Ninki

deity underworld single tradition · 3

Ninki is a Mesopotamian deity who appears at the beginning of enumerations of the 'Ancestors of Enlil'. In the earliest recorded lists, Enki and Ninki were the immediate parents of Enlil, but beginning in the Ur III period onwards, a growing number of 'ancestors' separated them. Enki and Ninki became primordial, ancestral beings who were no longer active and resided in the underworld.

↻ synthesized from 3 sources

When

First attested
3000 BCE
Attested period
-3000 – 0
Historical notes
Attested from earliest recorded lists.

Relationships

parent of
Enlil
consort of
Enki

Expand to full subgraph →

Sources

Source passages

“Dina Katz proposes that Ereshkigal might have developed from Ninki. She assumes that the former might have split from the latter at some point between the reign of Eannatum and Uruinimgina. In contrast with Ninki, Ereshkigal does not appear in Early Dynastic god lists.”

#14836 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001

“The so-called Silbenvokabular A explains the signs [AŠ].NI-[AŠ].UR first as the primordial par Enki-Ninki”

#37308 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001

“Enumerations of such figures start with the pair Enki-Ninki, and sometimes they were referred to simply as "Enkis and Ninkis," dEn-ki-e-ne dNin-ki-e-ne. Texts from Fara and Abu Salabikh from the Early Dynastic period already attest the existence of these pairs. References are also known from Ebla, where in one text Enki and Ninki are linked with roots of the tamarisk.”

#38898 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001