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Utu
Utu (dUD "Sun"), also known under the Akkadian name Shamash, ''šmš'', syc, ܫܡܫܐ ''šemša'', he, שֶׁמֶשׁ ''šemeš'', ar, شمس ''šams'', Ashurian Aramaic: 𐣴𐣬𐣴 ''š'meš(ā)'' was the ancient Mesopotamian sun god. He was believed to see everything that happened in the world every day, and was therefore responsible for justice and protection of travelers. As a divine judge, he could be associated with the underworld. Additionally, he could serve as the god of divination, typically alongside the weather god Adad. While he was universally regarded as one of the primary gods, he was particularly venerated in Sippar and Larsa. The moon god Nanna (Sin) and his wife Ningal were regarded as his parents, while his twin sister was Inanna (Ishtar). Occasionally other goddesses, such as Manzat and Pinikir, could be regarded as his sisters too. The dawn goddess Aya (Sherida) was his wife, and multiple texts describe their daily reunions taking place on a moun ...
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List Of Mesopotamian Deities
Deities in ancient Mesopotamia were almost exclusively anthropomorphic. They were thought to possess extraordinary powers and were often envisioned as being of tremendous physical size. The deities typically wore ''melam'', an ambiguous substance which "covered them in terrifying splendor" and which could also be worn by heroes, kings, giants, and even demons. The effect that seeing a deity's ''melam'' has on a human is described as ''ni'', a word for the " physical creeping of the flesh". Both the Sumerian and Akkadian languages contain many words to express the sensation of ''ni'', including the word ''puluhtu'', meaning "fear". Deities were almost always depicted wearing horned caps, consisting of up to seven superimposed pairs of ox-horns. They were also sometimes depicted wearing clothes with elaborate decorative gold and silver ornaments sewn into them. The ancient Mesopotamians believed that their deities lived in Heaven, but that a god's statue was a physical embodiment ...
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Inanna
Inanna, also sux, 𒀭𒊩𒌆𒀭𒈾, nin-an-na, label=none is an ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love, war, and fertility. She is also associated with beauty, sex, divine justice, and political power. She was originally worshiped in Sumer under the name "Inanna", and later by the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians under the name Ishtar, (occasionally represented by the logogram ). She was known as the " Queen of Heaven" and was the patron goddess of the Eanna temple at the city of Uruk, which was her main cult center. She was associated with the planet Venus and her most prominent symbols included the lion and the eight-pointed star. Her husband was the god Dumuzid (later known as Tammuz) and her , or personal attendant, was the goddess Ninshubur (who later became conflated with the male deities Ilabrat and Papsukkal). Inanna was worshiped in Sumer at least as early as the Uruk period ( 4000 BCE – 3100 BCE), but she had little cult activity before the conqu ...
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Kittum
Kittum, also known as Niĝgina, was a Mesopotamian goddess who was regarded as the embodiment of truth. She belonged to the circle of the sun god Utu and was associated with law and justice. Character Kittum's name means "truth" in Akkadian and she regarded as a divine hypostasis of this concept. Kittum's Sumerian counterpart, Niĝgina, is not attested before the Old Babylonian period, and it possible that the Akkadian name was older, which would make Niĝgina an artificial translation. A possible forerunner to the idea of a goddess embodying truth are proverbs or dialogues copied in scribal schools in which truth was personified. Names with the element ''niĝgina'' are already attested in sources from the Ur III period, one example being Niĝginaidug ("truth is good"), but there is no indication that they were necessarily theophoric, and the word is written without the '' dingir'' sign which preceded divine names. Kittum could alternatively be equated with another of Utu's co ...
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Mamu (deity)
Mamu (also transcribed as Mamud, 𒀭𒈠𒊬) was a Mesopotamian goddess associated with dreams. She was regarded as the daughter of the sun god Utu and could herself be called the "Utu of dreams". References to male Mamu are also known, though it has been proposed that they only represent a late change of gender attested for a number of other originally female deities as well. Character Mamu's name is derived from the word ''mamu'', which means "dream" in Sumerian. As noted by Annette Zgoll, Sumerian has two words with that meaning which are not fully interchangeable. While the word ''mašĝi'' could designate any type of dream, ''mamu'' was specifically a meaningful dream, which was regarded as capable of influencing the future. The ''Assur Dream Ritual Compendium'' describes Mamu as ''dingir mamuda'', "deity of dreams." In Mesopotamian religion, dream deities could act as messengers of other gods, and as such were believed to manifest in dreams to convey information, includ ...
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Sin (mythology)
Nanna, Sīn or Suen ( akk, ), and in Aramaic ''syn'', ''syn’'', or even ''shr'' 'moon', or Nannar ( sux, ) was the god of the moon in the Mesopotamian religions of Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylonia and Aram. He was also associated with cattle, perhaps due to the perceived similarity between bull horns and the crescent moon. He was always described as a major deity, though only a few sources, mostly these from the reign of Nabonidus, consider him to be the head of the Mesopotamian pantheon. The two chief seats of his worship were Ur in the south of Mesopotamia and Harran in the north, though he was also worshiped in numerous other cities, especially in the proximity of Ur and in the Diyala area. In Ur, he was connected to royal power, and many Mesopotamian kings visited his temple in this city. According to Mesopotamian mythology, his parents were Enlil and Ninlil, while his wife was Ningal, worshiped with him in his major cult centers. Their children included maj ...
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Sippar
Sippar ( Sumerian: , Zimbir) was an ancient Near Eastern Sumerian and later Babylonian city on the east bank of the Euphrates river. Its '' tell'' is located at the site of modern Tell Abu Habbah near Yusufiyah in Iraq's Baghdad Governorate, some north of Babylon and southwest of Baghdad. The city's ancient name, Sippar, could also refer to its sister city, Sippar-Amnanum (located at the modern site of Tell ed-Der); a more specific designation for the city here referred to as Sippar was Sippar-Yahrurum. History Despite the fact that thousands of cuneiform clay tablets have been recovered at the site, relatively little is known about the history of Sippar. As was often the case in Mesopotamia, it was part of a pair of cities, separated by a river. Sippar was on the east side of the Euphrates, while its sister city, Sippar-Amnanum (modern Tell ed-Der), was on the west. While pottery finds indicate that the site of Sippar was in use as early as the Uruk period, substantial occu ...
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Aya (goddess)
Aya (rarely Nin-Aya) was an Akkadian goddess of dawn, and the wife of Shamash, the sun god. Her Sumerian equivalent was Sherida, wife of Shamash's equivalent Utu. Character Aya's name means dawn in Akkadian. She was associated with morning light and the rising sun. In this role she was called "morning-maker." It has also been suggested that the Sumerian name Sherida () was a loan from Akkadian ''šērtum'', "morning." Gebhard Selz notes that this would make her one of the first deities whose name has Akkadian origin to be integrated into the pantheons of Sumerian-speaking areas. Other such examples are Suen, a name of the moon god, and Ishtaran, a divine judge. Further attested names of the sun god's wife include Ninkar, Sudaĝ and Sudgan. Her another primary function was that of a divine bride, as exemplified by her epithet ''kallatum'' ("bride," "daughter in law"). As Shamash's wife she was regarded as epitome of beauty and charm. Shamash and Aya are the divine couple most ...
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Ningal
Ningal ( Sumerian: "Great Queen"), also known as Nikkal in Akkadian, was a Mesopotamian goddess of Sumerian origin regarded as the wife of the moon god, Nanna/Sin. She was particularly closely associated with his main cult centers, Ur and Harran, but they were also worshiped together in other cities of Mesopotamia. She was particularly venerated by the Third Dynasty of Ur and later by kings of Larsa. Character and iconography While Ningal was a major deity in the Mesopotamian pantheon and worship of her is attested from all periods of Mesopotamian history, her character was largely “passive and supportive” according to researchers. She was the tutelary goddess of Ur alongside her husband, and was referred to as its "lady" or "mother" on occasion. Based on some of Ningal's epithets it has been proposed that she was in part an astral deity, much like her husband. A type of bird, ''u''5-''bi''2, was possibly associated with Ningal, though the evidence is inconclusive. Propos ...
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Nahhunte
Nahhunte was the Elamite sun god. While the evidence for the existence of temples dedicated to him and regular offerings is sparse, he is commonly attested in theophoric names, including these of members of Elamite royal families. Name and character Multiple writings of the name are known. In Elamite documents, the attested forms include Nahhunte, Nahhute, Nahiti and dPÍR. Forms attested in Akkadian texts include Naḫḫude, Naḫunde, Nanḫunde, dUTU and, exclusively in theophoric names, -''nande'' and -''ḫundu''. According to Matthew Stolper, the name Nahhunte is a compound noun, but its precise etymology is impossible to ascertain. He proposes that it was a cognate, and possibly a homonym, of the Elamite word for the sun. In curse formulas, his name functioned as a metonym for the sun itself. In texts from Susa, Haft Tepe and Malamir the name of the sun god was usually written logographically as dUTU and it is uncertain when it should be read as Nahhunte rather than ...
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Shapash
Shapash (Ugaritic: 𐎌𐎔𐎌 ''špš'', "sun"), alternatively written as Shapshu or Shapsh, was a Canaanite sun goddess. She also served as the royal messenger of the high god El, her probable father. Her most common epithets in the Ugaritic corpus are ''nrt 'ilm špš'' ("Shapash, lamp of the gods", also translated as "torch" or "luminary" of the gods by various authors), ''rbt špš'' ("great lady Shapash"), and ''špš 'lm'' ("eternal Shapash"). In the pantheon lists KTU 1.118 and 1.148, Shapash is equated with the Akkadian dšamaš. Cult Unlike Shamash or Utu in Mesopotamia, but like Shams in Arabia, Shapash was a female solar deity. In addition to attestations in Ugaritic texts, Amarna letter EA 323 uses the Sumerogram for the sun deity, dUTU, as a feminine noun (''ša tiram dUTU'', line 19); given the letter's provenance with Yidya of Ashkelon it may refer to Shapash. Similarly, the letter EA 155 from Abimilki of Tyre to the Pharaoh includes a feminine dUTU (''LUGA ...
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Šimige
__NOTOC__ Šimige (in Ugaritic: ''ṯmg'') was the Hurrian sun god. From the 14th century BC he was also worshiped by the Hittites as the Sun god of Heaven. In the Hittite cliff sanctuary at Yazılıkaya, he is depicted as one of the chief deities. Šimige was closely connected to the Mesopotamian sun god, Šamaš, from whom he took his consort the goddess Aya Ikaltu, whose epithet Ikaltu or Nikaltu derived from the Akkadian word ''kallātu'' ('bride'). Two of his servants were also borrowed in this way: Bunene The ancient Mesopotamian deity Bunene, inscribed in cuneiform sumerograms as dḪAR and phonetically as d''bu-ne-ne'', was a subordinate to and '' sukkal'' ("vizier") or charioteer of the sun-god Šamaš, whom he drove from the eastern horizon at ... and Mišaru; a third servant was named Lipparu. Šimige drove a chariot pulled by four horses. On either side, he was accompanied by Bunene and Mišaru, as well as the personifications of "Respect" and "Awe". Children ...
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Šumugan
Šumugan, Šamagan, Šumuqan or Šakkan (𒀭𒄊) was a god worshiped in Mesopotamia and ancient Syria. He was associated with animals. Character Šumugan was a shepherd god. He was associated with various quadrupeds, especially donkeys or alternatively wild sheep. In Ebla he was associated with mules. In literary texts he was also tasked with caring for their habitat and plants growing there. In some texts his epithet is "shepherd of everything." Other known epithets include "god of wool," "god of herd animals," "god of grass-eating animals" and "god of watering places." He was regarded as responsible for prosperity and agricultural fertility, often in connection with grain deities (such as Ezina) and beer deities (such as Ninkasi). The name could also be metaphorically applied to a stallion of a herd. Due to the association between the steppe, where he was believed to dwell, and the netherworld, he sometimes appears in connection with the latter. Texts attesting this connecti ...
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