Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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All Sumerian Deities

The gods of Sumer, the oldest pantheon in the Atlas, recorded in the earliest surviving religious literature. Each major deity held a particular city as their seat, and the Akkadian and Babylonian pantheons that followed inherited these gods under new names, carrying them forward for two further millennia.

Facts
Attestation
Era of Attestation
Divine names appear in the archaic tablets of Uruk from about 3200 BCE. God-lists and literary texts follow from the mid-third millennium, and Sumerian religious texts were still being copied on cuneiform tablets in the first century CE. 2
Veneration Today
The cult ended with the cuneiform culture that carried it; no continuous worship survives. 2
Overview
What Defines This Grouping
The gods of southern Mesopotamia in the third and early second millennia BCE, recorded in the oldest religious literature in the world. The Sumerian pantheon is the substrate of the later Babylonian and Assyrian one: many of the same powers recur under Akkadian names, and the entries record the correspondence rather than duplicating the god. 2
Directory
Category
Deities 1
Learn More
The gods of Sumer

This group gathers the deities of Sumer, the earliest urban civilisation of southern Mesopotamia and the source of the oldest written religious literature in the world. The Sumerian pantheon underlies the later Babylonian and Assyrian gods, who often are the same powers under Akkadian names.

The browser will find the sky-god An, the air-god Enlil, the wisdom-god Enki, the great goddess Inanna (later Ishtar), the moon-god Nanna and the sun-god Utu. These figures appear in some of humanity's first recorded myths, including the descent of Inanna and the flood story that stands behind later versions. The entries note the Sumerian-to-Akkadian correspondences.

All Sumerian Deities
Filter Results13 entries

Anu

Sumerian Deities

Dumuzi

Sumerian Deities

Dumuzid

Sumerian Deities

Enki

Sumerian Deities

Enlil

Sumerian Deities

Geshtinanna

Sumerian Deities

Inanna

Sumerian Deities

Ninhursag

Sumerian Deities

Ninkasi

Sumerian Deities

Ninshubur

Sumerian Deities

Ninsianna

Sumerian Deities

Nisaba

Sumerian Deities

Utu

Sumerian Deities
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses
Nicole Brisch (ed.), Oracc / Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus, University of Pennsylvania, 2011IntroductionView the Source
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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