He is a first-born son of Apsu and Tiamat. He and his sister La?amu are the parents of Anshar and Kishar, the sky father and earth mother, who begat the first gods. La?mu was sometimes depicted as a snake, and sometimes as a bearded man with a red sash and six curls on his head. In Sumerian times La?mu meant "the muddy one" and it was a title given to the gatekeeper of the Abzu temple of Enki at Eridu. In the latter form, he is called La?mu the Hairy. He and La?amu are never mentioned separately. Symbolically, La?mu referred to the silt islands that appeared where the Fresh water (Abzu) met the Salt water (Tiamat) of the Persian Gulf.