| abstract | - Mesopotamian mythology is the collective name given to Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, and Babylonian mythologies from parts of the fertile crescent, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Zagros mountains. The Sumerians practiced a polytheistic religion, with anthropomorphic gods or goddesses representing forces or presences in the world, in much the same way as later Greek mythology. According to said mythology, the gods originally created humans as servants and freed them when they became too much to handle. Many stories in Sumerian religion appear similar to stories in other Middle-Eastern religions. Gods and Goddesses:
* Ninlil or Nillina, goddess of air (possibly the south wind) and wife of Enlil (Sumerian) at the E'kur Temple, Nippur
* Inanna, the goddess of love and war at the E'anna temple, Uruk
* Marduk, originally Ea's son and god of light (biblical Merodach, Mordechai was named after him), the main god of Aya, consort of Shamash.
* Ninurta (Sumerian: Lord plough) (panMesopotamian) at the E'Girsu (hence also called Ningirsu) temple, Lagash As social complexity in these cities increased, each god came to resemble a human monarch (Lugal: lu = man, gal = great), or high priest (Ensi: en = lord, si = country), complete with a family and a court of divine stewards and servants. Wars between cities were seen to reflect wars in heavens between the gods. Lesser gods were seen as family members of these bigger divinities. Thus Nanna, goddess of the moon came to be seen as the sister of Inanna, and she came to acquire a husband too, originally Gugalanna, the Wild Bull of Heaven, (from gu = bull, gal = great, anu = heaven), and subsequently Nergal, the Lord of Death, son (Aplu) of Enlil and Ninlil. Servants also became minor divinities, as Isimud the two faced androgynous Steward of Enki; or Ninshabur (Lady evening) the chief lady-in-waiting of Inanna. Divinities then proliferated, with there being specific gods of tooth-ache, or aching limbs, goddesses for "Greenery" and "Pasture". Every aspect of life thus came to be surrounded with its own minor divinity that required gifts or placation, as magic spells multiplied, trying to give people certainty in very uncertain times.
- The term "Mespotamian mythology" covers the ancient religions of Sumer, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria and Babylon. Obviously, Mespotamia figures heavily in the Bible; Abraham and his kin were, mostly likely, natives of the Sumerian city of Ur. Sumer, as you might have learned in your World History classes, is probably the oldest human civilization, that flourished from the 5th to the 3rd milennia BCE. Sumer began and ended as a collection of city-states in what is now Iraq. It's usually assumed that Sumerians were responsible for the invention of year-around agriculture, writing, the wheel, irrigation, and beer. Since the Sumerian language has no known cognates, it's anyone's guess where they came from. Some writers take this a step further and argue that the Sumerians were either assisted by aliens or aliens themselves. In the 3rd millenia BC, Sumer began to decline. Like the collapse of any superpower, there were a lot of reasons for this, but the primary reason, it seems, is that they were just plain displaced by Akkadians and various other Semitic people. After Sumer's decline, it was displaced by the Akkadian Empire, who borrowed the Sumerians' gods in the way that the Romans borrowed the Greek gods. The Akkadian Empire was not as fortunate as Sumer had been, though, and its rule collapsed after about a century. But the Akkadians proved to be a plucky lot, and they managed to recoup and build new cities. They kept this up until they were all conquered in 539 BCE by the Persians, which rendered the whole thing pretty moot. Studying Mesopotamian mythology in general is a little bit easier than studying most Indo-European mythologies, because the Mesopotamians were literate, but even so, there's a lot of conflicting information. The most likely reason is simple evolution of the religion as time went on. Major characters of Mesopotamian Mythology include:
* Anu, god of heaven and the stars.
* Enlil (Ellil) The god of wind and the sky. Often identified with Jupiter.
* Enki (Ea) The god of water and wisdom. Enki was much more fond of humanity than most other gods and was generally a pretty groovy guy. Often identified with Mercury.
* Ishkur (Adad), god of storms. He is either the brother of Enki or a son of Nanna and Ningal.
* Nammu, (Tiamat) goddess of the primeval waters.
* Ki, goddess of the earth.
* Ninhursag (Ninmah, Nintu, Mamma, Aruru, Belet-Ili), goddess of nature and earth, and the wife of Enki. May or may not be the same as Ki, above.
* Ninlil (Sud, Mulittu), the wife of Enlil and usually the mother of Nanna, Nergal, Ninazu, Ninurta and Enbilulu.
* Nanna (Suen, Sin), god of the moon. His wife is Ningal, goddess of the reeds.
* Nergal, god of fire, destruction, war, plagues, and occasionally, the sun. Often identified with Mars.
* Ninurta, god of agriculture, healing and destruction. Often identified with Saturn.
* Ereshkigal (Allatu, Irkalla), the ruler of the underworld, older sister of Inanna and wife of Nergal. They're the daughters of either Anu or Nanna.
* Inanna (Ishtar, Inana), goddess of warfare, love, and fertility. Often identified with Venus.
* Utu (Shamash), god of justice and the sun, son of Nanna and Ningal.
* Marduk, water, vegetation, judgment and magic; son of Enki and Damkina. As the patron deity of Babylon who was created to justify the Babylonians' dominance, you could call him an Ur Example of a Marty Stu.
- Even Old mythologies like the Egyptian, Chinese, Japanese and Indian were probably influenced by Mesopotamian mythology. they had a lot of figures which were the first of their kind. This would include stories like the famous epic of Gilgamesh Mesopotamian mythology is full of heroes and gods that were the first of their kind. These would include Tiamat, Ishtar, Enki, Apsu, Marduk and Anu, Inanna and Kingu. These gods were all created solely out of pure belief that simple phenomenon in nature they couldn't explain was because of a higher deity. This gave rise to the concept of a god. Ancient Mesopotamian were polytheistic in that they believed that these deities were all categorized and did different jobs and deeds like say Gilgamesh doing heroic things which is written in the epic of Gilgamesh. Some Mesopotamian Gods are There are currently nothing recorded about ancient Mesopotamian cosmology. However there is only one account about ancient Mesopotamian mythology. It is that the god Marduk killed the mother goddess Tiamat and used half her body to create the earth, and the other half to create both the paradise of šamû and the netherworld of irṣitu. The rest is buried in history
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