# Talk:Enlil

You forgot to write that :
Enlil was the older boy-child of Nammu and An.
He raped his future wife and sister : Ninlil.
They got a boy child from this union : Nanna.
Enlil and his young brother Enki fought , but we dont know the end of the story. It seems to be the same story than of Cain and Abel.
sources :
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/mythology/assyrbabyl-faq/

I read the original Ninlil Enlil text, and it sais that Nergal the was the result of this unholy union.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Novoneiro (talk • contribs) 06:57, 22 October 2008 (UTC) 

I've read a bit about Enlil while looking some of the comparative mythology associated to the story of Adam and Eve. There should maybe be a note added on how he might be related to this. ADM (talk) 13:25, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

[~clh][E-engurra, Inc.][IIdor][securus][XOR][securus][IIdor]['request'for'update'][~en.ki][~clh]
Good afternoon esteemed editors,
Please make editation to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En-lil
for:
removal of the [r][a][p][i][n][g] passage.

In the last paragraph of Cultural History, the mortal surviving the flood is named as Utnapishtim. I believe the name comes, as the link suggests, from the Epic of Gilgamesh, but the story itself is older, and in the original, his name is Atrahasis (after whom the story itself is named). 85.29.68.97 (talk) 21:53, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Two remarks:

- The meaning of Enlil's name derived from its Sumerian rendering en.líl, may be "Lord Wind", but the original meaning arguably was completely different: "God of the Gods", borrowed from Semitic (Eblaitic?). See W.G. Lambert, "The Section AN", in L. Cagni (ed.), Il bilinguismo ad Ebla, Napoli, 1984, 399 ad 802; M. Krebernik, Die Personennamen der Ebla-texte, Berlin, 1988, 84; Th. Jacobsen, "The Lil2 of dEn-lil2", in  E. Leichty et al. (eds), DUMU-E2-DUB-BA. Studies in Honor of Å.W. Sjöberg, Philadelphia, 1989, 270; P. Michalowski, "The Unbearable Lightness of Enlil", in J. Prosecky (ed.), Intellectual Life of the Ancient Near East, Prague, 1998, 241 f.; P. Steinkeller, "On Rulers, Priests, and Sacred Marriage. Tracing the Evolution of Early Sumerian Kingship", in K. Watanabe (ed.), Priests and Officials in the Ancient Near East, Heidelberg, 1999, 114 n. 36.

- Therefore the Sumerian evidence for Enlil's relationship with "wind" and "breath" becomes crucial. However, the reference in note 2 does not provide information to that respect, or it is not easy to retrieve that information on the webpage provided here. Could someone give a more detailed reference (number of the tablet, for instance)? Thanks.

Heunir (talk) 19:21, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

It makes much more sense now. The major ancient civilizations essentially worshipped the same "gods" under different names.
In Ancient Greece:
There was Cronus. And his most prominent offspring were Zeus (Lord of the Storm), Poseidon (Lord of the Sea, living there too) and Hades (Lord of the Underworld).
-
In the Canaanite religion, or Levantine religion as a whole:
There was  El (whom the Ancient Greeks actually identified with Cronus). And his most prominent offspring were Hadad (Lord of the Storm),  Yam (Lord of the Sea, living there too) and Mot (Lord of the Underworld).
-
In the Sumerian religion:
There was Anu. And his most prominent offspring were Enki (Lord of the Sea (abzu), living there too), Enlil (Lord of the Storm) and Ereshkigal (Lady of the Underworld).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.201.16.24 (talk) 08:14, 25 February 2012 (UTC) 

There are some cross-references to further establish this connection.
-
Both Enki and Poseidon were called "Lord of the Earth".
-
An aspect of Enki are 7 Sumerian sages, the Abgal, and an aspect of Yam is Lotan, a 7-headed dragon. Here is also a reference to the Book of Revelation. One of the Two Beasts comes out of the sea, from the abyss (abzu), and has 7 heads. This is a direct reference to both Yam (Lotan) and Enki (Abgal).
-
Yam was believed to be a sea serpent, and the symbol of Enki was a double-helix serpent. 88.153.208.150 (talk) 09:43, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
This not a forum or a dump for miscellanous, only partly true claims. Especially, Enki was not lord of the sea but of tha underground sweet water ocean called Abzu. Poseidon and Yam hoever are gods of the sea, not the Abzu. Str1977 (talk) 19:45, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

I have my doubts on the image that is now used as the depiction of the god. On wikimedia commons it states that the image depicts Enlil and Ninlil from a mural of Susa which is now located in the Louvre; http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EnlilandNinlil.jpg However I looked at the original on the site of the Louvre and they don't even mention Enlil. They do mention Samas which some may argue is son of Enlil. But further then that I see no connection. Could the image be removed? (the louvre link: http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/panels-molded-bricks).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Quirogatnonerat (talk • contribs) 15:34, 11 December 2014 (UTC) 

Does anyone know of a reasonably well-identified ancient Mesopotamian depiction of Enlil? The only image on Wikimedia Commons is the one that was removed because it does not actually represent Enlil. I have found some other images on the internet claimed to be "Enlil", but none of them are confirmed in reliable sources. In fact, in all the sources I have looked at, I have not seen a single ancient representation identified as Enlil. I have basically just rewritten the entire article and I am hoping to nominate it as a Good Article nominee, but I would like to have at least one image of what the ancient Mesopotamians imagined Enlil looked like. Does anyone here know of any such depiction? --Katolophyromai (talk) 15:29, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Without a citation at the end of every sentence, the sources are ambiguous. In fact, when I first wrote the very passage you have just edited, another user immediately removed some of the material I had written in the middle of the paragraph because he claimed that it was "uncited," even though I had placed a citation at the end of the paragraph. Clearly, if he could mistake the information as uncited, so can anyone else. I have seen plenty of other instances where this sort of thing has happened and I am fully convinced that, even if the citations seem redundant, they are absolutely necessary in order to make it clear which source is being used. Furthermore, what happens if someone comes in and splits the paragraph in two? If there is only a citation at the end of the original paragraph, then it looks like the first paragraph resulting from the split is uncited and must therefore be removed, but, if each sentence has its own citation, then the sourcing will still be clear. What if someone inserts a new, uncited statement into the middle of the paragraph that is not found in the source? If every other sentence has a citation, the sentence will stand out as uncited; if there is one citation at the end of the paragraph, it will look as though that statement came from the source at the end of the paragraph just like everything else. The repeated citations may seem redundant (or even to some extent ridiculous), but they are the clearest way I have found of citing my sources. --Katolophyromai (talk) 05:23, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

I am not sure what edit you are referring to, but this edit by A. Parrot is a great improvement. Drmies (talk) 05:26, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, Drmies. The first of the series of edits that Katolophyromai is referring to is here. The other editor never fully explained his or her rationale, and it seems to have been a disagreement about the substance of the retelling as much as it was about a supposed lack of citations. Katolophyromai was in the right in that disagreement, and if he had sought a third opinion, it would have been resolved in his favor.
I do think it's ridiculous to have such redundant citations. Citations create a slight interruption to the flow of the text. Wikipedia editors and, presumably, regular readers have learned to read fluidly despite them, but I still think it's better to avoid those interruptions when possible. According to WP:When to cite "If you write a multi-sentence paragraph that draws on material from one source, the source need not be cited after every single sentence unless the material is particularly contentious," and a citation for every paragraph is (or perhaps used to be; I don't know where to find it now) the minimum standard for a GA. No guideline requires a citation for every sentence except in medical articles, which are obviously a special case. The presumption is that, in a well-written article, each citation supports the preceding section of text up until the previous citation.
In a simple example like this, where two or three pages in a source that retell a myth are supporting a paragraph retelling the same myth, anyone who claims it's "uncited" is simply being unreasonable. Unreasonable editing is a constant danger on Wikipedia, but we're not required to design our articles around it. Likewise, if the paragraph is split, the citation at the end should be copied to the new paragraph as well, and if it's not, it's no different than if a vandal or careless editor deleted a citation. The assumption underlying Wikipedia is that sensible and competent editors will maintain things; if that ever ceases to be the case, Wikipedia will collapse, all the articles will turn to vandalized sludge, and it won't matter where the citations are placed. A. Parrot (talk) 06:49, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
Right. So, Katolophyromai, maintenance is the key--and readability the goal. Good luck with the GA nomination, BTW. I liked Enlil fine back when I was a deist, and I wish him the best. Drmies (talk) 19:03, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

1.
The article gives a translation of Enlil's name as Lord Storm and cites two sources, Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia and Halloran's Sumerian Lexicon version 3.0. I have checked both. 
I accessed Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia using Google Books. The cited page, p. 182, contains "lord wind" but not "lord storm." Furthermore, a search of the book for "storm" reveals no instances connected to Enlil's name as such.
Halloran's Lexicon does define en as lord but gives the following for líl:
líl: n., wind; breath; infection; spirit (of a place); back or open country (reduplicated li, 'cedar scent'?)
v., to infect.
Furthermore a search of the lexicon from the other direction - for English storm - reveals various words: chiefly imi / im / em, uru, mer / mir / gur, and compounds of these. I found no instances of English storm in the lexicon linked to líl or to any compound of líl.
http://www.sumerian.org/sumerian.pdf
I am replacing "Lord Storm" with "Lord Wind" because both the sources cited to support "Lord Storm" do not appear in fact to do so.
2.
I am a bit dubious about even "Lord Wind" for two reasons: one, I didn't see any weather-related compound words at all Halloran's lexicon that included líl, and two, the secondary definitions given above lead me to suspect that líl may be wind in the sense of "breath/spirit" rather than in the sense of movement of air due to weather (cf. Latin spirare, "to breathe," whence English spirit; thus in the sense that a living thing has breath). This leads me to think that a better translation may be something like Spirit Lord (or, taking some liberties and jumping off from the priestly rather than lordly sense of en, Holy Spirit). However, lacking expertise in Sumerian or more importantly sources I feel reluctant to go further than removing Lord Storm for lack of sources at this time. I would much appreciate any input/sources on this second question.
(p.s. as an ending note, I will add that lilu is given as an Akkadian word for spirit in the sense of a supernatural creature on this encyclopedia, and the page lists Sumerian equivalent lili - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilu_(mythology) )
Aithiopika (talk) 22:54, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Just a followup, I will restore mentions of Storm to the etymology section since further reading has indicated it has been read this way by some, particularly earlier 20th C. German scholars, even if there is not a consensus reading. Aithiopika (talk) 19:57, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Sorry - but it seems pretty hard to believe that it means anything more than phantom, or ghost.  Lord Ghost, (lord of the unseen) is just as likely as Lord Wind.
For plenty of textual examples where lil represents 'ghost' cf. http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?searchword=l=lil2%20p=N%20a=ghost&charenc=gcirc&sortorder=textno

If you want to add "Lord Ghost" as a translation of Enlil's name, you are going to need to provide a citation to a specific reliable, secondary, scholarly source that explicitly states that Enlil's name means or could mean "Lord Ghost." —Katolophyromai (talk) 00:57, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
@Katolophyromai:I came back to this topic a couple years after my earlier comment and did a little more research. My takeaway is that in academic Assyriological circles there doesn't seem to be a consensus in favor of understanding lil in Enlil's name as referring to wind and weather, but there also isn't a consensus in favor of understanding it as referring to ghosts and spirits.
Everybody agrees that Enlil is Lord Something, but whether to read him as a weather god or whether to understand the lordship as more broadly over the spiritual realm (and leave specific weather associations to Iškur/Adad, the Thunderer) seems to be definitely unsettled.
Sources:
Pro weather:
Jacobsen (1989) The líl of En-líl.
Anti weather; spirit/ghost/etc.:
Steinkeller (1999) On Rulers, Priests and Sacred Marriage: Tracing the Evolution of Early Sumerian Kingship.
Michalowski (1998) The Unbearable Lightness of Enlil.
That the debate remains unsettled and neither answer seems satisfactory:
http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/enlil/index.html -- Aithiopika (talk) 20:51, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
After a while of no comment, I'm going ahead and editing the etymology section to reflect the above. Aithiopika (talk) 19:58, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
Enlil - Zeus. Both send the flood.
There is another interesting moment, which seems to be not particularly noticed, but the fight of Hadad with Yam and the fight of Indra with Trisiras and Vritra are also about the flood. (99 fortresses of Vritra. Atlantis?)
I will say even more, the fight of Seth with Osiris is also about the flood, therefore Seth as the thunderer is demonized, the Egyptian priests deceived the Greeks by essentially identifying Zeus with Typhon. Everything is connected with the Flood.
Everything is connected with Titanomachy. Yes, it is almost a conspiracy theory, but sooner or later the picture will come together. and fallen titans, giants, atlanteans.
Note that Hadad fights with Yam, he is connected with Yama Ymir and Jamshid and if the first two are only indirectly connected with the flood, then 3 is directly connected with it. Awyachin (talk) 17:49, 20 April 2025 (UTC)