Inzak, tutelary lord of Dilmun
Inzak (Akkadian Inzak; Sumerian Enshag; older scholarship Enshag, also Enzag, Enzak, Anzak) was the principal god of Bronze Age Dilmun, the civilisation centred on Bahrain and the Eastern Arabian coast including the island of Failaka, anciently called Agarum. He is first named in a late third-millennium inscription of Gudea of Lagash, where, under the form Ninzaga, he ships copper to Lagash, reflecting Dilmun's role as the entrepot of the Gulf copper trade. The Dilmunite kings, attested on the Durand Stone of Bahrain and on stone vessels from royal tumuli (the dynasty of Rimum and his son Yagli-El, c. 1780 BCE), styled themselves 'servant of Inzak of Agarum', a theocratic royal ideology comparable to that of Assur and Eshnunna. In the Sumerian paradise myth 'Enki and Ninhursaga', set in Dilmun, Enshag is the eighth of the deities the mother-goddess Ninhursaga creates to cure Enki, and is rewarded with the lordship of Dilmun. His cult, shared with the goddess Meskilak, was housed in the Failaka temples (Ekarra, 'house of the quay', and Egal-Inzak, 'palace of Inzak'). His worship reached beyond Dilmun: Enzak stood in a divine triad on the Susa acropolis in the eighteenth century BCE, and in the late god-list An = Anu sha ameli he was equated with the Babylonian scribal god Nabu.
Domains
- tutelary kingship
- maritime copper trade
Powers
- to hold the lordship of the pure land of Dilmun
- to convey copper across the sea to Mesopotamia
Epithets
- Inzak ša AgarumKhaled al-Nashef, 'The Deities of Dilmun', in Bahrain Through the Ages: The Archaeology (London: KPI, 1986), pp. 340-366. (secondary)
- en DilmunSamuel Noah Kramer & W. F. Albright, 'Enki and Ninhursag: A Sumerian "Paradise" Myth', BASOR Supplementary Studies 1 (1945). (secondary)
Relations
- spouse: Meskilak, lady of DilmunInzak and Meskilak (locally Panipa) form the divine couple at the head of the Dilmun pantheon, jointly worshipped in the temple Ekarra on Failaka and paired in the greeting formulae of letters between Dilmun and Nippur. A minority view (noted by al-Nashef) instead makes Meskilak his mother rather than his consort.Khaled al-Nashef, 'The Deities of Dilmun', in Bahrain Through the Ages: The Archaeology (London: KPI, 1986), pp. 340-366. (secondary); Gianni Marchesi, 'The Cuneiform Texts from Failaka', in Failaka/Dilmun: The Second Millennium Settlements, Vol. 6, ed. F. Højlund (Aarhus University Press, 2024). (secondary)
Sources
- Inzak (Enzak/Enshag) was the tutelary chief god of the Dilmun pantheon, whose cult centre was Agarum (Failaka) and in whose name the kings of Dilmun ruled.: Khaled al-Nashef, 'The Deities of Dilmun', in Bahrain Through the Ages: The Archaeology, ed. H. A. Al Khalifa & M. Rice (London/New York: KPI, 1986), pp. 340-366. (secondary); Gianni Marchesi, 'The Cuneiform Texts from Failaka', in Failaka/Dilmun: The Second Millennium Settlements, Vol. 6: Copper, Cuneiform Inscriptions and Other Finds, ed. F. Højlund (Aarhus University Press / Jutland Archaeological Society Publications 17:6, 2024). (secondary); Stephanie Dalley, 'Gods from north-eastern and north-western Arabia in cuneiform texts from the First Sealand Dynasty, and a cuneiform inscription from Tell en-Nasbeh, c. 1500 BC', Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 24/2 (2013), pp. 177-185. (secondary)