Damu

Damu is a god of vegetation and rebirth in Sumerian mythology.

Damu, in Mesopotamian religion, Sumerian deity, city god of Girsu, east of Ur in the southern orchards region. Damu, son of Enki, was a vegetation god, especially of the vernal flowing of the sap of trees and plants. His name means "The Child," and his cult—apparently celebrated primarily by women—centred on the lamentation and search for Damu, who had lain under the bark of his nurse, the cedar tree, and had disappeared. The search finally ended when the god reappeared out of the river.

The cult of Damu influenced and later blended with the similar cult of Tammuz the Shepherd, a Sumerian deity. A different deity called Damu was a goddess of healing and the daughter of Nininsina of Isin.[1]

Damu is a healing deity credited both as asû "healer" and āšipu, "exorcist TT ", which says as much about the close link between the two professions as about the deity's capabilities. Accordingly, Damu accompanies his mother Gula/Ninkarrak in incantations but is also credited as healer in his own right: "Damu binds the torn ligaments" (Ebeling 1938: 115).

Damu is a Sumerian god, documented since the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur. He had a cult in Isin, where he was called the son of the local tutelary goddess, Ninisina. Thorkild Jacobsen in his masterwork on Mesopotamian Religion called "The Treasures of Darkness"(Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 1976) says that Damu is also considered the son of Urash, another name for Ninhursag-Ki, the Great Mother Earth, and Enki, god of Wisdom, Magick and the sweet fertilizing waters of the deep, the Abzu, as well as a younger, childlike version of Dumuzi/Tammuz, the archetypal Lover and Divine Bridegroom of Mesopotamia. As such, Damu is very much a healing deity, bringer of abundance and vitality. Jacobsen also states that He seems to represent the power in the raising sap, so vital for the orchard growers of the lower Euphrates. The prominent figures in the cycle of Damu as the Mesopotamian Divine Child are also present in the cycle of Dumuzi, namely his mother and sister(s), who Damu´s loss to the Underworld and rejoice at his triumphant return to the Worlds Above.

Not much has reached us to allow for the reconstruction of Damu´s . We don´t know whether He had a miraculous birth, as it is normally the case for Divine in myth and religion. Because we meet Damu namely through the hymns where his mother and sister(s) search for him and learn that "He is lost to the Underworld", his cycle may very well be related to the renewal of the land in its full vitality and splendor, especially the fruits of orchards and trees such as the date palm and the tamarisk, and about family ties that endure the hardest trials not to be broken by outer circumstances.

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