Nino Khundadze

Tamaz Beradze Institute of Georgian Studies, University of Georgia
Chief Research Fellow
Cultural Studies, Art History
PhD
n.khundadze@ug.edu.ge

Enki’s (Ea’s) attribute—the vase with two symmetrical streams of water flowing from it, symbolizing the Euphrates and Tigris as well as cosmic wisdom—underwent several fundamental symbolic transformations over the centuries. The fountain became a powerful symbol of life, energy, purification, and divine grace, connecting the earth, where the water falls, with the heavens, from which it symbolically descends. In art, the fountain functions not merely as a decorative element but as a powerful metaphor whose meanings changed from one period to another. Artists employed it to represent both the physical and the spiritual worlds.

The paper examines how this symbol was transformed across centuries and cultures, what forms and meanings it acquired, and how it was represented in the visual arts. Particular attention is paid to the way Sumerian cosmic wisdom was transformed in Georgian and, more broadly, Christian imagery into the metaphor of the Psalm: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God” (Psalm 41:1). This raises the question of whether Sumerian wisdom was reinterpreted through the teachings of Christ.

The paper also addresses deeper conceptual connections between ancient Mesopotamian thought and modernist art. Malevich’s Black Square may be understood as an extreme expression of the archaic idea that everything originates from darkness or nothingness. In Sumerian cosmology, the subterranean and invisible ocean, the Abzu—ruled by Enki—constitutes the primordial darkness from which all forms and life emerge. From this perspective, the Black Square can be interpreted as a modernist translation of the archaic Mesopotamian “fertile void,” in which darkness signifies not death, but the potential for life and light.

Drawing on Mircea Eliade’s theory of sacred time, art historians have interpreted the Black Square as an evocation of illud tempus—the primordial time when the world had not yet taken form. Enki’s release of the streams of water and Malevich’s generation of a new geometric Suprematist universe from the Black Square may therefore be viewed as analogous ritual acts: the transformation of chaos, or darkness, into cosmos, or order.

Within this symbolic sequence, the digital pixel can be understood as a logical contemporary continuation of the same archaic pattern. If, for Enki, the primordial element was the drop of water, and for Malevich it was the black square, then for the contemporary world the point of origin is binary code and the pixel. This may be understood as a manifestation of archetypal thought, whereby the human mind, across millennia, repeatedly embodies the same fundamental symbols in changing forms.

The paper traces this symbolic development through five principal stages: Enki in Sumerian culture, where physical water and cosmic wisdom function as sources of survival; Christian art and Van Eyck, where spiritual light and the “living water” signify the salvation of the soul; Malevich and modernism, where form is reduced to the Black Square and returns to primordial darkness; and the pixel of the digital age, where informational flow and binary order allow “nothing” (0) and “something” (1) to generate a new reality.

Understanding this sequence suggests that the contemporary digital world may be as deeply “mythological” as ancient Sumer. We continue to follow streams, seek symmetry, and remain both cautious of and attracted to the “black square” from which everything begins..