Its roots were of white crystal, which stretched towards the deep.
(Before) Ea was its course in Eridu, teeming with fertility;
Its seat was the (central place of the earth);
Its foliage (?) was the couch of Zikum the (primaeval) mother.
Into the heart of its holy house, which spread its shade like a forest, hath no man entered.
(There is the home) of the mighty mother who passes across the sky.
In the midst of it was Tammuz.
There is the shrine of the two (gods).[260]
Of this glorified tree or stem it is to be observed that it grew at the centre of the earth; that its roots pierced down into the abysmal watery deep, where the amphibious Ea, the god of wisdom, had his seat, and whence he nourished the earth with springs and streams; that its foliage supported Zikum, the primordial heavens, and overshadowed the earth, which was apparently regarded as a plane placed midway between the firmament above and the deep below. The stem itself was the home of Davkina, consort of Ea, the great mother, “the lady of the Earth,” and of her son Tammuz, a temple too sacred for mortals to enter.
Even were it not to be inferred from other evidence, there could be little doubt that the people amongst whom the above conception arose must have been already familiar with tree-worship. The mighty stem, in which the great gods dwelt, was but a poetical amplification of the sacred, spirit-inhabited tree, and arose out of the same idealising process as that which gave birth to the nearly related tree of knowledge and tree of life.