Gods of the cities
Sumerian religion grew out of the world of the southern Mesopotamian city-states, which flourished in the fourth and third millennia BCE. Each city had a patron deity, whose temple stood at its centre and whose fortunes were tied to the city’s. This arrangement helps explain why the Sumerian pantheon is large and often confusing: the gods were not designed as one system but built up from many local cults that were later combined and ranked.
Our knowledge comes mainly from cuneiform writing on clay tablets. The most important Sumerian literary tablets come from the Old Babylonian period, around the 18th century BCE, when scribes in schools copied older compositions, although some texts are much older. Sumerian was no longer a spoken language by then, so these copies preserve a tradition that was already ancient. Dating individual myths is therefore difficult, and statements about the earliest forms of a story need caution.
The main gods and what they governed
The following figures are central.
- An (Anu in Akkadian) is the sky and the highest authority, but in many myths he is a remote figure. His main seat was the city of Uruk.
- Enlil is lord of wind and air, and the god who carries out the decisions of the divine assembly. His temple, the Ekur, stood at Nippur, a city that long served as the religious centre of Sumer. He can be harsh, as in his role as the sender of the flood in several versions of that story.
- Enki (Akkadian Ea) is god of the fresh waters of the Abzu, of wisdom, magic and craftsmanship. His cult centre was the city of Eridu, which tradition regarded as one of the oldest cities. In many stories he is the resourceful helper of gods and humans.
- Ninhursag, also known by names such as Ninmah and Nintur, is a mother goddess associated with mountains and birth.
- Nanna (Akkadian Sin) is the moon god, whose chief shrine was in the city of Ur. His children include the sun god Utu and Inanna.
- Utu (Akkadian Shamash) is the sun, a god of justice who sees everything under the sky. His seats included Sippar and Larsa.
- Inanna is goddess of love, war and the planet Venus, centred at Uruk.
- Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld, and Ningirsu, a warrior god of Lagash, appear in many texts. Ningirsu was invoked on the stele of Eannatum.
City gods and national gods were not exclusive. A Sumerian might pray to the city’s patron, to a personal god in the household, and to the great gods of the realm, all in the same week.
Divine households and the me
The Sumerian gods were often thought of as living in households, with spouses, children, servants and viziers. Enlil’s wife is Ninlil. Enki’s wife is Damgalnuna (also called Ninki). Gods had messengers, such as Ninshubur, Inanna’s loyal minister. Temples were treated as the actual homes of the gods, with daily meals offered to their statues.
A key concept is the me, the divine powers or decrees that sustain civilisation. They include kingship, the priesthood, crafts, music, law and many other aspects. Myths such as Inanna and Enki explain how the me passed from one city to another, which suited the political ambitions of different cities.
Sumerian myths
A selection gives a sense of the range.
Enki and Ninhursag. Set in Dilmun, a paradise-like land, the poem tells how Enki’s relationships with several goddesses produce a chain of daughters and eventually plants; Enki eats eight plants that Ninhursag had created, and she curses him. He falls ill, and the other gods persuade her to heal him by creating healing deities. The poem links fertility, water and the origin of certain divinities.
Enlil and Ninlil. The young goddess Ninlil meets Enlil by the river and conceives Nanna, the moon god. For his offence against her the other gods banish Enlil to the underworld, and Ninlil follows him. Enlil takes on the shapes of other figures and fathers underworld deities, who are to take the place of Nanna below. The story is a difficult one by modern standards, and its tone is debated, but it shows the gods as subject to rules and consequences.
Inanna’s descent. Inanna passes through seven gates to the realm of her sister Ereshkigal and is killed before she is revived. Her story is told in a separate profile of the goddess.
Ninurta’s battles. Stories about the warrior god Ninurta, including his fight with the monster Asag in the poem Lugale and his dealings with the Anzu bird, show the gods confronting forces of disorder.
Creation texts. Sumerian accounts imagine the primeval sea, Nammu, heaven and earth separated by Enlil, and humans formed of clay to relieve the gods of labour. They are shorter than the Babylonian Enuma Elish and do not feature a battle against a sea monster.
Sumerian versus Akkadian and Babylonian retellings
The later literature drew heavily on the Sumerian, yet it altered it in significant ways.
- Names and languages. The old gods were given Akkadian names or equivalents, and Sumerian names were often retained in ritual or learned writing.
- Shifts of status. In Babylonian religion, Marduk, a god not prominent in Sumerian sources, rose to head the pantheon; in Assyria, Ashur did. Enlil’s roles were transferred.
- A more violent cosmos. The Babylonian Enuma Elish describes the world as made by conquering chaos. The Sumerian creation poems are generally more concerned with separation, order and work.
- New emphases. The Akkadian-speaking world gave greater prominence to omens and divination, to the king as the god’s chosen, and to a warlike Ishtar.
When reading a modern summary, it is worth checking whether the version told is Sumerian, Old Babylonian, Assyrian or Late Babylonian, because the same figure may behave differently in each.
The afterlife
In Sumerian belief, the dead went to the underworld, a gloomy, dusty place sometimes called Kur or Irkalla in later texts, where they led a shadowy existence. This did not depend on moral behaviour, although the care of the living for the dead, in the form of libations and food, was believed to matter. The picture is far from the elaborate funerary world of Egyptian afterlife beliefs, though Sumerian royal graves at Ur show that rulers were sometimes buried with great wealth.
Reading with care
Sumerian mythology is rich but patchy. Many tablets are broken, translations vary, and the meaning of some passages is uncertain. Scholars also distinguish between literary texts, which may have been written in schools and for kings, and the religion of ordinary people, which is known more from names, seals and offerings. The picture drawn here is the best-supported outline, not a complete account.