Two-Word Tamil Lesson

My husband Mowgli (not his real name) speaks three languages. English is his first (in case you're curious -- he gets a lot of questions about that), and at home, his parents speak a mix of Tamil and Telugu in addition to English. So if I want to understand and converse the way they do, I'll need to learn two languages as well as the particular mixology at work in my in-laws' home.

For now, I've decided that learning Tamil, slowly and randomly, is the way to go, since they live in Tamil Nadu and I should therefore be able to use it both in the house and in public the next time I visit.

One word I've learned, from doing yardwork with Mowgli, is the word for "snake," because we have garter snakes and he is not fond of snakes in any form. When he sees one, he will point and use the Tamil word for snake.

Not long ago, when a nature show ad came on, and there was a gorgeous close-up of a tongue-flicking snake in the ad, I proudly trotted out one of my five Tamil words. "Ooh, honey, look at that big bad tombu!"

That's when the laughing started. Tombu means "thumb." Pombu is "snake."

And now I know two Tamil words really, really well.

Adam, Eve, Snakes, Sumeria

Yesterday, I was having coffee with a friend, and we were talking about an art exhibition involving bugs, which led the conversation to fears of bugs, spiders and snakes. She’s deathly afraid of snakes, and so naturally we turned to the Bible story of Adam and Eve and the snake’s role in their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

I knew the general outline of the story, that the snake tricked Eve into going against God’s wishes that she not eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and thus represents the Devil. What I didn’t know, and learned from my husband when I got home, is that the story may originate in Sumeria. (I may have learned something about this link in my 7th grade Western Civilization class, but those days are long gone.)

There is a Sumerian creation myth dating to roughly to the 18th century B.C. in which the main mother-goddess (Ninhursag) installs her lover (Enki) in an earthly paradise that has a lush garden feauring eight special plants. Enki gets curious about the plants in the garden, and has his assistant fetch them for him to sample. Ninhursag gets wind of this, becomes enraged, and causes Enki to fall ill in eight ways. Then the other gods persuade Ninhursag to save Enki, and she creates eight goddesses to heal the eight afflictions. The one she creates to help with his rib is called Ninti.

This name is significant because the original semetic form of Eve is "Hawah," meaning life. In Sumerian, "nin" means lady, and "ti" can mean either rib or life. So Ninti means either “lady of the rib” or “lady of life.”

Naturally, on the Internet, you can find sites that both support and refute the theory that Sumerian myths are the true origin of key Bible stories. To me, the parallels are striking, and it’s always made sense to me that early Christians would employ existing mythology to make their new recruits feel more at home in a new faith.

Here's the weird thing, though: I haven't been able to find any mention of a snake in the Sumerian version.