Lord of the sweet waters
Enki
Shaper of humans from clay and blood, keeper of the me — the ordinances of civilisation. He warns Atrahasis of the flood by speaking to a reed wall.
The maker
Enki is the craftsman of the pantheon and the closest thing it has to a friend of humankind. In Atrahasis he mixes clay with the flesh and blood of a slain god, Wê-ila, so that the new creature will carry a divine ghost and a heartbeat. Ninhursag pinches off fourteen pieces; birth goddesses attend. It is a workshop scene and a delivery room at once, and nothing in it resembles a laboratory.
The loophole
Sworn not to warn humanity of the flood, Enki keeps the letter of his oath by speaking to a reed wall while Atrahasis happens to be on the other side of it. The trick is characteristic. Enki never opposes the assembly directly; he finds the seam in its decisions. Cleverness, in these texts, is a form of mercy.
The me
Enki holds the me: some hundred abstractions — kingship, the priestly office, truth, descent into the underworld, the art of the scribe, even 'the kindling of strife' — treated as portable objects. Inanna gets him drunk and carries them off to Uruk by boat. The myth is a charter for the transfer of civilisation from the old cult centre at Eridu to the rising city, told as a hangover.