ii) Throughout the text, where scholars argue over rendering Sh as Š, I have generally chosen the former.
iii) The term "Mesopotamia":
It should also be noted that there is really no such things as a "Mesopotamian god and goddess", though there are gods and goddesses of the Sag-Giga (Sumerians), or the Akkadians in the earliest times of recorded history; the "Assyrians" and Babylonians (and even "Persians"), in later times; and various other peoples who came and went across the Middle East, who also worshipped the same variants of the same deities, by their own or different names, their own or different spellings; and of course the region described as Mesopotamia also grew and shrank and altered and found itself renamed throughout the epochs, the intention here is simply to list the deities of the region, and to describe them. A fuller explanation of this is appended at the end of this blogpage.
My references to ancient Sumerian texts sometimes come with links, sometimes without; in every case, if that text still exists, the ORACC website is the place to go to find it: click here and use its search engine. It comes under "Creative Commons", so it is free to use, without fear of patents, copyrights or any other obstacles; but please do give them the credit, as I am doing here, because it is an absolutely amazing scholarly project and deserves the acknowledgement.
PABILSAG: the patron deity of the city of Larak, one of the ante-diluvian cities according to a very ancient Sumerian kinglist, he was the husband of the healing goddess Gula/Nin-Karrak/Nin-Isinna, and was also identified with the god Nin-Girsu/Nin-Urta.
Exactly what he did is not easy to fathom, according to the scholars, but surely we can guess some of them from the fact that he was syncretised with Nin-Urta quite early on, and there is at least one inscription from the Early Dynastic period in Lagash, which refers to him as "the warrior of En-Lil", which epithet was commonly used for Nin-Girsu. His wife was a healing goddess, so those stuck for better ideas assume he must have been one too, but there are absolutely no grounds for that, nor anything that has yet been dug out of the grounds. But he must have been a divine judge, because what else does a city patron do but figurehead the courts of justice? To which the answer is: he leads the men to war, and blesses theirs hunting and sporting ventures. And oversees the burying of the dead, which is why he also gets associated with the underworld god Nergal.
Of the other handful of finds, a Sumerian literary text describes Pabilsag's journey to the city of Nippur to marry Nin-Isinna.
In addition to his patronage of Larak, he is known to have been worshipped at Ur (but all the pantheon was worshipped at Ur), and at Lagash/Girsu, Umma, Nippur, Babylon and Isin, and there is evidence as well both in Gula/Nin-Isina's temple at Isin, and a temple of his own, named the E-rab-ri-ri, in the same city.
PAP-SUKKEL: or probably Pap-Sukkal, who we have already encountered under the name NIN-SHUBUR. He was the Sumerian minister of the gods, something like the British Cabinet Secretary, but he served all the gods, where the Akkadian Nin-Shubur was exclusively the personal assistant to Anu, the head of the pantheon. He was usually represented as a robed, bearded man wearing a horned cap and holding a staff - not dissimilar to the Prophet Shemu-El, when he served as "minister" to King Sha'ul, or Merlin, in the same capacity with Arthur.
What does a "minister" to the gods do anyway? Generally, it seems, they provided a gateway to gain access to the gods, in the same way that a Chamberlain in the palace could determine whose petition was read by the monarch, and whose, terribly sorry, must have got mislaid somewhere, and no his diary for personal audiences is full for the next year at least. If you are unsure that the god or goddess would even hear your prayer, address it to Pap-Sukkal instead, and ask him to intercede on your behalf.
What does a "minister" to the gods do anyway? Generally, it seems, they provided a gateway to gain access to the gods, in the same way that a Chamberlain in the palace could determine whose petition was read by the monarch, and whose, terribly sorry, must have got mislaid somewhere, and no his diary for personal audiences is full for the next year at least. If you are unsure that the god or goddess would even hear your prayer, address it to Pap-Sukkal instead, and ask him to intercede on your behalf.
In Sumerian, Pap-Sukkal's name was Ig-galla, which literally, and rather splendidly, translates as "The Great Doorleaf".
The god list "An = Anum" has him also serving Nergal and Enki, and names his daughter Dpap-pap (the "d", as usual, is silent).
Temples in his honour are known at Akkil, Kish and Babylon; and not one but two cult installations in the temple of Anu at Uruk.
The god list "An = Anum" has him also serving Nergal and Enki, and names his daughter Dpap-pap (the "d", as usual, is silent).
Temples in his honour are known at Akkil, Kish and Babylon; and not one but two cult installations in the temple of Anu at Uruk.
Pap-Sukkal's name in Sumerian is a conjunction of "Pap" = "oldest brother" and Sukkal = "vizier".
PAZ-UZU: The Sumerian demon who was charged with protecting human beings from plague and the forces of evil. He was especially invoked for protection of pregnant women and infants against the schemes of the evil demoness Lamashtu. Though a force for good, he was also the personification of the south wind, and the south-east wind which brought pestilence and disease.
QUINGU: Also known as Kingu, the consort of Tiamat, and her champion in her war with the younger gods. He stole the Tablets of Destiny for use as a breast plate in battle - itself an interesting connector to the Tanach, because the Ephod, the breastplate of the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, was itself a version of the Tablets of Destiny, being comprised of twelve jewels, one for each of the tribes, which is to say one for each of the constellations. After his death in battle, his blood and flesh were used in the creation of human beings.
RAMMAN: The Akkadian and Sumerian storm god associated with both Adad and Nin-Tur, mentioned in "The Epic of Gilgamesh". Also known as Rimmon, and in the Phoenician world as Ba'al Rimmon - he appears repeatedly in the Tanach under both of these latter names.
SAKKAN: The Sumerian god of cattle, charged with protecting both domesticated and wild animals. He was responsible for the fertility of animals in the wild, and was often depicted as a shepherd - or should that say cattleherd, or even cowboy? In Akkadian he was known as Sumuqan. In both "The Epic of Gilgamesh" and the Sumerian poem "The Death of Gilgamesh", Sakkan/Sumuqan is mentioned in connection to the Underworld.
The SCORPION PEOPLE: In Sumerian and Babylonian stories, the Scorpion People were powerful servants of the sun god Utu (Shamash). They had a human head, arms and torso, but were bird-like below the waist (sometimes with human legs, sometimes bird) and a scorpion's tail. The people of Mesopotamia invoked the Scorpion People as figures of powerful protection against evil and the forces of chaos. In "The Epic of Gilgamesh" the Scorpion couple, Scorpion Man and Scorpion Woman, guard the great Gate of the Mountain where the sun rises and are described as "terrifying".
SHALA: The consort of the storm god Adad, she was believed to have power over crop fertility. Astrologically, according to the Babylonian "Mul-Apin" (Tablet I, line 52), which is the ultimate encyclopedia on the subject, her name meant "The Furrow", as in the sort that ploughs create when preparing fields for sowing, and she is therefore equated with Virgo. But the "Mul-Alpin" also explains her name as "ear of grain", and it may be no coincidence that the brightest star in the constellation Virgo is still known today as Spica, which is the Latin for "ear of grain".
In some of the god-lists she is named Medimsha rather than Shala, and is the wife of Ishkur not Adad; and in the penultimate millennium of BCE her name sounded so similar, and her role and function so absolutely identical, to that of Shalash, the wife of Dagan, that the two became syncretised. Which is actually more significant than it sounds - for scholars of the subject anyway. No one known where Shala came from, but everyone assumes a non-Mesopotamian origin. Where might that be? Is it possible that Shalash came first, and was brought to Mesopotamia? In the Hurrian language, the aboriginal language of Kena'an long before the Pelishtim brought Dagan from Crete, Shalash (pronounced with a long first 'a', as though it were Sharlash) means "daughter". Perhaps the virgin daughter was married to the Mesopotamian storm-god, and migrated east? And left a memory of herself behind, because of course Jesus is a later revival of the god born from that "ear of grain" (Dagan in Yehudit means "corn"), and his mother too was regarded as a Virgo.
As Shala the wife of Adad she was venerated at every major Babylonian and Assyrian centre from the second millennium onwards; on her own, the only known shrine was the E-dur-kù at Karkara - Biblical Qarqar, which Shalman-Ezer III famously gloated about destroying (click here).
As Shala the wife of Adad she was venerated at every major Babylonian and Assyrian centre from the second millennium onwards; on her own, the only known shrine was the E-dur-kù at Karkara - Biblical Qarqar, which Shalman-Ezer III famously gloated about destroying (click here).
SEBITTI: According to Babylonian sources, the Sebitti were seven minor warrior gods, sometimes associated with the Anunnaki of the Underworld, who followed the demon Irra into battle. The Sebitti were not comprised of any of the major gods, but seem to have been associated with Nergal. They are also associated with the Pleiades, though this is odd, because the Greek Pleiades were girls, not boys.
SHAMASH: also known as Samas, Babbar and (among the Sumerians) Utu, he was the sun-god, a symbol of justice, and the original St Christopher, the deity invoked for the protection of travellers, especially merchants, soldiers and sailors. To the Beney Yisra-El, as to the Pelishtim, he became Shimshon (Samson), and in Yehudit Shemesh = the sun, while the month in which the sun reaches its apogee is named Tammuz, as it was in Babylon (click here for more background on the calendar). Tammuz is the Chaldean pronunciation of Shamash, and itself a variation on Dumuzi.
He is often depicted holding the blade with which he cuts his way through the mountains each morning at dawn. In his duties as protector he is also envisaged in a boat (for sailors), a chariot (for soldiers), or on horseback (for travellers and merchants). Logically enough his consort was Aya, or Aja, the goddess of dawn, known as Serida or Sherida among the Sumerians - I can't help but wonder if Ayelet ha Shachar, who is the dedicatee of Psalm 22, is connected to Aya/Aja; and whether the sleeping beauty waiting for him on the mountaintop, when he puts away Excalibur, or is it Hunding's sword, was named Cordelia or Brunnhilde.
SHARA: A minor god of war in Babylonian mythology, son of Anu and Ishtar.
SHERIDA: Or Serida. Making her the fourth, or fifth, or possibly the sixth name for the ancient Sumerian mother goddess, the giver and sustainer of light and life. Sherida is unquestionably one of the oldest (known) deities of Mesopotamia, very much one of the "primary deities" - the primary deities are the elements of Nature, the "secondary deities" those creations which are also able to procreate, or to supplement, adding new forms of creation through mutation - the difference between YHVH and Chavah in the Yehudit, between molecular "essence" and manifest "existence" in modern parlance. The consort to the sun god, Utu, she was known to the Akkadians and Babylonians as Aja or Aya, and regarded by them as the goddess of dawn.
SHULPAE: The god of feasts and good times, sometimes represented as the consort of Nin-Hursag.
SHUTU: And speaking of gods and goddesses who go by many names, or features of the Cosmos which are attributed severally (those two may not be the same thing, though they probably are), Shutu is at least the third god named on this list as the Sumerian deity of sickness, and the fourth as the personification of the south wind. Hardly surprising that so much syncretisation took place. The likelihood for the repetitions is either dialect variation (God, Gott, Dieu, Dio, Deus, Dios etc), or that some of the names were simply epithets and sobriquets.
SIDURI: The rather Shakespearian alewife in "The Epic of Gilgamesh", it is she who advises the hero to abandon his quest for immortality and simply enjoy life - Voltaire's Candide, but four thousand years ahead of him!. Gilgamesh rejects her advice, and instead she directs him on the path to Utnapishtim, the "restorer of souls".
SILILI: The Babylonian goddess of horses, known as "The Divine Mare", the mother of all horses. The modern concept of a "Night-Mare", or bad dream, does not derive from her however, but from her counterpart Lilit.
SIN: Or Su'en, and sometimes Shin, he was the Babylonian moon god, associated with the fertility of women and with cattle. His principal shrines appear to have been at Ur, Charan and Yericho, which is not uninteresting in the light of Av-Ram's early journeys! [does the biblical Wilderness of Sin connect to him? no; that is an error in the English; it is the Wilderness of Zin in the Yehudit, and anyway the geographical area would appear to be much too far west.] It is intriguing to find the moon-god fathering the sun-god, rather than the other way around, but Sin is reckoned as the father of Shamash [does the Biblical Mount Sinai also connect to him? no, that is an error in the theology; Mount Sinai is an imaginary mountain, equivalent to Olympus and Valhalla, a place in the heavens where the gods made their home].
To the Sumerians Sin was Nanna, and elsewhere we can find Nannar, and sometimes his Su'en variation is conjoined to make Nanna-Su'en. His name is pronounced "seen", not "sin". He is depicted as a man standing with a crescent moon. Clearly he must have been a female goddess originally, masculinised in the Hammurabic epoch, or afterwards, when the reduction of all females, human as well as divine, to inferior status, became the norm.
SUMUGAN: The Sumerian god of the open plains. Also known as Shumugan, and Sumuqan, he was the Akkadian and Babylonian version of Sakkan, who was responsible not only for the plains, but also for the animals who grazed on them.
THE TABLETS OF DESTINY: The sacred objects which legitimised the rule of the supreme god and conferred upon their holder the power to determine the destiny of the world. They were stolen from En-Lil by the Anzu bird, who was supposed to guard them, and retrieved by Nin-Urta. In the "Enuma Elish" they are given to Quingu by Tiamat, and taken from him, after his death, by Marduk.
TAMMUZ: For my full page on him, click here. At that link you will find Tammuz, Utu and Dumuzi, combined and syncretised, because that is how they are best seen in relation to the Tanach. In this catalogue I have separated the three and given each of their histories.
Tammuz was the Babylonian version of the Sumerian Dumuzi, a vegetation god, of the earth as well as the Earth, dying and reviving on an annual basis, because that is what the annual cycle does. Along with Gishida, also a dying and reviving god figure, he guarded the gates of the gods in "The Myth of Adapa". The T in Chaldean invariable becomes the Sheen (ש) in Yehudit, though the hottest month of the year in the Yehudit calendar is named to this day as Tammuz, and not, as we might expect, Shimshon, though clearly they are the same god.
Tammuz was the Babylonian version of the Sumerian Dumuzi, a vegetation god, of the earth as well as the Earth, dying and reviving on an annual basis, because that is what the annual cycle does. Along with Gishida, also a dying and reviving god figure, he guarded the gates of the gods in "The Myth of Adapa". The T in Chaldean invariable becomes the Sheen (ש) in Yehudit, though the hottest month of the year in the Yehudit calendar is named to this day as Tammuz, and not, as we might expect, Shimshon, though clearly they are the same god.
TASHMETU: the consort of the scribe-god Nabu - he who wrote the destinies of human beings in the Book of Life and gave his name to become the Yehudit word for a Prophet - Navi. She was associated with wisdom as well as sexual attractiveness, the latter probably on her own merits, the former probably the same, but the myths generally endow it like a wedding-ring, something she acquired when she took Nabu for her husband - wisdom being associated, entirely accurately and correctly, with the art of scribing. In other traditions Nabu's consort was Nanaya or Ishtar, though probably this was just language-change at some later date.
As to her origins, she was the daughter of the god Urash, the patron deity of the northern Babylonian city of Dilbat. Her cult centres are always her husband's cult centres, though in the latter years of BCE Nabu was replaced by Marduk. She may have been made the patron deity of Kalhu in the early Assyrian epoch, when around 800 BCE the Assyrian king Adad-nirari III built twin temples for her and Nabu in the Kalhu temple complex known as the E-zida. The marriage of Tashmetu and Nabu is recorded poetically in a racily erotic document found in the royal library of Ashurbanipal at Ninveh (Nineveh), dating from the seventh century BCE, one so similar to the Biblical Song of Songs ("come into my garden, my spouse...") it is worth the comparative-reading, though like all good anchormen I must warn you that the text is full of sex and then still more sex, and absolutely graphic, and so should not be read by adults until after 9pm - click here.
As to her origins, she was the daughter of the god Urash, the patron deity of the northern Babylonian city of Dilbat. Her cult centres are always her husband's cult centres, though in the latter years of BCE Nabu was replaced by Marduk. She may have been made the patron deity of Kalhu in the early Assyrian epoch, when around 800 BCE the Assyrian king Adad-nirari III built twin temples for her and Nabu in the Kalhu temple complex known as the E-zida. The marriage of Tashmetu and Nabu is recorded poetically in a racily erotic document found in the royal library of Ashurbanipal at Ninveh (Nineveh), dating from the seventh century BCE, one so similar to the Biblical Song of Songs ("come into my garden, my spouse...") it is worth the comparative-reading, though like all good anchormen I must warn you that the text is full of sex and then still more sex, and absolutely graphic, and so should not be read by adults until after 9pm - click here.
She was clearly important to the later Assyrians in a degree that she had not been in previous epochs, to the extent that the most famous of all Assyrian rulers, Sennacherib, named his consort Tashmetu-Sharrat ("Tashmetu is queen"), and gave her an unprecedented status in the royal court - the equivalent in the Bible is King Achashverosh in the Book of Esther having his new wife, the Yehudit Hadassah, adopt the royal title Ishtar (Ester, in the Yehudit), in honour of the mother goddess.
TIAMAT: goddess of the sea. This is particularly interesting since, in earlier incarnations, Tiamat (Tahamat, Tohu, Tehom) is specifically a sea-serpent whose cult is served by a prophetess/oracle; the goddess is presumably a later version. And in the very, very earliest versions she is not even the sea, but the "primordial ocean" itself, the molecules and elements that comprised what Genesis calls Tohu and Bohu, the "void" and "chaos" that preceded Creation - see Genesis 1.
For my full page on her, click here, and be aware that I will be dealing with her in all her forms there: Tiamat and Tahamat, Tohu and Tehom, but also Liv-Yatan, who you might know as Leviathan.
UMMANU: Throughout Mesopotamia, the Ummanu were the great scribes who wrote the epic poems, works such as "Enuma Elish", the "Myth of Etana", "The Epic of Gilgamesh" etc, all of which have been referenced repeatedly in this catalogue. They were also considered expert astrologers, which is not surprising, as most of the myths are intended as allegorical explanations of the workings of Nature, on Earth and especially in the heavens.* The term "Ummanu" refers not only to the scribes, but also to what they wrote. The Chief Scribe of a king was charged with recording his monarch's glorious achievements and, by 640 BCE, the written Ummanu were considered important enough to include in the King's Lists. An equivalent role can be seen in the Tanach - see for example 1 Chronicles 24:6 and 27:32.
* They were probably expert astronomers too. It was Johannes Keppler, one of the great astros of the modern European Enlightenment, who observed that "Mother Astronomy would surely have to suffer hunger if the daughter Astrology did not earn their bread".
UMUNMUTAMKAG: The Babylonian god of offerings, he was the intermediary between human beings and the gods. He presented the sacrificial offerings to the gods in a pleasing fashion.
URSHANABI: The boatman in "The Epic of Gilgamesh" who ferries Gilgamesh across the waters of death to the land of Dilmun (paradise) where the immortal Utnapishtim lives. Urshanabi breaks the eternal laws governing his position as ferryman by taking Gilgamesh to Dilmun, and then travelling back with him to the city of Uruk at the end of the epic. Charon (pronounced Kharon) in the Greek myths has the same role, though Dante gave it to Phlegyas, and placed the river, the Styx, in the fifth circle of Hell.
USMU: The messenger god of Ea, to the Akkadians, of Enki, to the Sumerians. Like Roman Janus he was a two-faced god, though not in the hypocritical sense - Janus (whence January) looked back at the just-ended year as well as forward to the just-started; Usmu in similar manner, being a gopher and a valet, was endlessly coming and going, back and forth, up and down, on errands. The Akkadians depicted him as a man presenting a bird-man before Ea - pigeon-post, primitive style!
UMUNMUTAMKAG: The Babylonian god of offerings, he was the intermediary between human beings and the gods. He presented the sacrificial offerings to the gods in a pleasing fashion.
URSHANABI: The boatman in "The Epic of Gilgamesh" who ferries Gilgamesh across the waters of death to the land of Dilmun (paradise) where the immortal Utnapishtim lives. Urshanabi breaks the eternal laws governing his position as ferryman by taking Gilgamesh to Dilmun, and then travelling back with him to the city of Uruk at the end of the epic. Charon (pronounced Kharon) in the Greek myths has the same role, though Dante gave it to Phlegyas, and placed the river, the Styx, in the fifth circle of Hell.
USMU: The messenger god of Ea, to the Akkadians, of Enki, to the Sumerians. Like Roman Janus he was a two-faced god, though not in the hypocritical sense - Janus (whence January) looked back at the just-ended year as well as forward to the just-started; Usmu in similar manner, being a gopher and a valet, was endlessly coming and going, back and forth, up and down, on errands. The Akkadians depicted him as a man presenting a bird-man before Ea - pigeon-post, primitive style!
UTNAPISHTIM: In "The Epic of Gilgamesh", he is the wise and pious man who is warned by the god Ea of the impending flood and, with his wife and the "seed of life", builds an ark and survives the deluge. After the Great Flood he and his wife are granted immortality, and live in The Faraway "at the mouth of the rivers" ; Utnapishtim himself is also referred to as "The Faraway". The earlier Sumerian version of the tale, "The Epic of Atra-Hasis", names him Ziusudra. "Utnapishtim" is usually translated as "He Who Saw Life", but this is guesswork based on the fact that he was the only man - beside Ziusudra, and No'ach with his family!, and Deucalion... - to survive the Great Flood. My own reckoning is that it means "the self-regenerating soul", which is how LEHITNAPESH would be translated if this were Yehudit (the word for "soul" or "spirit" in Yehudit is Nephesh, and probably derives, in the Hit'pael form, from Utnapishtim - explanations of the Binyanim can be found here: simple; complex).
UTTU: Go tell Aunt Nancy that this was once the Sumerian spider goddess, the patroness of weavers, both of the skill of weaving, and of the clothing that the weavers made. Whether or not she had an old grey goose I cannot say, but I can confirm that she was the daughter of Enki and Nin-Kurra, and best known for her role in the myth "Enki and Nin-Hursag", in which she complains to the mother goddess about Enki's neglect, and is told to wipe his seed from her body, thus fertilising the Earth and giving birth to the first plants and trees.
And what does this have to do with Aunt Nancy? The same spider goddess can be found across the continent of Africa, especially among the Ashanti tribes of Ghana, and in the Spider Woman cartoons of contemporary America, brought there by the slaves, and known by them as Anansi. As Guy Faux became Guy Fawkes, and then given a fake history to make him plausible, so Anansi, unacceptably pagan to those virtuous Christians of slavetime America, became Aunt Nancy, and the spider was turned into a goose; and for those who wanted even greater distance from an inferior because non-white and non-European and non-Christian source, Aunt Rhody (at least they didn't make him Uncle Rhodes!).
Not to be confused with Utu, below.
UTU: the sun-god, later identified with Dumuzi.
For my full page on him, click here. At that link you will find Tammuz, Shamash, Utu and Dumuzi, combined and syncretised, because that is how they are best seen in relation to the Tanach. In this catalogue I have separated the four and given each of their histories.
WE-LLU: Another name for Geshtu, the god who sacrificed himself to create humanity.
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| "Kudurru relief", the Babylonian horoscope, circa 1400 BCE. |
ZABABA: The Akkadian god of war, and patron deity of the city of Kish. He was one of the many consorts of Inanna/Ishtar, or of Baba, in other versions of his legend. His epithet was "The Crusher of Stones", which is probably meant literally; though he was also the crusher of those who would crush the stones, which is why the main protective gate at Babylon, ultimate defense against sieges, was known as the Zababa Gate - and the name is thought to mean "It Hates Its Attacker".
As we have witnessed throughout this catalogue, deities change names, status, and even function, depending on where they are in time and place and language, which is the favourite deity of the current ruler, who has just been conquered and their culture needs to be suppresssed, or which preferred deity belongs to the recently acquired royal spouse. So, at one particular moment of Assyrian history, the previously unknown Zababa starts to be mentioned, along with Nin-Urta, as the son of Ashur - only to disappear again within a generation. In the same way, particularly after the Old Babylonian period, the goddess Baba is regularly attested as his wife, but then he goes back to being the consort of Ishtar, and acquires the epithet "Lord of the Lands", as though he had suddenly been raised to the throne of En-Lil, or by then it might even have been Marduk. Or Ilaba, a deity of considerable obscurity, except that he was a favourite of Sargon of Akkad, his personal deity indeed, and Sargon's victory over the city of Kish was a key moment in the establishment of his empire - so the populace was given to understand that Ilaba had not actually conquered their city, because Zababa and Ilaba were the same god, and so carry on as before, but now under my kingship. Christian saints from Patrick to Margaret of Antioch are the consequences of the selfsame process.
The significance of Zababa to the citizens of Kish cannot be overstated, though an inscription of the Old Babylonian king Samsu-iluna names both Zababa and Ishtar as the chief deities. Temples to him, or them, a-plenty, and important enough to be repeatedly restored, by Sumu-lael (a name of distinctly Yehudit grammatical form!), Samsu-iluna and Hammurabi. Kish has also proven important for the anthropologists, because the archaeologists have unearthed some of the earliest data about the roles and functions of priestesses, based on the "cloister" of nadītu-priestesses of Zababa. When Zababa becomes Ilaba, however, it is not only his status and his name, but also concern for his buildings, that slips away, and his temple was only saved from total ruin by the interventions of Kurigalzu I, and then his son Kurigalzu II, when the the Kassites briefly ruled. An inscription of Nebuchadnezzar reveals another phase of restoration around 580 BCE, though Nebuchadnezzar is rather worse remembered for the number of other people's temples that he either destroyed, or attempted to, the one in Yeru-Shala'im a rare survivor, until it too was razed to the ground, in 586 BCE.
Icons of Zababa usually show him carrying a lion-headed mace, or shooting with a bow, though these are commonplace to all warrior deities and most kings. On Kudurru reliefs he is represented by an eagle-staff - the 12 o'clock position in the illustration, above.
When modern Israelis, Jews as well as Arabs, describe great things as "sababa", are they perhaps mispronouncing Zababa?
ZAKAR: Or Zaqar, if you insist. The Babylonian god of dreams. Dreams were considered messages from the gods. Zakar's responsibility was to send these messages to the appropriate human recipients.
ZARPANIT: The earliest known form of the Sumerian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, charged with the fertility of the whole universe. Later, and elsewhere, she would be named Beltia, and then changed again, or simply her attributes assumed, by Inanna, and then Ishtar. She was the consort of which ever male deity happened to be ruling at that epoch.
ZALTU: Because everything in Nature has its driving force, its core elements, so even human strife. Zaltu was the associated goddess, among the Babylonians, though she was also associated with, or reckoned simply to be an aspect of Ishtar, the personification of the destructive side of the goddess.
The earliest known Mesopotamian temples date from 4000-3500 BCE; after which came the ziggurats, which were symbolic mountains with palaces on the summit for the city - the great cities of the Inca and Mayan and Aztec peoples in Meso-America are quite remarkably similar.
Key to the ziggurats were their step-access, mirrored in the ramp that led to the altar in the Temple in Yeru-Shala'im; but with one important difference. The ramp enabled humans to climb upwards to the place of the god, but these did the opposite, providing a ladder for the gods to descend to Earth - cf Ya'akov at Beit-El in Genesis 28, which is also a representation of the Milky Way, in the same way that the twelve stones of the Gilgal - a circular temple or cromlech - functioning as the duodecal tribal confederacy, suggest the twelve signs of the zodiac, which was probably a Babylonian invention linked originally to the life of Gilgamesh.
ZU: The Akkadian version of Anzu, and elsewhere Imdugud, the storm bird who stole "The Tablets of Destiny" from En-Lil (and who should therefore have been named Imdubad).
And finally, the QUEEN OF THE NIGHT: A terracotta relief (known as the Burney Relief) from circa 1792-1750 BCE, depicting a Babylonian goddess whose identity is not clearly established. She has been identified as both Ishtar/Inanna and as Ereshkigal, as well as with the demoness Liltu/Lilit. She is depicted as a naked woman with wings, holding the rod and rings of power, standing on two lions and flanked by owls.Because the wings point downward, an association with the underworld and Ereshkigal appears to be established, but no stories link that goddess with owls (if this were a Greek ikon, the owls would indicate without question that this must be Athena).
The figure of a woman standing on, or riding on a lion, is definitely associated with Inanna/Ishtar (the relationship of Lucy and Susan with Aslan!), as would be the ring and rod of power, but there is no mention of wings on this goddess and no owl connection. Liltu, who caused pregnant women distress and made women barren or, at least, made it difficult for them to conceive, was closely associated with owls but not with wings, lions nor the rod and rings of power. The identity of the Queen of the Night, therefore, remains unknown.
ADDENDUM:
Throughout this catalogue you will have seen that variant names of the same deity, or variants of the same deity by different names, recur again and again. In many cases this is simply a matter of language or dialect variation, in the way that Gott, God, Dieu, Dios and Dio are all the same Christian deity, but in five different European forms (German, English, French, Spanish, Italian), some very similar, others entirely different and yet the same deity, and universally, of course, far more than just these five. But it is not always the case, and this is where the scholars find themselves struggling.
So there seems to be vast overlap, but also substantial difference; and so we look beyond the Fertile Crescent, to the myths and legends and the languages of the peoples who migrated to other parts, and - yes, we see more of the same overlaps there too.
And as to whether the masculine was feminised, or vice versa, or they were siblings, Greek Ouranos was originally Urania, mother of the Titans (as Yah was masculinised into Yah by the Beney Yisra-El at around the time of Ezra, and Asherah became Ashur among the Assyrians). Once again we can trace a linking of deities, in this case of Ana with Ura, the Akkadian word for Queen; the Queen of Heaven being Inanna, itself a variant on Ana. The pronunciation of the name Ourania may well suggest a certain threshing-floor - Araunah or Ornah, which King David "purchased" as the site of the Temple (2 Samuel 24:18-24). And Bethany is of course Beit Anatot - the house of the goddess Anat. Ana has various prefixes, including Di-Ana and Ath-Ana (the feminine equivalent of Eth-Ba'al), whence the Greek goddess Athene, though it is also suggested that Athene came from another etymological journey of the same root-name, via Libyan Neith who returns to Kena'an as Anat after appearing in Mitsrayim as Asnat, Yoseph's wife.
All of this is, I appreciate, immensely complex and complicated, but it needs to be stated, because no attempt to unravel the deities of ancient Mesopotamia can be undertaken without it.
Copyright © 2020 David Prashker
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The Argaman Press
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