Basalt water basin from Assur

God of fresh water and annual flood Ea/Enki flanked by fish-cloaked Apkallus. Part of the 7th century BC basalt water basin from Assur, Iraq. Pergamon Museum, Germany...

Ea/Enki is often depicted as the source of the two great rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, which either flow out of his shoulders, or out of a cup that he holds in his hands...Enki is (in) Abzu, The Northern mountains/highlands, the source of Tigris and Euphrates...

I love the fact that on the relief from the water basin from Assur, the water is depicted flowing out of the "jugs" in the sky (rain), into the "jug" held by Enki/Ea (Abzu, mountains/highlands which are source of Tigris and Euphrates) and then out of it as two great rivers...

What about the fish dudes?

Fish are often depicted swimming towards Enki. I talked about this in my posts "Adda seal", "Goatfish", "Utu and Enki"...

These are giant Mesopotamian carps, migratory fish which migrate upstream, towards Enki who is (in) Abzu, the source of Tigris and Euphrates, for spawning during the flood...Hence the expression "carp flood" found in Mesopotamian texts...

These were then seen as Enki's messengers, and on the Stella of the Vultures, we can read that they were "sent with messages to Enki"...You can read about this in my post "Goatfish".

These giant fish were eventually turned into Apkallu, which are on the Assur basin seen "facing" Enki. Apkallu were seen as proxies through whom Enki, the god of wisdom and civilisation, established civilisation in Lower Mesopotamia...Basically Neolithic settlers from Anatolia...I talked about them in my post "Apkallu"...

 

So that wasn't so difficult to understand, right? Well if you know what animal calendar markers are and how to interpret them...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...