The abzu ( , Akkadian: apsū also engur, , Akkadian: engurru) from the Sumerianab 'far' and zu 'water' was the name for fresh water from underground aquifers that was given a religious quality in Sumerian and Akkadian mythology. Lakes, springs, rivers, wells, and other sources of fresh water were thought to draw their water from the abzu.
The SumeriangodEnki (Ea in the Akkadian language) was believed to have lived in the abzu since before human beings were created. His wife Damgalnuna, his mother Nammu, his advisor Isimud and a variety of subservient creatures, such as the gatekeeper Lahmu, also lived in the abzu. In the city Eridu, Enki's temple was known as E2-abzu (house of the cosmic waters) and was located at the edge of a swamp, an abzu.[1] Certain tanks of holy water in Babylonian and Assyrian temple courtyards were also called abzu (apsū).[2] Typical in religious washing, these tanks were similar to the washing pools of Islamicmosques, or the baptismal font in Christianchurches.
As a deity
Abzu (apsū) is depicted as a deity only in the Babylonian creationepic, the Enūma Elish, taken from the library of Assurbanipal (c 630 BCE) but which is a millennium older. In this story, he was a primal being made of fresh water and a lover to another primal deity, Tiamat, who was a creature of salt water. The Enuma Elish begins:
When above the heavens did not yet exist nor the earth below, Apsu the freshwater ocean was there, the first, the begetter, and Tiamat, the saltwater sea, she who bore them all; they were still mixing their waters, and no pasture land had yet been formed, nor even a reed marsh...
Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, 1992. Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: an illustrated dictionary, s.v. "abzu, apsū". ISBN 0-292-70794-0
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