain by Enki's son Marduk, the god of Storms, who then forms the heavens and earth from her corpse.
^Green, Margaret Whitney (1975). Eridu in Sumerian Literature. University of Chicago: Ph.D. dissertation. pp. 180–182.
^Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, 1992. Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: an illustrated dictionary, s.v. "abzu, apsû". ISBN0-292-70794-0.
Quotations related to Abzu at Wikiquote
