I just visited the Necronomicon Page of my friend and sparring partner Dan Clore and noticed someone claiming his origin in the Absu, a term used often in the Simon Necronomicon. It's not the first time; people have been mentioning the Absu as a synonym for Hell, and even naming bands and occult groups after it. Even though I have better things to do, I thought I'd shed some light on this particular word and thereby point out how it's best to know your mythology before trying to awe people with it.

First of all, the Absu has more recently been re-interpreted as Apsu or Abzu, the name by which it is mentioned in most modern works on Mesopotamian mythology that I have seen. Thus, if you're looking for information on "Absu" to confirm or debate what I say here, you can look under these names.

So, what is the Absu? Is it merely the Mesopotamian equivalent of the Christian Hell? Hardly. Absu was originally the consort of Tiamat. He plotted with his vizier Mummu to destroy the gods because of the noise they made. The wise god Ea (also called Enki) then cast a spell which put Absu to sleep, and then slew him. Ea set up his dwelling place in the middle of Absu. (See James B. Pritchard's Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, p. 61, for the original of this myth.)

From his origins, one might expect the place made out of Absu to be pretty nasty. However, mythology tells us otherwise. This is what Jeremy Black and Anthony Green's Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary has to say about it:

...it was anciently believed that springs, wells, streams, rivers and lakes drew their water from and were replenished from a freshwater ocean which lay beneath the earth in the abzu (apsû) or engur... The abzu was the particular realm and home of the wise god Enki (Ea), his wife Damgalnuna (Damkina) and his mother Nammu, and was also inhabited by a number of creatures subordinate to him...The underworld was located even further down, beneath the abzu.(p. 27)

Ea or Enki is the god of magicians and the civilized arts - hardly a lord of demons. To further convince you that the equation of Absu with the Underworld is faulty, the following note on the Apsu can be found in Thorkild Jacobsen's The Harps that Once...: Sumerian Poetry in Translation:

8. The expanse of fresh water thought to underlie the earth. Because of the cleansing power of water, the rites of the Apsû stood for ritual purity in the highest degree.

Not the sort of place you'd expect to find demons cavorting, is it? This goes to show that looking into these things can often be more important than some people think.

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