But Nippur, in very early days, had a close rival for its
position of religious and spiritual supremacy: the city Eridu,
about 120 miles to the south. Here in Eridu there was a local
deity by the name of Ea, and the aspiring theologians of that
city, eager to make him the supreme deity of the land, pressed
forward his claim for lordship over the earth, and in an effort
to insure his claim applied to him the epithet en-ki, "Lord of
the Earth," which then became his Sumerian name. But
though Enki, after some centuries, did succeed in displacing
Ninhursag and taking third place in the pantheon, he failed
to topple Enlil from his supremacy and had to settle for
second best, becoming an Enlil-banda, a kind of "Junior
Enlil." Like other gods he had to travel to Nippur to obtain
Enlil's blessing after he had built his temple E'engurra in
Eridu; he had to fill the Ekur of Nippur with gifts and pos-
sessions so that Enlil might rejoice with him; though he had
charge of the me controlling the cosmos and all civilized life,
he had to admit that these were turned over to him by a
generous and more powerful Enlil. As a consequence of his
failure to displace Enlil, he became so vindictively jealous
that, if we may trust the Sumerian mythographers, he brought
about the direst of calamities for mankind -- the "confusion
of tongues," a rapture of communications from which man

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