Table of Contents
Clay is the material the gods reach for when they make people, and on this site it turns up from Sumer to Persia, West Africa, the Aleutians and the Andes. These are the pages where it appears.
Clay mixed with the blood of a god
On Atrahasis the gods are worn out by their labor and ask the birth goddess to create man. Nintu answers that the work belongs to Enki and that she will do it if he gives her clay. Enki then lays out the plan to the great gods:
Nintu shall mix clay
Enki, in the Atrahasis epic
With his flesh and his blood.
Then a god and a man
Will be mixed together in clay.
On Ninmah and Enki Enki advises the gods to make a servant of the gods, humankind, out of clay and blood, and in the end Kingu’s blood is used for the first human. On Mesopotamian Creation Myths the same story of Enki and Ninmah begins with the lesser gods complaining to Namma, the primeval mother, about their toil.
Aruru and Enkidu
The Epic of Gilgamesh uses the same gesture for the wild man who becomes the king’s companion. On Epic of Gilgamesh: Tablet I the goddess Aruru makes him:
Aruru washed her hands, she pinched off some clay, and threw it into the wilderness.
Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet I
The next line has her create valiant Enkidu in the wilderness. A man of the steppe who starts as a pinch of clay is to me the clearest picture of how the Mesopotamians thought a body was made.
The dust of the ground
On Genesis and Atlantis Ignatius Donnelly sets Genesis 2:7, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,” beside the creation story of the Quiché of Central America:
The first man was made of clay; but he had no intelligence, and was consumed in the water.
Quiché legend, quoted by Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
On Androgyne Adam God creates Adam from clay or dust, shapes him and breathes life into him. On The Jinn the Qur’an has man made from sounding clay and the jinn made before him from fire. In the Hesiod section of Androgyne Adam the Greek verses on Pandora have the crippled god mould plastic clay with tempering water at the order of the ruler of the gods.
Potters in Persia and Africa
In the Vendidad, on Yima and the Vara, Yima asks how he will build the Vara he has been commanded to make, and the answer comes in a potter’s image:
O fair Yima, son of Vivanghat! Crush the earth with a stamp of thy heel, and then knead it with thy hands, as the potter does when kneading the potter's clay.
Ahura Mazda to Yima, Vendidad, Fargard 2
On Kyomarz or Gil-shah – First man the father of the Persians is Kyomarz or Gil-Shah, and “Gil” means clay while “Shah” means king. So the first man of that line carries the material of his making in his name.
On Disobedience and corruption on earth, Olorun decided that a drastic action was needed Obatala feels the world needs life, molds human figures from clay and brings them to Olorun, who breathes life into them. On Ta Seti, Africa’s Early Powerhouse Khnum, the ram-headed god of the Nile source, fashions humans on a potter’s wheel.
Clay in the north and in the Americas
On Aleutian Myth: Tulugaak created the world Tulugaak, the raven, gathers clay and shapes the first humans with his beak and claws. On Elder races lived in the earth the Jicarilla Apache tell of deities in a damp, dark underworld who create animals and the first humans from clay before the emergence into this world. Clay can also be turned against the gods: on Þór and Hrungnir the giants build a clay giant to stand beside Hrungnir in his duel with Thor.
Related pages
- Atrahasis
- Epic of Gilgamesh: Tablet I
- Ninmah and Enki
- Mesopotamian Creation Myths
- Genesis and Atlantis
- Yima and the Vara
- Kyomarz or Gil-shah – First man
- Disobedience and corruption on earth, Olorun decided that a drastic action was needed
- Aleutian Myth: Tulugaak created the world
For every page I tagged with Clay, see the Clay tag archive.
