Mesopotamian mythology
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Mesopotamian mythology is the collective name given to Sumerian and Assyrian and Babylonian mythologies from the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern Iraq.
The Sumerians practised a polytheistic, henotheistic religion, with anthropomorphic gods or goddesses representing forces or presences in the world, much as in the later Greek mythology. The gods originally created humans as servants for themselves, but freed the humans when they became too much to handle.
Many stories in Sumerian religion appear homologous to stories in other middle-eastern religions. For example, the Biblical account of the creation of man as well as Noah's flood narrative resemble Sumerian tales very closely. Gods and goddesses from Sumer have distinctly similar representations in the religions of the Akkadians, Caananites, and others. A number of related stories and deities have Greek parallels as well; for example, Inanna's descent into the underworld strikingly recalls the story of Persephone
Contents |
What Deities did they worship?
- A. The Four Primary Deities
- B. The Seven who decreed fate
- C. The Annuna and others
- D. The Demigods, mortal Heroes and Monsters
Deities
The Four Primary Deities
- An, The God of Heaven
- Ki, The Godess of the earth
- Enlil, The God of the air and storms
- Enki, The God of water
The Three Sky Deities
- Nanna, The God of the moon
- Shamash (aka Utu), The Sun God
- Ishtar (aka Inanna), The Queen of the Heavens and goddess of love and war
Divine Relationships
The universe first appeared when Nammu, a presumably formless abyss, curled in upon herself, and in an act of self-procreation gave birth to An and Ki.
The union of An and Ki produced Enlil, who eventually became leader of the pantheon. After the banishment of Enlil from Dilmun (the home of the gods) for raping Ninlil, Ninlil had a child, Sin (god of the moon), also known as Nanna. Sin and Ningal gave birth to Inanna and to Shamash. During Enlil's banishment, he fathered three underworld deities with Ninlil, most notably Nergal.
Nammu also gave birth to Enki. Enki also controlled the Me, holy decrees that governed such basic things as physics and complex things such as social order and law.
This accounts for the origin of most of the world as we know it
Sources
The earliest known writings on the Sumerian cosmology stem from Enheduanna.
See also
- Babylonian and Assyrian religion
- Wikipedia:Shortpages/Mythology/Chaldean for many fragmentary entries.
External links
- alt.mythology Sumerian Mythology FAQ[[es:Mitolog�a Caldeana]][[pt:Mitologia sum�ria]]
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Mesopotamian_mythology" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamian_mythology, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
