Apkallu

Overview

The apkallu (Akkadian; abgal in Sumerian) were the legendary sages of Mesopotamia, wise beings credited with teaching humanity writing, building, law, and the priestly arts. The word means "wise one." In the oldest layer of the tradition there were seven, creatures of the god Ea who lived in the Apsu, the fresh-water deep, before the great flood of Mesopotamian tradition, told in the Atrahasis Epic. Later texts add sages of human descent who served kings after that flood, and later still scholars called ummanu, "experts." The Epic of Gilgamesh asks whether the Seven Sages did not lay the foundations of Uruk's wall.

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Forms and uses

In Assyrian and Babylonian art the sages appear as a fish-cloaked man, a bird-headed winged figure, and a winged man. Each usually carries a bucket and a cone-shaped object, probably tools of ritual purification. Ritual texts prescribe figurines of the sages, made of wood or clay, placed at set points in a building, including doors, thresholds and foundations, as protective guardians. The texts call them guardians (massaru), a word also rendered "watchers."

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What the texts say

The Uruk List of Kings and Sages (a copy dated 165 BC, found in Uruk's temple of Anu) pairs seven kings before the flood with seven sages, then, after a dividing line usually taken to mark the flood, lists more. Berossus, a Babylonian priest of the third century BC, describes Oannes (the Greek form of Uanna, the first sage), a creature with a fish's body and a man's head and feet who came out of the sea each day to teach writing, city building, law, and farming. The Epic of Erra and Ishum (probably eighth century BC) says Marduk sent the "experts" (ummanu) down to the Apsu and forbade their return; Dalley takes them to be the sages. A few texts treat the sages as dangerous. In two incantations the anti-witchcraft series Maqlu casts them as witches, and elsewhere it calls on them as allies. One ritual text says two later sages angered the gods.

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Dating the evidence

The written sources are mostly from the first millennium BC. Some scholars trace the sages to the third millennium BC, but the earliest surviving images date to the late second millennium BC, and the famous palace reliefs to the ninth through seventh centuries BC.

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At Nimrud

At Nimrud (biblical Calah), the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) shows winged sage figures beside the sacred tree, a fish-cloaked sage stood at the entrance to the temple of Ninurta, and clay sage figurines were buried in brick boxes in foundations, as at Assur and Nineveh.

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Scripture's contrast

Mesopotamia credited wisdom, writing, and skill to Ea's sages. Scripture credits wisdom and skill to the LORD (Proverbs 2:6; Exodus 31:3). The sages are never named in the Bible. Enoch, seventh from Adam (Genesis 5:1-24), is set beside the seventh figures of the Mesopotamian lists in the work of Amar Annus, who notes a Babylonian tradition that the seventh antediluvian figure, a king or a sage, ascended to heaven, and that the seventh sage, Utuabzu, is said in the incantation series Bit meseri to have ascended to heaven.

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Apkallu and Genesis 6:1-4

Several scholars see these sages as a backdrop for the sons of God and the Nephilim. Anne Draffkorn Kilmer proposed in 1987 that the apkallu were the Mesopotamian counterparts of the Nephilim. Assyriologist Amar Annus argued in 2010 that the Watchers of 1 Enoch, and Genesis 6:3-4, reflect inverted versions of Mesopotamian sage lore. Annus infers from the four post-flood sages being called "of human descent" that apkallu could mate with humans. Helge Kvanvig reads Genesis and the Enochic Watcher story as two separate accounts drawing on the same Mesopotamian material. Michael Heiser (1963-2023), whose doctorate came from the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in a 2015 article that Genesis 6:1-4 was written to denigrate Mesopotamian ideas. Scholars differ on which way the influence ran and when. Even if a Mesopotamian background is granted, the identity of the sons of God remains debated, surveyed in Giants.

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Further reading

Stephanie Dalley, "Apkallu," Iconography of Deities and Demons (online project); Jonas C. Greenfield, "Apkallu," Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible; Amar Annus, "On the Origin of Watchers," Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 19.4 (2010) and "The Story of the Watchers as a Counter Narrative," Religions 15.9 (2024); Helge S. Kvanvig, "The Watcher Story and Genesis," Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 18.2 (2004); Michael S. Heiser, Reversing Hermon.