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 Agarum
- en Dilmun
Relations
- spouse: Meskilak, lady of Dilmun
Sources
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.