nd a corn god is
not necessarily remote when we consider that in Babylonia and Egypt
the harvest was the gift of the rivers.

The Euphrates, indeed, was hailed as a creator of all that grew on its
banks.

O thou River who didst create all things,
When the great gods dug thee out,
They set prosperity upon thy banks,
Within thee Ea, the King of the Deep, created his dwelling...
Thou judgest the cause of mankind!
O River, thou art mighty! O River, thou art supreme!
O River, thou art righteous![35]

In serving Ea, the embodiment or the water spirit, by leading him, as
the Indian Manu led the Creator and "Preserver" in fish form, from
river to water pot, water pot to pond or canal, and then again to
river and ocean, the Babylonians became expert engineers and
experienced agriculturists, the makers of bricks, the builders of
cities, the framers of laws. Indeed, their civilization was a growth
of Ea worship. Ea was their instructor. Berosus states that, as
Oannes, he lived in the Persian Gulf, and every day came ashore to
instruct the inhabitants of Eridu how to make canals, to grow crops,
to work metals, to make pottery and bricks, and to build temples; he
was the artisan god--Nun-ura, "god of the potter"; Kuski-banda, "god
of goldsmiths", &c.--the divine patron of the arts and crafts. "Ea
knoweth everything", chanted the hymn maker. He taught the people how
to form and use alphabetic signs and instructed them in mathematics:
he gave them their code of laws. Like the Egyptian artisan god Ptah,
and the linking deity Khnumu, Ea was the "potter or moulder of gods
and man". Ptah moulded the first man on his potter's wheel: he also
moulded the sun and moon; he shaped the universe and hammered out the
copper sky. Ea built the world "as an architect builds a house".[36]
Similarly the Vedic Indra, who wielded a hammer like Ptah, fashioned
the universe after the simple manner in which the Aryans made their
wooden dwellings.[37]

Like Ptah, Ea also developed from an artisan god into a sublime
Creator in the highest sense, not merely as a producer of crops. His
word became the creative force; he named those things he desired to
be, and they came into existence. "Who but Ea creates things",
exclaimed a priestly poet. This change from artisan god to creator
(Nudimmud) may have been due to the tendency of early religious cults
to attach to their chief god the attributes of rivals exalted at other
centres