Of the four planes of existence in Sumerian mythos, the Netherworld, otherwise known as Kigal or Irkalla, was by far the most depressing. 268-278. (This inscription lists l in second place in the local pantheon, following Ba'al Shamm and preceding the Eternal Sun.). Scholars used to believe that the gods name was a combination of the Sumerian wordsen(lord) andll(air/wind or storm). In this capacity he became known as the god of justice and . Mark Smith has argued that Yahweh and El were originally separate, but were considered synonymous from very early on. Despite their varied appearance to the. She was the goddess of love, beauty, sexuality, justice, and war. And the king will do according to his pleasure; and he will exalt himself and magnify himself over every god ('l), and against the God of Gods ('El 'Elm) he will speak outrageous things, and will prosper until the indignation is accomplished: for that which is decided will be done. Saturn (Latin: Sturnus [satrns]) was a god in ancient Roman religion, and a character in Roman mythology.He was described as a god of time, generation, dissolution, abundance, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation. [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). This god is sometimes conflated with Chronos (time). It was about this time that Enlil appears to have been elevated from the status of patron god of Nippur, a city located near the Euphrates about one hundred miles southeast of modern Baghdad, to head of the Mesopotamian pantheon. At sunrise ama was known to emerge from his underground sleeping chamber and take a daily path across the skies [ Image 1 ]. Sumerians honoured ca 1000 gods, about fifty of whom were considered the main gods, and espe-cially important were seven gods - the Great Seven. In an ancient seal that dates back to the period, Inanna was depicted to have several weapons ready on her back, a horned helmet, wings, and with her foot on a lion whose leash she was holding. l is called again and again Tru l ("Bull l" or "the bull god"). They include Ugaritic ilu, pl. He dwells in a tent according to some interpretations of the text which may explain why he had no temple in Ugarit. Guest User ID: 628058 Guest #26. [1]Lluis Feliu, Concerning the Etymology of Enlil: The An=Anum Approach.Aula Orientalis-Supplementa22 (2006), p. 229. Strangely, Nanna was also considered to be the god of cattle because their horns resembled the crescent moon. Said to be in control of female fertility, sexual love, reproduction, and war, she was a catalyst of both life and death, showering the civilization with blessings when pleased. The goddess was also said to have crafted a set of legislations that shaped the code of law and etiquette in the area. One of the most stark examples of Sumerian religion being different from modern ones is the sheer humanness of ancient Mesopotamian gods. They also said Anunnaki lifespans were 120 sars which is 120 x 3600 or 432,000 years. Cognate forms of l are found throughout the Semitic languages. It is believed that Nammu held greater importance in earlier times, but as there are no written records of those times, this is impossible to say with certainty. The social structure of the Sumerians was decidedly different from other societies of that and later times. That phrase with m-enclitic also appears in Phoenician inscriptions as late as the fifth century BCE. That makes the etymology of Enlils name easier to grasp: Rather than Sumerianen+ll, his name most likely derives from a doubling of the Semitic wordilu(god): il + il, meaning god of gods,[4]or god of all the gods.[5]. 3 (July, 1968), p. 172. The Sumerian sky god Anu and the highest semitic deity El were considered the same personage in the northern regions of Mesopotamia 6. Inanna is the ancient Sumerian goddess of love, sensuality, fertility, procreation, and also of war. Heliocentric Solar System: The Sumerians were well aware that our solar system was Heliocentric.Moreover they show 11 celestial bodies or planets.The above picture taken from a Sumerian cylinder seal cleary shows that they not only knew the number of bodies in the solar system, but the relative size as well. [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). [4]Christopher B. Hays, Enlil, Isaiah, and the Origins of thellm: A Reassessment.Zeitschrift fr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 132(2) (2020), p. 226. Its not a stretch to theorize that the cult of the god, Kumarbi/El/Enlil, was carried to Harran by travelers along that route over the centuries. Traditionally bn 'lm has been interpreted as 'sons of the mighty', 'mighty ones', for 'El can mean 'mighty', though such use may be metaphorical (compare the English expression [by] God awful). Uranus was not discovered until the 1800's, but the astronomers in that time period continued the tradition of naming planets after Roman gods. Saturn, Venus, Mars were mistress suns before our yellow sun . Ninurta was an ancient Sumerian and Akkadian god of War. 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. The text was translated by Rosenthal (1969, p.658) as follows: An eternal bond has been established for us. By the time of Abraham, around 1900 BC, Amorites controlled nearly everything from western Iran to the Mediterranean. Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mercury, and Mars were the five planets known, in the order, they appear in ancient Babylonian literature; Mercury and Saturn traded places in later works. After being separated from An by the former, Ki stayed on Earth to rule over the domain. Utu was the personification of the brilliance and warmth of the sun unfailing and perpetual. The symbol that denotes her name is the same as the one used to designate Engur, her mate and the personification of the mythical underground freshwater ocean known as Abzu. . Her popularity saw a spike in the early days of Babylon, eventually going on to become the foremost of healing deities for the civilization. He was also known as Ningirsu and was sometimes portrayed as the god of hunting. 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. [27] He also fathered many gods, most importantly Baal, Yam, and Mot, each sharing similar attributes to the Greco-Roman gods: Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades respectively. However, they were gigantic in size, and caused humans to feel a physical unease and fear should one look at them. His other children, depending on the version of the myth, were Enki, Nikikurga, Nidaba, Baba, and even Inanna and Kumarbi. 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. 5. Moreover, they were also meant to live leisurely lives and be treated as whimsical masters at best, ominously present just beyond sight and sound as temperamental overseers to humans. The rise of the Akkadians occurred around the same time that Amorite migrants began to arrive in southern Mesopotamia. ilnu. In later times, Engur was essentially superseded by Enki, the Sumerian god of water, wisdom, water, and crafts whom we will meet later on. This included the aforementioned air god Enlil, air goddess Ninlil, moon god Nanna, and sun god Utu. He was the son of Ninhursag and Enlil, and the Babylonians believed that he was a brave warrior riding on a lion with a scorpion tail. He then lay with them, and they gave birth to Shachar ("Dawn") and Shalim ("Dusk"). When it comes to the well-known sun gods of early man, nothing in the mythical record seems to have unnerved the experts. The stem l is found prominently in the earliest strata of east Semitic, northwest Semitic, and south Semitic groups. The phrase also occurs in the Pyrgi Inscription as hkkbm 'l (preceded by the definite article h and followed by the m-enclitic). By now, Enlil should require little in the way of an introduction. 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. Though Sanchuniathon distinguishes Poseidon from his Elus/Cronus, this might be a splitting off of a particular aspect of l in a euhemeristic account. It probably means he of Kumar, a site identified with the modern village of Kmr, about twenty-five miles northwest of Aleppo. A Phoenician inscribed amulet of the seventh century BCE from Arslan Tash may refer to l. Ninurta began his divine career as a god of irrigation and agriculture. [18], In any case, Enlils emergence as the kingmaker of Mesopotamia doesnt extend as far back in Sumerian history as was thought. In northwest Semitic use, l was a generic word for any god as well as the special name or title of a particular god who was distinguished from other gods as being "the god". There were more than 3,000 Sumerian gods and goddesses, and the four most well-known gods in the Sumerian religion were An, Ki, Enlil and Enki. This is a plausible scenario, given that the Sumerian homeland in southern Iraq is noticeably devoid of mountains. Robert William Rogers, ed., Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (New York: Eaton & Mains, & Cincinnati: Jennings & Graham, 1912), pp. who can be likened to Yahweh among the sons of Gods (bn 'lm). With more than 3,000 Sumerian gods and goddesses, the pantheon is immense. ENBILULU - The Mesopotamian water god charged with the care of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. 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 sun gods appearance was similar to those of other important deities of the region, with a knife and some rays of fire differentiating him from his peers. Ashshur has established (it) for us, Utus chief place of worship was at Sippar, with the temple being called the White House. Mesopotamian moon god. One of the most highly regarded female deities in early Mesopotamian religion, Nammugave birth to An and Ki the gods of heaven and earth. Other cult centers of renown include Agade and Nineveh. In most Babylonian texts it is identified with the planet Jupiter. 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. It was widely believed that a human kings right to rule derived from the favor of Enlil; in fact, kingship, the attribute of royalty that conveyed the divine authority of a king, was literally called enlilship.[19]But until about 2450 BC, Enlil did not bestow that power to kings across all of Sumer. She was also a consort to Enki at some point, and had three children: Ninurta, Ashgi, and Panigingarra. But to each of the other gods he gave two wings upon the shoulders, as meaning that they accompanied Cronus in his flight. Ninurta, an obscure god inherited by the Babylonians, may have been identified with Saturn, the slowest moving visible planet, because . Nibiru, to the Babylonians, was the celestial body associated with the god Marduk. 12th celestial body found in our solar system, ruled by Anu and spouse Antu. I discussed the moon-god in some detail in my book on the spiritual forces behind Islam,Bad Moon Rising. Essentially the supreme lord of all the gods and mortals according to Mesopotamian religion. The Sumerian god Enki is more like the serpent of Genesis and Lucifer. The Hebrew form () appears in Latin letters in Standard Hebrew transcription as El and in Tiberian Hebrew transcription as l. tures and ages have added to it. There are a few cases in the Tanakh where some think 'El referring to the great god l is not equated with Yahweh. In the Tanakh, 'elhm is the normal word for a god or the great God (or gods, given that the 'im' suffix makes a word plural in Hebrew). [12], However, because the word l sometimes refers to a god other than the great god l, it is frequently ambiguous as to whether l followed by another name means the great god l with a particular epithet applied or refers to another god entirely. The earliest writings of both are roughly contemporary, and occur interchangeably. While there are a number of "central characters" in the myths and legends of the Anunnaki, much of the action revolves around these two sibling rivals. Nanna was also the father of fire god Nusku and one of Enlils trusted ministers. [20]His name was rarely used as the theophoric element in personal names before the Akkadian conquest of Southern Mesopotamia around 2300 BC.[21]. [46] What is certain is that the form 'El does appear in Israelite names from every period including the name Yir'l ("Israel"), meaning "El strives". A rarer form, 'ila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite. How old is the United States of America? It appears in similar contexts in Ugaritic texts where the expression bn 'il alternates with bn 'ilm, but both must mean 'sons of l'. Enlil and Kumarbi supplanted Anu, while El took the place of amm (Heaven). Here 'l might refer to a generic god, or to a highest god, l. Like an aging movie star who gradually finds leading roles harder to come by as younger actors arrive in Hollywood, Enlil was eventually replaced as the king of Mesopotamian deities by the city-god of Babylon, Marduk, a process that was complete by about the twelfth century BC.[23]. During the time of Abraham and Isaac, in texts dated between 1900 BC and 1791 BC,[8]the only two gods attested among the Amorites of Mesopotamia were the moon-god and the god. His cult featured princesses as priestesses, who were given residence in a building called a Gipar. The Babylonians also recognized five of the planets, along with the Sun and Moon. Before the Great Flood, Saturn was regarded by all mankind as the supreme god and ruler of the kings. Sometimes he is specifically named (or at least identified with) Sn.[9]. [38][39], In some places, especially in Psalm 29, Yahweh is clearly envisioned as a storm god,[40] something not true of l so far as we know[41] (although true of his son, Ba'al Haddad). It began as a collection of reed huts in a marsh alongside the Euphrates. These Israelites are described as a people inhabiting Canaan. [14]However, the epithetkur-galhas not been found in any Sumerian text prior to the rise of Sargon in the late twenty-fourth century BC,[15]evidence that this particular title of the god was introduced to Sumer by the Akkadians, rather than a holdover from the dim Sumerian past. It' s a free PDF paper (28 pp) on the planets in Mesopotamian sources (i.e., the actual cuneiform astronomical texts also known as the stuff Zecharia Sitchin hides from his readers). To link to this article in the text of an online publication, please use this URL: https://historycooperative.org/sumerian-gods/. cognate with Arabic Latif "hidden". 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. Some sources also say that it was not Enki, but Abzu itself that was worshiped by the people of Eridu as the personification of the freshwater supply. But how did a god once associated with growth and healing come to embody war and malevolence? Roman - Saturn and Ops l is the grey-bearded ancient one, full of wisdom, malku ("King"), 'ab amma ("Father of years"), 'El gibbr ("l the warrior"). With either or each of them she birthed Damu and Ninazu, both gods of healing. One of them is Utu, a sun god and god of justice. This star is actually not a star at all, but the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter. Why these two? Nimrod's Babylonian followers worshipped him as Marduk - the god of war and fortresses. Although the Amorites spoke a Semitic language, they were usually portrayed in Egyptian art with fair skin. They prayed to Anu (supreme god or sky god), Enki (god of water, knowledge, mischief, crafts, and creation), Enlil (Lord Wind), Inanna (Queen of Heaven), Utu (sun-god), and Sin (moon-god). Going back to the 8th century BCE, the bilingual inscription[53] at Karatepe in the Taurus Mountains equates l-Creator-of-the-Earth to Luwian hieroglyphs read as da-a-,[54] this being the Luwian form of the name of the Babylonian water god Ea, lord of the abyss of water under the earth. The Semitic root lh (Arabic ilh, Aramaic Alh, Elh, Hebrew elah) may be l with a parasitic h, and l may be an abbreviated form of lh. 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. Its true that correlation does not imply causation, but the arrival in Sumer of that epithet at about the same time as groups of Semitic-speaking Akkadians and Amorites is strong circumstantial evidence. [48][51]:255. Four Sumerians, whose names we do have, fall somewhere between myth, legend, and history. According to the Sumerians these gods came from the planet Nibiru 'Planet of the Crossing.' The Assyrians and Babylonians called it 'Marduk', after their chief god. The Balikh-Harran region is roughly a hundred miles west of Urkesh, where the god had been worshiped under the name Kumarbi for probably fifteen hundred years by the time of Abraham. Here is a list of the 10 most important: Contents show 10. However, Cross (1973, p.17) translated the text as follows: The Eternal One ('Olam) has made a covenant oath with us, [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]. Whether a deity or not, she played a major role in creating the universe as well as humans and human civilization. An, the Sumerian deity who ruled heaven, was the most important god, and the most important deity, in the religion overall. They recognised five planets and these were identified with the gods of the Babylonian p. When Amorites first encountered the civilizations of Akkad and Sumer in the twenty-fourth century BC, the two most popular deities among the newcomers were the moon-god, Erah (also spelled Yarikh; called Sn in Akkad and Nanna in Sumer) and the god, under the Amorite name El. This is documented by the Amorite personal names logged in official Sumerian and Akkadian records: If we then take a look at the 43 most popular Amorite names (in this case: Amorite names occurring three times or more). 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'. The case of ala and ala", Bartleby: American Heritage Dictionary: Semitic Roots: l, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=El_(deity)&oldid=1150397638, Hebrew words and phrases in the Hebrew Bible, Articles having same image on Wikidata and Wikipedia, Articles containing Ugaritic-language text, Articles containing Phoenician-language text, Articles containing Akkadian-language text, Articles containing Imperial Aramaic (700-300 BCE)-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2022, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from April 2015, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 17 April 2023, at 23:37. She was referred to as the patroness of doctors, and was said to be in possession of medical equipment such as scalpels, herbal medicine, and bandages. Despite Enlils symbol having been a horned crown, no horns can be seen in this instance although that is likely to be a result of thousands of years of damage. Either way, she went on to enlist the help of Enki to create a clay figurine in the image of the gods themselves. They move, or rather appear to move, against the background of seemingly fixed stars. . [6]In my view, this is Fallen Realm Fake News to diminish the true God of heaven (and earth, and all creation) by slandering the sky-god as remote, disinterested, and, in some accounts, literally neutered. A small statuette of Enlil which shows him as a bearded man sitting on a throne was found in Nippur. El Elyon also corresponds to the Sumerian Anu, as well. Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open. 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. The 8-pointed star is the pentacle of Jupiter. Saturn: A very ancient god, the father of many of the others. They saluted him as husband. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Gods of Death [citation needed]. l (also 'Il, Ugaritic: lu; Phoenician: l;[6] Hebrew: l; Syriac: yl; Arabic: l or ilh; cognate to Akkadian: , romanized:ilu) is a Northwest Semitic word meaning "god" or "deity", or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. Unlike Ereshkigal, the healing goddess of Sumer had a much brighter reputation in the region. As the patron god of the city of Eridu, Enkis job was to imbue the ruler of the land with knowledge, skill, and intelligence. 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 . [9]Lloyd R. Bailey, Israelite l adday and Amorite Bl ad.Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. Like his son Utu, Nanna was determined to be a judge of good and bad due to his all-seeing position. Ascribe to Yahweh, sons of Gods (bn 'lm), Whether this was a long-standing belief or a relatively new one has long been the subject of inconclusive scholarly debate about the prehistory of the sources of the Tanakh and about the prehistory of Israelite religion. At an early period of Sumerian history, Utu was regarded to be the twin brother of Inanna. This parallel pleads against the Amorites as newcomers, because such a phenomenon is typically the result of long-term contact and/or acculturation. Additionally, these deities were depicted to either be human in form or, at the very least, anthropomorphic. NOTE: "Planet" is Greek for wanderer; Greeks and Romans thought the planets and the sun rotate around the earth - 7 known by them - they named gods and days of the week after them. This recent reconsideration of the nature of Enlil is quite different from the way the god has traditionally been understood by scholars. ama (Sumerian Utu) is the god of the sun. So, possession of Nippur was crucial for an ambitious ruler in Sumer. Mason-Dixon Line A banker named Philostratus donated two altars, one to Palaistine Aphrodite Urania ('Ashtart) and one to Poseidon "of Ascalon". All of them were considered creators of the world, described by epithets like father of the gods, ancient one, and so on. Accessed April 18, 2023. Mesopotamians believed these pyramid temples connected heaven and earth. Originally, he seems to have been a god of thunderstorms. Albrecht Alt presented his theories on the original differences of such gods in Der Gott der Vter in 1929. [11] l is listed at the head of many pantheons. Unlike the modern idea of heaven, Sumerian heaven was essentially the sky, which was where some gods lived. 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. 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. [7] The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *il-, meaning "god".[8]. 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. The Euphrates a bearded man sitting on a throne was found in our solar,! Star at all, but the largest planet in our solar system ruled. `` Dawn '' ) a rarer form, 'ila, represents the predicate form in Old and... God inherited by the time of Abraham, around 1900 BC, Enlil should require in... Worshipped him as Marduk - the god of war listed at the very least, anthropomorphic power to across! 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With the god of war throne was found in our solar system, Jupiter against the background of seemingly stars. Of good and Bad due to his all-seeing position the domain how a! Lists l in second place in the Image of the sun and moon were mistress suns before our yellow.!

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