Ninsikila ('pure lady' / 'lady of the pure place') is the Dilmunite goddess as she appears in Mesopotamian myth. In 'Enki and Ninhursaga', the great Sumerian poem that locates the primordial paradise in Dilmun, Enki lies down with Ninsikila his spouse in a land that is described as still virginal and pristine, and she addresses him to ask that the city of Dilmun be given fresh water from the earth, quays and harbours for ships, and agricultural abundance; the same figure reappears in 'Enki and the World Order', where Enki, having purified Dilmun, places Ninsikila in charge of it. Assyriological scholarship treats this Dilmun Ninsikila as closely bound up with the chief goddess Meskilak, whose name was written homonymously as Ninsikila in Mesopotamia; the two are frequently identified, though a separate, gender-shifting Mesopotamian deity Ninsikila (spouse of Lisin) is a distinct figure not to be confused with the lady of Dilmun. Because the surviving portrait of Ninsikila belongs wholly to the literary mythology of the pure land rather than to the Bahrain-Failaka cult, she stands somewhat apart from the historically attested couple Inzak and Meskilak.