Below, an impression from an ancient cylinder seal of Ea/Enki standing within his rectangular abzu shrine or sea-house within the abyss (the underground freshwater ocean, or abzu/apsu). The schematized portals or door hinges to the shrine are guarded by two Lahmu "hairy [ones]" naked except for a thong belt they wear. Note the wavy lines about the shrine symbolizing the watery abyss (for the photo cf. p. 98. "Ea." Piotr Bienkowski & Alan Millard. Dictionary of the Ancient Near East. Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2000. ISBN 0-8122-3557-6)
Below, another cylinder seal impression rendering Ea/Enki in a more "CUBULAR" apsu/abzu "sea House." Two Lahmu, naked except for a thong belt they wear, guard the portals. The two faced god is Izimud, Ea's vizier. Ea holds in his had an irrigation pot with two streams of water (rivers ?). He was the god who sent up freshwater for rivers from springs in the earth from his abzu house (for the below photo cf. p. 13. Diane Wolkenstein & Samuel Noah Kramer. Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, Her Stories and Hymns From Sumer. New York. Harper & Row. 1983. ISBN 0-06-090854-8 paperback). Perhaps the Shuruppak "Ark" descibed as being a CUBE in form is recalling Ea/Enki's Cubular sea-house or shrine ? He warned the Mesopotamian Noah, Ziusudra of Shuruppak to build the boat to save himself family and animals. In other Mesopotamian myths it is Ea/Enki who creates naked man and places in him his fruit-tree garden at Eridu to till and tend it forevermore inorder to relieve the junior Igigi gods of toil. I understand that Ea/Enki has been transformed by the Hebrews into Yahweh-Elohim. Both make naked man and place him in their garden to be their servant and both later warn a man of a flood sent to destroy all of mankind.
Below, a cylinder seal impression showing a rectangular shrine with ceremonial totem posts of a god on either side. Naked men in a boat approach a rectangular shrine. Could Ea/Enki's shrine have been rectangular too ? Perhaps the earliest shrines were made of reeds or marsh grasses and later of mudbrick ? (for the below photo cf. p. 25. Diane Wolkenstein & Samuel Noah Kramer. Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, Her Stories and Hymns From Sumer. New York. Harper & Row. 1983. ISBN 0-06-090854-8 paperback).
Below, three reed hut shrines with totem poles surrounded by calves and cows. Was the reed hut shrine of Ea/Enki like these ? The Mesopotamian flood hero is asleep in such a shrine when Ea advise him to tear it down an to build a ship of it to save himself, family and animals (for the below photo cf. p. 74. "The Dream of Dumuzi." Diane Wolkenstein & Samuel Noah Kramer. Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, Her Stories and Hymns From Sumer. New York. Harper & Row. 1983. ISBN 0-06-090854-8 paperback).
Below, a photo of a modern descendants of the ancient Mesopotamian reed huts including shrines, now used as communal meeting halls by todays marsh Arabs ( for the picture cf. p. 10. John Gray. Near Eastern Mythology. London. Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd. 1969)
Another reed hut shrine (?) with totem poles and cattle with calves (p. 360. figure d. Barthel Hrouda. Editor. Der Alte Oriente, Geschichte und Kultur des alten Vorderasien. Munchen. C. Bertelsmann Verlag GmbH. 1998. ISBN 3572-00867-0)
Below, the interior of a modern reed hut communal meeting hall. Gray's commentary identifies such a building with the Shuruppak Flood hero :
"Cane-plaited hall in the marshes of southern Mesopotamia. It is the kind of 'reed-hut' to which the god Ea divulged the secret of the flood."
(cf. p. 48. John Gray. Near Eastern Mythology. London. Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd. 1969)
