Myth, Ritual, And Order in "Enki and the World Order"‪.‬

"Enki and the World Order" (henceforth EWO) is a long and relatively well-preserved Sumerian mythological composition (ca. 472 lines). (1) It divides naturally into four major sections. First, there is an opening third-person praise to Enki (lines 1-60). Second, Enki praises himself twice in the first person (lines 61-139): (a) in his first self-praise Enki recounts how Enlil commissioned him and gave him the gift of the me's and nam-tar, the various cultural components that made up the core of Sumerian life and culture, and the power to determine destinies, respectively (lines 61-85), and (b) in the second self-praise Enki proposes to take a journey through Sumer on his barge, in order to fulfill his commission to establish proper order and prosperity in Sumer (lines 86-139). Third, the long central section of the composition recounts Enki's journey through the land, decreeing the destiny of the Sumerian world (lines 140-386). In the first part of this section Enki begins with Sumer as a whole, and especially Ur, and moves from there to the surrounding regions of Magan, Meluhha, and Dilmun (lines 140-249). In the second part of the journey he comes back to the Sumerian homeland itself, where in a twelve-cycle series he assigns specific deities to take charge of the functions of various regions and elements of the Sumerian world order (lines 250-386). Fourth, and finally, Inanna complains to Enki that he had not assigned her any special functional powers in his decreeing of destinies, and Enki responds to her complaint (lines 387-471). In a previous article I treated in some detail the twelvefold cycle of the second part of Enki's journey (lines 250-386), in which Enki establishes the flow and fecundity of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and the canals (cycles 1-4), the tools, principles, and crops of the farmer (cycles 5-6), the tools and practices of brick making and construction (cycles 7-8), the plains and pastures with their herds and flocks (cycles 9-10), and finally the various city states and their industries (cycles 11-12). (2) I proposed there that, although EWO is a complex and sophisticated myth, reflecting a high level of religious, intellectual, and literary creativity, the primary subject matter and focus of the myth is nevertheless the proper functioning of regular daily, weekly, seasonal, and annual cycles of life at all levels of society in ancient Sumer. EWO, therefore, provides a useful starting point for approaching the subject of common daily life in ancient Sumer.