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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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sukkal
Sukkal (conventionally translated from Sumerian as "vizier") was a term which could denote both a type of official and a class of deities in ancient Mesopotamia. The historical sukkals were responsible for overseeing the execution of various commands of the kings and acted as diplomatic envoys and translators for foreign dignitaties. The deities referred to as sukkals fulfilled a similar role in mythology, acting as servants, advisors and envoys of the main gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon, such as Enlil or Inanna. The best known sukkal is the goddess Ninshubur. In art, they were depicted carrying staffs, most likely understood as their attribute. They could function as intercessory deities, believed to mediate between worshipers and the major gods. The office sukkal is also known from various areas to the west and east of Mesopotamia, including the Hurrian kingdom Arrapha, Syrian Alalakh and Mari and Elam under the rule of the Sukkalmah Dynasty, while the concept of divine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ninkasi
Ninkasi was the Mesopotamian goddess of beer and brewing. It is possible that in the first millennium BCE she was known under the variant name Kurunnītu, derived from a term referring to a type of high quality beer. She was associated with both positive and negative consequences of the consumption of beer. In god lists, such as the ''An = Anum'' list and the Weidner god list, she usually appears among the courtiers of the god Enlil, alongside deities such as Ninimma and Ninmada. She could also be paired with Siraš, a goddess of similar character, who sometimes was regarded as her sister. A possible association between her and the underworld deities Nungal and Laṣ is also attested, possibly in reference to the possible negative effects of alcohol consumption. A number of works of Mesopotamian literature refer to Ninkasi, for example the myths '' Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave'' and '' Lugalbanda and the Anzud Bird''. A hymn dedicated to her, known simply as the ''Hymn to Nink ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nergal
Nergal ( Sumerian: d''KIŠ.UNU'' or ; ; Aramaic: ܢܸܪܓܲܠ; la, Nirgal) was a Mesopotamian god worshiped through all periods of Mesopotamian history, from Early Dynastic to Neo-Babylonian times, with a few attestations under indicating his cult survived into the period of Achaemenid domination. He was primarily associated with war, death, and disease and has been described as the "god of inflicted death." He reigned over Kur, the Mesopotamian underworld, depending on the myth either on behalf of his parents Enlil and Ninlil, or in later periods as a result of his marriage with the goddess Ereshkigal. Originally either Mammitum, a goddess possibly connected to frost, or Laṣ, sometimes assumed to be a minor medicine goddess, were regarded as his wife, though other traditions existed, too. His primary cult center was Kutha, located in northern Mesopotamia. His main temple was the E-Meslam and he was also known by the name Meslamtaea, "he who comes out of Meslam." Initi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tell Brak
Tell Brak (Nagar, Nawar) was an ancient city in Syria; its remains constitute a tell located in the Upper Khabur region, near the modern village of Tell Brak, 50 kilometers north-east of Al-Hasaka city, Al-Hasakah Governorate. The city's original name is unknown. During the second half of the third millennium BC, the city was known as Nagar and later on, Nawar. Starting as a small settlement in the seventh millennium BC, Tell Brak evolved during the fourth millennium BC into one of the biggest cities in Upper Mesopotamia, and interacted with the cultures of southern Mesopotamia. The city shrank in size at the beginning of the third millennium BC with the end of Uruk period, before expanding again around c. 2600 BC, when it became known as Nagar, and was the capital of a regional kingdom that controlled the Khabur river valley. Nagar was destroyed around c. 2300 BC, and came under the rule of the Akkadian Empire, followed by a period of independence as a Hurrian city-stat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kura (deity)
Kura was a god worshiped in Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh in Syria) in the third millennium BCE. He was the tutelary god of the city, as well as the head of the local pantheon. While his functions are difficult to ascertain, it is well attested that he was connected to the institution of kingship. The etymology of his name is presently unknown, and it is commonly assumed that it belongs to an unknown linguistic substrate, similar to the names of some of the other Eblaite deities, such as Aštabi, Hadabal or Ishara. Kura's spouse was the goddess Barama, who like him was only worshiped in Ebla. After the destruction of the city both of them disappear from records. A number of proposals have been made regarding identification of deities attested from later periods with Kura, but most of them are not widely accepted. Name and origin The oldest attestations of Kura come from administrative texts predating the destruction of Ebla by thirty five to forty years. The name of the god is c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ib'al
Ib'al was the name used by Ebla in the 24th century BC to indicate a confederation of tribes occupying the steppic region south of Ebla; the region included small villages and towns. Qatna could have been one of the urban centers in the region. Ebla and Mari were engaged in a long war and Ib'al was drawn into; during the reign of the Eblaite king Isar-Damu Isar-Damu (reigned c. 2320 BC), was the king ( Malikum) of the first Eblaite kingdom. Isar-Damu fought a long war with Mari which ended in Eblaite victory; he was probably the last king of the first kingdom. Reign Isar-Damu succeeded his father ..., repeated campaigns over the course of four years were aimed at the confederation and ended with the Ib'al defeat. Following the war with Ebla, Ib'al became an Eblaite ally and acted as such during a campaign against Mari. Ib'al maintained a peaceful relation with Ebla until the latter collapse, and the Ebla archive mentions the names of seven of its sheikhs. References Citations ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eblaite Deities
Eblaite (, also known as Eblan ISO 639-3), or Palaeo-Syrian, is an extinct East Semitic language used during the 3rd millennium BC by the populations of Northern Syria. It was named after the ancient city of Ebla, in modern western Syria. Variants of the language were also spoken in Mari and Nagar. According to Cyrus H. Gordon, although scribes might have spoken it sometimes, Eblaite was probably not spoken much, being rather a written lingua franca with East and West Semitic features. The language was discovered through cuneiform tablets found in Ebla. Discovery The 1964 discovery at the Tell Mardikh site in Northern Syria of an ancient city from the second half of the third millennium BC completely altered archaeological knowledge of the time, as it indicated the existence of a contemporary urban culture during the Early Dynastic Period of Mesopotamia, within a geographic zone where, at the time, previous excavations had revealed nothing on the same scale. In agreement ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesopotamian Gods
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 embodi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hittite Mythology And Religion
Hittite mythology and Hittite religion were the religious beliefs and practices of the Hittites, who created an empire centered in what is now Turkey from . Most of the narratives embodying Hittite mythology are lost, and the elements that would give a balanced view of Hittite religion are lacking among the tablets recovered at the Hittite capital Hattusa and other Hittite sites. Thus, "there are no canonical scriptures, no theological disquisitions or discourses, no aids to private devotion". Some religious documents formed part of the corpus with which young scribes were trained, and have survived, most of them dating from the last several decades before the final burning of the sites. The scribes in the royal administration, some of whose archives survive, were a bureaucracy, organizing and maintaining royal responsibilities in areas that would be considered part of religion today: temple organization, cultic administration, reports of diviners, make up the main body of sur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Enkidu
Enkidu ( sux, ''EN.KI.DU10'') was a legendary figure in ancient Mesopotamian mythology, wartime comrade and friend of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk. Their exploits were composed in Sumerian poems and in the Akkadian ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', written during the 2nd millennium BC. He is the oldest literary representation of the wild man, a recurrent motif in artistic representations in Mesopotamia and in Ancient Near East literature. The apparition of Enkidu as a primitive man seems to be a potential parallel of the Old Babylonian version (1300–1000 BC), in which he was depicted as a servant-warrior in the Sumerian poems. There have been suggestions that he may be the "bull-man" shown in Mesopotamian art, having the head, arms, and body of a man, and the horns, ears, tail and legs of a bull. Thereafter a series of interactions with humans and human ways bring him closer to civilization, culminating in a wrestling match with Gilgamesh, king of Uruk. Enkidu embodies the wild or natu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epic Of Gilgamesh
The ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' () is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, and is regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five Sumerian poems about Bilgamesh (Sumerian for "Gilgamesh"), king of Uruk, dating from the Third Dynasty of Ur (). These independent stories were later used as source material for a combined epic in Akkadian. The first surviving version of this combined epic, known as the "Old Babylonian" version, dates back to the 18th century BC and is titled after its incipit, ''Shūtur eli sharrī'' ("Surpassing All Other Kings"). Only a few tablets of it have survived. The later Standard Babylonian version compiled by Sîn-lēqi-unninni dates from the 13th to the 10th centuries BC and bears the incipit ''Sha naqba īmuru'' ("He who Saw the Abyss", in unmetaphoric terms: "He who Sees the Unknown"). Approximately two-thirds of this longer, twelv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amurru (god)
Amurru, also known under the Sumerian name Martu, was a Mesopotamian god who served as the divine personification of the Amorites. In past scholarship it was often assumed that he originated as an Amorite deity, but today it is generally accepted that he developed as a divine stereotype of them in Mesopotamian religion. As such, he was associated with steppes and pastoralism, as evidenced by his epithets and iconography. While this was initially his only role, he gradually developed other functions, becoming known as a god of the mountains, a warlike weather deity and a divine exorcist. He is first attested in documents from the Ur III period, chiefly in Sumerian and Akkadian theophoric names. Later he also came to be worshiped in Babylon, Assur and other locations in Assyria and Babylonia. He had his own cult center somewhere in the area known as the Sealand in Mesopotamian texts. Only a single myth about Amurru is known. It describes the circumstances of his marriage to Adgar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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