The only sons of l named individually in the Ugaritic texts are Yamm ("Sea"), Mot ("Death"), and Ashtar, who may be the chief and leader of most of the sons of l. Nanna was depicted as a bearded man sitting on a throne with a symbolic crescent moon in the sky. Like other Mesopotamian gods, his cult changed over time. Such images continued to appear on coins until after the time of Augustus. She later became identified by the Akkadians and Assyrians as the goddess Ishtar, and further with the Hittite Sauska, the Phoenician Astarte and the Greek Aphrodite, among many others. Sometimes he is specifically named (or at least identified with) Sn.[9]. Before that, the androgynous goddess of sex and war, Inanna (called Ishtar in Akkadian), the patron deity of Uruk, conveyed rulership to leaders in southern Sumer where Enlil was apparently considered a foreign god. Along with his grandfather Beelzebub, he controlled the airways for the Gods, wearing his symbol of . Unlike most major gods, Enki did not live in heaven, Earth, or the Netherworld; he lived in the Abzu. Rather than exhausting the subject after the point has been made, we'll summarize: The chief god of the Roman pantheon, the deity worshiped in the Capitolium, was the storm-god, Jupiter. They developed a pretty rough reputation, especially the Tidanu tribe (about whom more later), that contributed to the collapse of the last Sumerian kingdom to rule Mesopotamia. His other children, depending on the version of the myth, were Enki, Nikikurga, Nidaba, Baba, and even Inanna and Kumarbi. The bloodcurdling truth is that Judaism has always been a cult of Saturn from its beginning. In a later passage it is explained that l castrated Sky. Uranus was not discovered until the 1800's, but the astronomers in that time period continued the tradition of naming planets after Roman gods. [4]Christopher B. Hays, Enlil, Isaiah, and the Origins of thellm: A Reassessment.Zeitschrift fr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 132(2) (2020), p. 226. Ninurta, an obscure god inherited by the Babylonians, may have been identified with Saturn, the slowest moving visible planet, because . [42] It is Yahweh who is prophesied to one day battle Leviathan the serpent, and slay the dragon in the sea in Isaiah 27:1. One version of the myth states that when Enlil proposed the idea of creating humans to Nammu, she told him that she could make such beings with the help of Enki who was also her son. Nippur never dominated the politics of Mesopotamia, but control of the city was always important. Nibiru = Sumerian "planet of the crossing". And the deity the Hurrians and Amorites considered the father of their gods, Kumarbi/El, was at home in the mountains and connected to an underground abodethe Hurrianabiand the springs of the two deeps under or near Mount Hermon. Although the gods Nanna and Enlil refused to come to her aid, good old Enki sprang into action and tried to have Inanna extracted from the Nether realm. So how did this group of Canaanite El-worshippers come in contact with the cult of Yhwh? There is even evidence of cults which considered Nanna to be the primary god. Poseidon of Beirut was also worshipped at Delos where there was an association of merchants, shipmasters, and warehousemen called the Poseidoniastae of Berytus founded in 110 or 109 BCE. Abstract. She was the embodiment of the primeval sea, which played a major part in the creation of the world, and also considered the mother goddess. through the bond of heaven and earth for ever, [22]. Roman - Saturn and Ops And all the sons of El, At last, with the advice of his daughter Athena and the god Hermes Trismegistus (perhaps Thoth), l successfully attacks his father Sky with a sickle and spear of iron. These entities gave birth to An, the god of the sky which doubled as heaven, and Ki, who represented the Earth. It probably means he of Kumar, a site identified with the modern village of Kmr, about twenty-five miles northwest of Aleppo. El is depicted primarily as a warrior; in Ugaritic sources Baal has the warrior role and El is peaceful, and it may be that the Sanchuniathon depicts an earlier tradition that was more preserved in the southern regions of Canaan. To the people of the ancient world, Enlil, like El and Kumarbi, bridged the gap between time immemorial and the present day. The god of heaven or the sky, he was also the patron god of the city of Uruk. He asked the women to tell him when the bird was fully cooked, and to then address him either as husband or as father, for he would thenceforward behave to them as they called him. The supreme deity was represented by a black cube. Psalm 29, understood as an enthronement psalm, begins: A Psalm of David. [19]Andreas Johandi, Some Remarks about the Beginnings of Marduk. In S. Fink and R. Rollinger, eds.,Proceedings of the Ninth Symposium of the Melammu Project Held in Helsinki / Tartu(Mnster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2018), p. 566. Utu was also known as the god of truth and justice because he was deemed to be able to see everything from his vantage point. One of them is Utu, a sun god and god of justice. The Tower of Babel and . This is the position of Frank Moore Cross (1973). To the ancient Egyptians, the sun god Atum-Ra, the model ruler, reigned over the fortunate era for a time, then retired from the world. Cognate forms of l are found throughout the Semitic languages. After the Doomsday cataclysm Minoan tradition gave way to Greek tradition. . 5. Saturn, Venus, Mars were mistress suns before our yellow sun . When viewed as applying to the King of Tyre specifically, the king was probably not thinking of Yahweh. 24.258 describes a banquet to which l invites the other gods and then disgraces himself by becoming outrageously drunk and passing out after confronting an otherwise unknown Hubbay, "he with the horns and tail". He is often depicted in paintings as an elderly man with a long beard . Gula was also known to be the goddess of dogs and other animals, and this is immortalized in depictions of her with a dog carved into a boundary stone dating from the period. [11] l is listed at the head of many pantheons. Here is a list of the 10 most important: Contents show 10. The following verses in which the god condemns those whom he says were previously named gods (Elohim) and sons of the Most High suggest the god here is in fact l judging the lesser gods. An and Ki then proceeded to mate, and birthed Enlil. [43] The slaying of the serpent in myth is a deed attributed to both Ba'al Hadad and 'Anat in the Ugaritic texts, but not to l.[44]. They also required food, water, and shelter much like the people who worshiped them. But Enlils prestige continued for centuries afterward. As recorded on the clay tablets of Ugarit, El is the husband of the goddess Asherah. Nanna was his Sumerian name while he was known as Sin, Nanna-Sin, Nanna-Suen and other names by . Unlike Enlil, however, Enki was almost always nice to humans, appearing to be wiser and more peaceful than his master. Members of the Mesopotamian pantheon were immortal, and as long as they were above the Netherworld, had an aura about them called melammu, which was described as a glow which instantly distinguished them from mere mortals. He created the trees and fertile fields and was the brother of Enten, the god of winter. One of Sky's concubines (who was given to l's brother Dagon) was already pregnant by Sky. l is the grey-bearded ancient one, full of wisdom, malku ("King"), 'ab amma ("Father of years"), 'El gibbr ("l the warrior"). The ziggurat at Ur, the only one left of such structures remaining from ancient Summer, was a temple dedicated to the Moon. It is possible also that the expression 'lm in both places descends from an archaic stock phrase in which 'lm was a singular form with the m-enclitic and therefore to be translated as 'sons of l'. He is qniyunu 'lam ("creator eternal"), the epithet 'lam appearing in Hebrew form in the Hebrew name of God 'l 'lam "God Eternal" in Genesis 21.33. Again l lay with his wives and the wives gave birth to "the gracious gods", "cleavers of the sea", "children of the sea". [49][50] l is brother to the God Bethel, to Dagon and to an unknown god, equated with the Greek Atlas and to the goddesses Aphrodite/'Ashtart, Rhea (presumably Asherah), and Dione (equated with Ba'alat Gebal). The stories and descriptions of Enlil dont include any characteristics youd expect from a wind or storm-god. [10]Like the Amorites, the name Kumarbi may come from northern Syria. They associated the planets with different gods in their pantheon: Jupiter with Marduk, Venus with Ishtar, Saturn with Ninurta, Mercury with Nabu, Mars with Nergal, the Sun with Shamash and the Moon with Sin. Ascribe to Yahweh, sons of Gods (bn 'lm), Ownership of Nippur was proof that Enlil wanted him to be king. "El" (Father of Heaven / Saturn) and his major son: "Hadad" (Father of Earth / Jupiter), are symbolized both by the bull, and both wear bull horns on their headdresses.[29][30][31][32]. Followers of the cult in his name worshiped him at the temple of Ekur, a word which translates roughly to mountain house. To this day, the ruins of the temple still stand. [20]His name was rarely used as the theophoric element in personal names before the Akkadian conquest of Southern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC.[21]. This included the aforementioned air god Enlil, air goddess Ninlil, moon god Nanna, and sun god Utu. All of them were considered creators of the world, described by epithets like father of the gods, ancient one, and so on. [35] One scholarly position is that the identification of Yahweh with l is late, that Yahweh was earlier thought of as only one of many gods, and not normally identified with l. Poseidon is known to have been worshipped in Beirut, his image appearing on coins from that city. [10] Among the Hittites, El was known as Elkunirsa. Ba'al Hadad is a few times called l's son rather than the son of Dagan as he is normally called, possibly because l is in the position of a clan-father to all the gods. This image below is of a relief in the British Museum that shows the Sumerian God Ninurta. [14] However the documentary hypothesis developed originally in the 1870s,[15] identifies these that different authors the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. With more than 3,000 Sumerian gods and goddesses, the pantheon is immense. The goddess was also said to have crafted a set of legislations that shaped the code of law and etiquette in the area. In most Babylonian texts it is identified with the planet Jupiter. Identification of an aspect of l with Poseidon rather than with Cronus might have been felt to better fit with Hellenistic religious practice, if indeed this Phoenician Poseidon really is the l who dwells at the source of the two deeps in Ugaritic texts. [16], The Egyptian god Ptah is given the title gitti 'Lord of Gath' in a prism from Tel Lachish which has on its opposite face the name of Amenhotep II (c. 14351420 BCE). Shamash was the son of Sin. As the sun fills the entire sky with light, ama oversaw everything that occurred during the . Mesopotamian Gods and Astrology. . [17]M. G. Easton, Amorites.Illustrated Bible Dictionary(New York: Thomas Nelson, 1897). The clash in tone between his names is not an outlier. Also at Delos, that association of Tyrians, though mostly devoted to Heracles-Melqart, elected a member to bear a crown every year when sacrifices to Poseidon took place. This myth nicely rounds up Inannas personality:lustful, violent, and vengeful. The earliest writings of both are roughly contemporary, and occur interchangeably. According to an ancient seal, she was pictured as a woman with long arms wearing a traditional garb and a horned helmet. The true etymologies of both Nanna and Su'en remain unclear ( Krebernik 1993-98b: 360-64). He dwells in a tent according to some interpretations of the text which may explain why he had no temple in Ugarit. For who in the skies compares to Yahweh, Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Apart from An, Enlil, Enki and Inanna, there were three other deities that make up the seven most important gods and goddesses of the Sumerian pantheon. Together with An, she created a portion of the vegetation of the planet and also gave birth to Enlil and the other gods collectively known as the Annunaki. (Father of Heaven / Saturn) and his major son: "Hadad" (Father of Earth / Jupiter), are symbolized both . A patron deity of Ur, Nannas main temple was Ekishnugal, which was rebuilt or restored many times by different rulers. In Judges 9:46 we find 'l Brt 'God of the Covenant', seemingly the same as the Ba'al Brt 'Lord of the Covenant' whose worship has been condemned a few verses earlier. ama (Sumerian Utu) is the god of the sun. [23]W. G. Lambert,Studies in Marduk.Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1984, Vol. He and his military allies the Eloim gain Sky's kingdom.[48]. For the reference in some texts of Deuteronomy 32:8 to seventy sons of God corresponding to the seventy sons of l in the Ugaritic texts, see `Elyn. However, this would be impossible to do without leaving behind a replacement, and it was then that Inanna chose Dumuzi to stay in her stead, upset that he had not mourned her loss enough. The god of air, rain, storms, and even the Earth, Enlil may have created life by mating with his mother, but he later married the goddess Ninlil, with whom he birthed the gods Ninurta, Nanna, and Utu, among others. Hence, the Greek Pan was the half human/goat and Osiris was the ram of Egypt; both represent "all things" and the planet Jupiter who gave life and light to the . Inanna is the ancient Sumerian goddess of love, sensuality, fertility, procreation, and also of war. also devised for Cronus as insignia of royalty four eyes in front and behind but two of them quietly closed, and upon his shoulders four wings, two as spread for flying, and two as folded. It's hard to come across evidence that is conclusive about how life really was back then but suffice to say that Sumeria has always been a place of fascination. But others have argued that from patriarchal times, these different names were in fact generally understood to refer to the same single great god, l. that at one point El was a desert god. There are three different ways you can cite this article. Different from many other major pantheistic societies, such as the ancient Egyptians or the ancient Aztecs, the chief astral god of the Sumerians wasnt the sun god, but the moon god Nanna otherwise known as Sin. This also establishes a link between the Hurrians and the Amorites, and suggests a path of transmission from the north to Sumer. Marduk = Babylonian. Of the four planes of existence in Sumerian mythos, the Netherworld, otherwise known as Kigal or Irkalla, was by far the most depressing. For example, in the Ugaritic texts, il mlk is understood[13] to mean "l the King" but il hd as "the god Hadad". Her temples were found in Nippur, Mari, and in several other places under different names. If El was the high God of AbrahamElohim, the prototype of YahvehAsherah was his wife, and there are archaeological indications that she was perceived as such before she was in effect "divorced" in the context of emerging Judaism of the 7th century BCE. Philo of Byblos (c. 64141 AD) was a Greek writer whose account Sanchuniathon survives in quotation by Eusebius and may contain the major surviving traces of Phoenician mythology. It appears that the moon-god was considered the god of the Amurru-landin other words, the god of the Amorites: We may reasonably conclude, therefore, that the god worshiped by the nomadic Amurru-peoples in the Balikh-Harran region by the epithets Amurru and Bl ad, at the time of the Mari and Old Babylonian texts, was a lunar deity. Eanna temple in Uruk: Equatorial sky: An (in Sumerian), later known as Anu (in Akkadian), was the supreme God and "prime mover in creation", embodied by the sky. The Saturn god symbol is a sickle to represent his role in agriculture. Worshipers of each city would go to the main temple to pay their respects to the main god. In Ugaritic the plural form meaning "gods" is ilhm, equivalent to Hebrew elhm "powers". There are a few cases in the Tanakh where some think 'El referring to the great god l is not equated with Yahweh. [This article tackles two issues in the "proto-astronomical" conception of the planet Saturn, first attested in Mesopotamia and followed by the Greeks and Hindus: the long-standing . The social structure of the Sumerians was decidedly different from other societies of that and later times. The Sumerian An, ruling with "terrifying splendor," was the central luminary of the sky, but not our sun, and later departed to a more remote . Rather than emerging from Sumer in the south, as Mesopotamian civilization is assumed to have done, recent research shows that the god was transplanted to Sumer by migrants from the north or northwest. 3. ENBILULU - The Mesopotamian water god charged with the care of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. But the form 'El also appears, mostly in poetic passages and in the patriarchal narratives attributed to the Priestly source of the documentary hypothesis. It is interesting that Nannar the moon-god was a male, not a female goddess. [2]Based on his identification with El, Kumarbi, and others well discuss before we reach the end of this series, Enlil should be understood not as lord of the air, but as a universal god who controls different spheres and domains, different areas without any defined specialization.[3], In other words, Enlil was simply the god. Morris Jastrow said: "Inasmuch as astrology deals primarily, as a system of divination, with the phenomena observed only at night, the foremost place is naturally occupied by the great orb of night, the moon, which, when a personified power, was designated as En-Zu, "the lord of wisdom," and had the . In fact, legends spoke of how he had Nanna and Utu illuminate the sky after being unhappy about the darkness in his heavenly home. Osiris was the God of the Afterlife, King of Heaven and Hell, the King of Eternity, King of the Living, Master of Souls; He who appears as ram in Mendes, and the Sovereign of Amenti. For the Canaanites and the ancient Levantine region as a whole, l or Il was the supreme god, the father of mankind and all creatures. To cite this article in an academic-style article or paper, use: James Hardy, "The 10 Most Important Sumerian Gods", History Cooperative, April 22, 2022, https://historycooperative.org/sumerian-gods/. This research identifies the Mesopotamian deity Amurru, generally considered a separate entity by most scholars, as the moon-god, and places the center of his cult in the very region that produced the family of Abrahamthe area along the Balikh River and around the city of Harran, which was home to a well-known temple to Sn. 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