Observations placeholder
Intelligences - TRINITY CREATOR AND CREATED Enlil and Ninlil
Identifier
022217
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Enlil and Ninlil flank the Tree of Life
A description of the experience
Enlil and Ninlil are symbolically the Creator and Created. That is the first division that took place of the Ultimate Intelligence into that which creates and that which is created. Analogously it is like a software package developer as the creator and the resultant package as the created.
In some of the more sophisticated images of Enlil he is shown with three faces – the Trimurti – that which creates maintains and destroys.
The Myth of Enlil and Ninlil or Enlil and Ninlil: The begetting of Nanna is a Sumerian creation myth, written on clay tablets in the mid to late 3rd millennium BC, which describes how this took place
The source of the experience
Mesopotamian systemConcepts, symbols and science items
Symbols
Tree of lifeScience Items
Activities and commonsteps
Activities
Commonsteps
References
The first lines of the myth were discovered on the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, catalogue of the Babylonian section (CBS), tablet number 9205 from their excavations at the temple library at Nippur. This was translated by George Aaron Barton in 1918 and first published as "Sumerian religious texts" in "Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions", number seven, entitled "A Myth of Enlil and Ninlil".
Barton noted that Theophilus G. Pinches had published part of an equivalent Akkadian version of the same story in 1911, noting "The two texts in general agree closely, though there are minor variations here and there."
Another tablet from the same collection, number 13853 was used by Edward Chiera to restore part of the second column of Barton's tablet in "Sumerian Epics and Myths", number 77. Samuel Noah Kramer included CBS tablets 8176, 8315, 10309, 10322, 10412, 13853, 29.13.574 and 29.15.611. He also included translations from tablets in the Nippur collection of the Museum of the Ancient Orient in Istanbul, catalogue number 2707. Another tablet used as cuneiform source for the myth is held by the British Museum, BM 38600, details of which were published in 1919. Other tablets and versions were used to bring the myth to its present form with the latest composite text by Miguel Civil produced in 1989 with latest translations by Willem Römer in 1993 and Joachim Krecher in 1996.