Wayne Horowitz discusses the earth/underworld being a place of no return in Mesopotamian cosmology.

Date
1998
Type
Book
Source
Wayne Horowitz
Non-LDS
Hearsay
Direct
Reference

Wayne Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Winona Lake, Indiana.: Eisenbrauns, 1998), 268, 272

Scribe/Publisher
Eisenbrauns
People
Wayne Horowitz
Audience
Reading Public
PDF
Transcription

Sumerian Names Akkadian names

. . .

ki erṣet la târi ‘Earth of No Return’

. . .

ki. Sumerian ki occurs countless times in the cosmic pair an.ki ‘heaven and earth’ and in parallelisms between heaven and earth in texts such as Gilgameš and the Ḫuluppu-Tree, Enik and Ninmaḫ and KAR 4, where an an ki are separated from one another in early times (see pp. 134-42). As such, ki also occurs as a name for the exposed upper surface of earth, the earth’s surface.

Two examples of ki = erṣetu as the underworld occur in bilingual texts. In SBH 139 no. iv 157-58, 600 Anunnaki are placed in ki = erṣetu (see p. 18). These 600 can be identified as the 600 Anunnaki of the underworld in KAR 307.37. In Utukku Lemnutu XVI, demons are sent down to ki = erṣetu from the earth’s surface:

udug.ḫul a.lá ḫul ki.šè ḫa.ba.e11.dè

ú-tuk-ku lem-nu a-lu-ú lem-nu ana erṣetimtim li-ri-du

CT 12 22: 280-281 + duplicates

(cf. O. Gurney, AAA 22 86: 126-137)

Let the evil utukku-demon and evil alû-demon go down to the underworld.

Citations in Mormonr Qnas
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