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Namma

A reference page linking a name, group, or concept to the materials that discuss it.

A goddess who asks Enki to relieve the gods’ labor in Enki and Ninmah.

Clay tablet of Atraḫasīs at the British Museum. The photographer identifies it with the flood tradition, not the human-creation lines. Photograph: SpeakingArch, 2026 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0; resized and converted to WebP for display
Clay tablet of Atraḫasīs at the British Museum. The photographer identifies it with the flood tradition, not the human-creation lines. Photograph: SpeakingArch, 2026 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0; resized and converted to WebP for displaySpeakingArch / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SALicense · Image source

Text

In the opening lines of Enki and NinmahEnki and NinmahA Sumerian composition preserved in Old Babylonian copies: human creation relieves divine labor, followed by scenes about bodies and fates.Glossary · Click to read the explanation, Namma wakes her son EnkiEnkiMesopotamian deity associated with deep fresh water, wisdom and Eridu, known as Ea in Akkadian tradition. The earliest preserved written mention does not date his cult’s origin or identify Ubaid Eridu’s deity.Glossary · Click to read the explanation about the burden borne by working gods. Her role in this scene concerns the request for and arrangement of human making. The killed god’s blood in Atraḫasīs is not part of this text’s preserved creation scene. [1]

References and notes

  1. Full extant English translation read. Lines 1–37 and 44–51 govern the labor and human-creation comparison; lines 52–139 concern Ninmah's subsequent fashioned persons and their assigned fates and contain lacunae and manuscript variants. The translation is not an autograph of composition. Oxford ETCSL 1.1.2, Enki and Ninmaḫ, lines 1–51, 52–139 Return to the text ↑

Research history

Substantive changes are retained here. Minor copy edits remain in the internal operational log.

  1. Edition 2 · 12 October 2026 · editor:aladmin

    Substantive record update

    Read this revision in its original language (Arabic)

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Cite this record

IL Archive, «Namma», Edition 2, https://ilarchive.com/en/entities/namma