Encyclopedia of Mythology
Antika
Gods and Titans Goddesses of antiquity Heroes of Greek myths Demons of the ancient world Characters of antiquity Mythical creatures Myths of Hellas and Rome
Two Rivers
The gods of Mesopotamia The Goddesses of Mesopotamia The Heroes of the Two Rivers The Demons of the East The epic of Gilgamesh
Egypt
Gods of ancient Egypt Egyptian goddesses Demons and Demiurges Myths and Legends of Egypt
India
Gods of Ancient India Goddesses of Hinduism Avatars of deities Fabulous creatures Myths and legends of India
Celtic
Gods of the Celts and Gauls Celtic goddesses Magicians and demons of the Celts Heroes of Celtic legends Knights of the Round Table Mythical creatures Myths legends of the Celts
China
Gods of China Chinese goddesses Heroes of Chinese myths Demons and monsters Chinese legends
Mesoamerica
Gods of Mesoamerica Aztec and Mayan Goddesses Myths of Mesoamerica
Russia
The gods of the ancient Slavs Slavic goddesses Heroes of the legends of the Slavs Mythical creatures Demons and Evil Spirits Legends and epics
Scandinavia
Scandinavian gods Goddesses of Scandinavia Heroes of Northern myths Trolls Giants Jotuns Mythical creatures Demons and monsters Scandinavian sagas
Japan
Gods of Ancient Japan Japanese goddesses Fabulous creatures Heroes of Japanese myths Myths legends of Japan
History
The firmament
Map
Mythology of Sumer and Akkad
A B C G D E F Z I K L M N O P R S T U F X C H W E Y I
Akkadian, Sumerian, Zoroastrian mythology Ancient Greek and Roman mythology Aztec and Mayan mythology of the peoples of Mesoamerica Vedic and Hindu mythology of ancient India Ancient Egyptian and West Semitic mythology Celtic, Irish and Welsh mythology Chinese, Taoist and Buddhist mythology Scandinavian and Germanic mythology Slavic and Old Russian mythology Japanese and Shinto mythology Gallery of paintings of mythical creatures
Sumerian and Akkadian mythology of the Two Rivers
The Gods
Adad
Anu
Ahuromazda
Ashur
Baal
Zervan
Marduk
Mitre
Syn
Teshub
Utu
Shamash
Elohim
Enki
Enlil
Goddesses
Astarta
Inanna
Ishtar
Demons
Azazel
Angro Mainyu
Lilith
Heroes
Gilgamesh
Zarathustra
Ut Write
Myths
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Angro Mainyu God of death of Zoroastrian mythology V century BC Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia) ancient Greek geographers called the plain area between the Tigris and Euphrates.
The self — name of this area is Sennaar.
The center of development of the most ancient civilization was in Babylonia.
Northern Babylonia was called Akkad, and southern Babylonia was called Sumer.
No later than the IV millennium BC, the first Sumerian settlements appeared in the extreme south of Mesopotamia, gradually they occupied the entire territory of Mesopotamia.
Where the Sumerians came from is still unknown, but according to a legend spread among the Sumerians themselves, from the islands of the Persian Gulf.
The Sumerians spoke a language whose kinship relations with other languages have not been established.
In the northern part of Mesopotamia, since the third millennium BC, there lived Semites, pastoral tribes of ancient Near Asia and the Syrian steppe, the language of the Semitic tribes was called Akkadian.
In the southern part of Mesopotamia, the Semites spoke the Babylonian dialect of the Assyrian language, and to the north they spoke the Assyrian dialect.
For several centuries, the Semites lived next to the Sumerians, but then they began to move south and by the end of the third millennium BC occupied the entire southern Mesopotamia, as a result of this, the Akkadian language gradually replaced Sumerian, but it continued to exist as the language of science and religious worship until the first century.
The Mesopotamian civilization is the oldest in the world.
It was in Sumer at the end of the IV millennium BC that human society left the stage of primitiveness and entered the era of antiquity, which means the addition of a new type of culture and the birth of a new type of consciousness.
An important role in the formation and consolidation of the new culture of the ancient society was played by writing, with the advent of which new forms of storing and transmitting information became possible.
Sumerian cuneiform, the middle of the III millennium BC Mesopotamian writing in its oldest, pictographic form appeared at the turn of the IV III millennia BC.
It is believed that in the early pictographic writing there were more than one and a half thousand signs of drawings.
Each sign meant one or more words.
The improvement of the writing system went along the line of unification of badges, reducing their number, as a result, cuneiform impressions appeared.
At the same time, the phonetization of the letter is taking place, that is, the icons began to be used not only in the original, verbal meaning, but also in isolation from it.
The most ancient written messages were a kind of puzzles.
The developed cuneiform system, capable of transmitting all shades of speech, was developed only by the middle of the third millennium BC.
Most of what is known about the culture of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians was obtained by studying 25 thousand tablets and fragments of the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.
Ancient Mesopotamian literature includes both monuments of folklore origin and works of authorship.
The most outstanding monument is the Akkadian epic about Gilgamesh, which tells about the search for immortality, about the meaning of human life.
Of great interest are the Old Babylonian "Poem about Atrahasis", which tells about the creation of man and the World Flood, and the cult cosmogonic epic "Enuma Elish".
Mythology of Mesopotamia — the mythology of the ancient states of the Two Rivers: Akkad, Assyria, Babylonia, Sumer, Elam.
Sumero Akkadian mythology is the mythology of the oldest known civilizations located on the territory of Mesopotamia, and developed from the IV to the II millennium BC.
Sumerian mythology.
The Sumerians, tribes of unknown origin, at the end of the IV millennium BC, mastered the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates and formed the first city states in the Two Rivers.
The Sumerian period of the history of the Two Rivers covers about one and a half thousand years, it ends at the end of the III beginning of the II millennium BC with the so called dynasty of the city of Ur and the dynasties of Isin and Larsa, of which the latter was already only partially Sumerian.
By the time of the formation of the first Sumerian city states, apparently, the idea of an anthropomorphic deity had been formed.
The patron deities of the community were primarily the personification of the creative and producing forces of nature, with which the ideas of the power of the military leader of the tribe of the community are combined (at first irregularly) with the functions of the high priest.
From the first written sources (the earliest pictographic texts of the so — called Uruk III — Jemdet Nasr period date from the end of the IV — beginning of the III millennium), the names (or symbols) of the gods Inanna, Enlil and other deities are known, and since the so called period of Abu Salabih (a settlement near Nippur) and Fara (Shuruppak), that is, from the 27-26 centuries, theophoric names and the most ancient list of gods.
The earliest proper mythological literary texts — hymns to the gods, lists of proverbs, the presentation of some myths (for example, about Enlil) also date back to the period of Fara and come from the excavations of Fara and Abu Salabih.
From the time of the reign of the Lagash ruler Gudea (about the 22nd century BC), building inscriptions have come down, giving important material concerning the cult and mythology (a description of the renovation of the main temple of the city of Lagash Eninnu — the "temple of fifty" for Ningirsu, the patron god of the city).
But the main mass of Sumerian texts of mythological content (literary, educational, actually mythological and other, somehow related to the myth) belongs to the end of the III beginning of the II millennium BC, to the so — called Old Babylonian period the time when the Sumerian language was already dying out, but the Babylonian tradition still preserved the system of teaching in this language.
Thus, by the time of the appearance of writing in the Two Rivers (the end of the IV millennium BC), a certain system of mythological representations was recorded here.
But each city state preserved its own deities and heroes, cycles of myths and its own priestly tradition.
Until the end of the third millennium, there was no single systematized pantheon, although there were several common Sumerian deities: Enlil, "lord of the air", "king of gods and people", the god of the city of Nippur, the center of the oldest Sumerian tribal union; Enki, the lord of underground fresh waters and the world ocean (later the deity of wisdom), the main god of the city of Eredu, the oldest cultural center of Sumer; An, the god of heaven, and Inanna, the goddess of war and carnal love, the deities of the city of Uruk, Naina, the moon god, worshipped in Ur; the warrior god Ningirsu, worshipped in Lagash (this god was later identified with the Lagash Ninurta), and other deities.
The oldest list of gods from the Farah (about the 26th century BC) identifies six supreme gods of the early Sumerian pantheon: Enlil, Anu, Inanna, Enki, Nanna and the solar god Utu.
The ancient Sumerian deities, including the astral gods, retained the function of the fertility deity, which was thought of as the patron god of a separate community.
One of the most typical images is the image of the mother goddess (in iconography, images of a woman with a child in her arms are sometimes associated with her), who was worshipped under different names: Damgalnuna, Ninhursag, Ninmah, Nintu, Mama, Mami.
Akkadian versions of the image of the mother goddess are Beletili ("lady of the gods"), the same Mami (who has the epithet "helping with childbirth" in Akkadian texts) and Aruru — the creator of people in Assyrian and New Babylonian myths, and in the epic of Gilgamesh — a "wild" man (the first man) Enkidu.
It is possible that the patron goddesses of cities are also associated with the image of the mother goddess: for example, the Sumerian goddesses Bay and Gatumdug also bear the epithets "mother", "mother of all cities".
In the myths about the fertility gods, there is a close connection between the myth and the cult.
The cult songs from Ur speak about the love of the priestess "lukur" (one of the significant priestly categories) for King Shu Suen and emphasize the sacred and official nature of their union.
The hymns to the deified kings of the third dynasty of Ur and the First dynasty of Isin also show that a sacred marriage ceremony was performed annually between the king (at the same time the high priest "en") and the high priestess, in which the king represented the incarnation of the shepherd god Dumuzi, and the priestess — the goddess Inanna.
The content of the works (which make up the single cycle "Inanna Dumuzi") includes the motives of the courtship and wedding of the heroes of the gods, the descent of the goddess into the underworld ("the land of no return") and her replacement by a hero, the death of the hero and crying for him and the hero's return to earth.
All the works of the cycle turn out to be the threshold of the drama of the action, which formed the basis of the ritual and figuratively embodied the metaphor "life death life".
The multiplicity of variants of the myth, as well as the images of departing (dying) and returning deities (which in this case is Dumuzi), is connected, as in the case of the mother goddess, with the separation of Sumerian communities and with the metaphor "life — death — life" itself, which constantly changes its appearance, but is constant and unchangeable in its renewal.
More specific is the idea of replacement, which runs through all the myths associated with the descent into the underworld as a leitmotif.
In the myth of Enlil and Ninlil, the patron of the Nippur community, the lord of the air Enlil, acts as a dying (departing) and resurrecting (returning) deity, who forcibly mastered Ninlil, was banished by the gods to the underworld for this, but managed to leave it, leaving "substitutes"instead of himself, his wife and son.
In form, the demand" for the head — the head "looks like a legal trick, an attempt to circumvent the law, which is inviolable for anyone who entered the "country of no return".
But it also contains the idea of a certain balance, the desire for harmony between the world of the living and the dead.
In the Akkadian text about the descent of Ishtar (corresponding to the Sumerian Inanna), as well as in the Akkadian epic about Err, the god of plague, this idea is formulated more clearly: Ishtar, in front of the gates of the "land of no return", threatens, if she is not allowed in, to "release the dead who eat the living", and then "the dead will multiply more than the living", and the threat acts.
Myths related to the cult of fertility provide information about the ideas of the Sumerian people about the underworld.
About the location of the underworld (Sumer.
Kur, Kigal, Eden, Irigal, Arali, the secondary name is kur nougi, "the land of no return"; Akkadian parallels to these terms are ercet, ceru) there is no clear idea.
They not only descend there, but also "fall through"; the border of the underground kingdom is an underground river, through which the carrier transports.
Those who enter the underworld pass through the seven gates of the underworld, where they are met by the main gatekeeper Neti.
The fate of the dead under the ground is hard.
Their bread is bitter (sometimes it is sewage), their water is salty (slops can also serve as a drink).
The underworld is dark, full of dust, its inhabitants, "like birds, are clothed with the clothing of wings."
There is no idea about the "field of souls", just as there is no information about the court of the dead, where they would be judged by their behavior in life and according to the rules of morality.
A tolerable life (clean drinking water, peace) is awarded to the souls for whom the funeral rite was performed and sacrifices were made, as well as those who fell in battle and those with many children.
The judges of the underworld, the Anunnaki, sitting before Ereshkigal, the mistress of the underworld, pass only death sentences.
The names of the dead are entered in the table by the female scribe of the underworld Geshtinanna (among the Akkadians — Beletzeri).
Among the ancestors of the inhabitants of the underworld are many legendary heroes and historical figures, such as Gilgamesh, the god Sumukan, the founder of the III dynasty of Ur Ur Nammu.
The unburied souls of the dead return to earth and bring trouble, the buried are crossed over the "river that separates from people" and is the border between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
The river is crossed by a boat with the carrier of the underworld Ur Shanabi or the demon Humut Tabal.
The actual cosmogonic Sumerian myths are unknown.
The text "Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Underworld" says that certain events took place at a time "when the heavens separated from the earth, when Anu took the sky for himself, and Enlil took the earth, when Ereshkigal was given to Kuru."
The myth of the hoe and the axe says that Enlil separated the earth from heaven, the myth of Lahar and Ashnan, the goddesses of cattle and grain, also describes the merged state of the earth and heaven ("the mountain of heaven and earth"), which, apparently, was known by the god Anu.
The myth "Enki and Ninhursag" tells about the island of Tilmun as a primordial paradise.
There are several myths about the creation of people, but only one of them is completely independent — about Enki and Ninmah.
Enki and Ninmah sculpt a man from the clay of Abzu, the underground world ocean, and involve the goddess Namma — "the mother who gave birth to all the gods" - in the creation process.
The purpose of the creation of man is to work for the gods: to cultivate the land, graze cattle, collect fruits, feed the gods with their sacrifices.
When a person is made, the gods determine his fate and arrange a feast on this occasion.
At the feast, the intoxicated Enki and Ninmah begin to sculpt people again, but they get freaks: a woman who is unable to give birth, a being without sex, etc.
In the myth of the goddesses of cattle and grain, the need to create a man is explained by the fact that the Anunnaki gods who appeared before him do not know how to manage any economy.
The idea that people used to grow underground like grass repeatedly slips through.
In the myth of the hoe, Enlil makes a hole in the ground with a hoe and people come out from there.
The same motif is heard in the introduction to the hymn to the city of Ered.
Many myths are devoted to the creation and birth of gods.
Cultural heroes are widely represented in Sumerian mythology.
The creators of the demiurgists are mainly Enlil and Enki.
According to various texts, the goddess Ninkasi is the initiator of brewing, the goddess Uttu is the weaving craft, Enlil is the creator of the wheel, grain; gardening is the invention of the gardener Shukalitudda.
A certain archaic king Enmeduranki is declared the inventor of various forms of predicting the future, including predictions using the outpouring of oil.
The inventor of the harp is a certain Ningal Paprigal, the epic heroes Enmerkar and Gilgamesh are the creators of urban planning, and Enmerkar is also writing.
The eschatological line is reflected in the myths about the flood and the wrath of Inanna.
In Sumerian mythology, there are very few stories about the struggle of the gods with monsters, the destruction of natural forces, etc. (only two such legends are known — about the struggle of the god Ninurta with the evil demon Asag and about the struggle of the goddess Inanna with the monster Ebih).
Such battles in most cases are the lot of a heroic person, a deified king, while most of the actions of the gods are associated with their role as deities of fertility (the most archaic moment) and carriers of culture (the most recent moment).
The external characteristics of the characters correspond to the functional ambivalence of the image: these all powerful, omnipotent gods, the creators of all life on earth, evil, rude, cruel, their decisions are often explained by the whims, drunkenness, promiscuity, their appearance can be underlined household unattractive features (the dirt under the fingernails, painted in red, from Enki, disheveled hair Ereshkigal, etc.).
Variety and the degree of activity and passivity of each deity.
Thus, the most lively are Inanna, Enki, Ninhursag, Dumuzi, and some minor deities.
The most passive god is the "father of the gods" Anu.
The images of Enki, Inanna, and partly Enlil are comparable to the images of the demiurge gods, "carriers of culture", in whose characteristics the elements of comedy are emphasized, the gods of primitive cults living on earth, among people, whose cult supersedes the cult of the "supreme being".
But at the same time, no traces of "theomachy" — the struggle of old and new generations of gods - have been found in Sumerian mythology.
One canonical text of the Old Babylonian time begins with the enumeration of fifty pairs of gods who preceded Anu: their names are formed according to the scheme: "the lord (lady) of this and that".
Among them is named one of the oldest, according to some sources, the gods Enmesharra ("the lord of all the secret forces of Me").
From a source of even later time (the New Assyrian spell of the first millennium BC), it follows that Enmesharra is "the one who handed over the scepter and dominion to Anu and Enlil".
In Sumerian mythology, this deity is chthonic, but there is no evidence that Enmesharra was forcibly overthrown into the underground kingdom.
Of the heroic tales, only the tales of the Uruk cycle have come down to us.
The heroes of the legends are three successive kings of Uruk: Enmerkar, the son of Meskingasher, the legendary founder of the I dynasty of Uruk (27-26 centuries BC; according to legend, the dynasty originated from the sun god Utu, whose son was considered Meskingasher); Lugalbanda, the fourth ruler of the dynasty, the father (and possibly the ancestral god) of Gilgamesh, the most popular hero of Sumerian and Akkadian literature.
A common external line for the works of the Uruk cycle is the theme of Uruk's connections with the surrounding world and the motif of the heroes ' journey.
The theme of the hero's journey to a foreign country and the test of his moral and physical strength in combination with the motives of magical gifts and a magical assistant not only shows the degree of mythologization of the work composed as a heroic historical monument, but also allows us to reveal the early motives associated with initiation rites.
the binding of these motifs in the works, the sequence of a purely mythological level of presentation brings the Sumerian monuments closer to a fairy tale.
In the early lists of gods from the Farah, the heroes Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh are attributed to the gods; in later texts they appear as the gods of the underworld.
Meanwhile, in the epic of the Uruk cycle, Gilgamesh, Lugalbanda, Enmerkar, although they have mytho epic and fairy tale features, act as real kings rulers of Uruk.
Their names also appear in the so called "royal list", compiled during the third dynasty of Ur, probably around 2100 BC (all the dynasties mentioned in the list are divided into "antediluvian" and ruled "after the flood", the kings, especially of the antediluvian period, are attributed a mythical number of years of rule: Meskingasher, the founder of the Uruk dynasty," the son of the sun god", 325 years, Enmerkar 420 years, Gilgamesh, who is called the son of the demon Lilu, 128 years).
Thus, the epic and non epic tradition of the Two Rivers has a single general direction — the idea of the historicity of the main mytho epic heroes.
It can be assumed that Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh were deified posthumously as heroes.
The situation has been different since the beginning of the Old Akkadian period.
The first ruler who declared himself the "patron god of Akkad" during his lifetime was the Akkadian king Naram Suen of the 23rd century BC; during the third dynasty of Ur, the cult veneration of the ruler reached its apogee.
As a rule, the development of an epic tradition from myths about cultural heroes, characteristic of many mythological systems, did not take place on Sumerian soil.
A characteristic actualization of ancient forms (in particular, the traditional motif of travel) also looks like the motif of god's journey to another, higher, deity for a blessing, which is often found in Sumerian mythological texts (myths about Enki's journey to Enlil after the construction of his city, about the journey of the moon god Nanna to Nippur to Enlil, his divine father, for a blessing).
The period of the third dynasty of Ur, the time from which most of the written mythological sources have come down — is the period of developing the ideology of royal power in the most complete form in Sumerian history.
Since myth remained the dominant and most "organized" area of public consciousness, the leading form of thinking, it was through myth that the corresponding ideas were confirmed.
Therefore, it is no accident that most of the texts belong to one group — the Nippur canon, compiled by the priests of the third dynasty of Ur, and the main centers most often mentioned in myths: Eredu, Uruk, Ur, gravitated to Nippur as a traditional place of the Sumerian cult.
The concept (and not the traditional composition) is also a myth that explains the appearance of the Semitic tribes of the Amorites in the Two Rivers and gives the etiology of their assimilation in society — the myth of the god Martu (the very name of god is a deification of the Sumerian name of the West Semitic nomads).
The myth underlying the text did not develop an ancient tradition, but was taken from historical reality.
But also traces of the general historical concept the idea of the evolution of mankind from savagery to civilization (reflected already on the Akkadian material - in the history of the "wild man" Enkidu in the Akkadian epic about Gilgamesh) appear through the "actual" concept of the myth.
After the fall at the end of the third millennium BC under the onslaught of the Amorites and Elamites of the third dynasty of Ur, almost all the ruling dynasties of individual city states of the Two Rivers turned out to be Amorite.
However, in the culture of the Two Rivers, contact with the Amorite tribes left almost no trace..
Akkadian (Babylonian Assyrian) mythology.
Since ancient times, the Eastern Semites Akkadians, who occupied the northern part of the lower Two Rivers, were neighbors of the Sumerians and were under strong Sumerian influence.
In the second half of the third millennium BC, the Akkadians also established themselves in the south of the Two Rivers, which was facilitated by the unification of the Two Rivers by the ruler of the city of Akkad Sargon the Ancient into the " kingdom of Sumer and Akkad "(later, with the rise of Babylon, this territory became known as Babylonia).
The history of the Two Rivers in the II millennium BC is already the history of the Semitic peoples.
However, the merger of the Sumerian and Akkadian peoples occurred gradually, the displacement of the Sumerian language by Akkadian (Babylonian Assyrian) did not mean the complete destruction of the Sumerian culture and its replacement by a new, Semitic one.
No early purely Semitic cult has yet been discovered on the territory of the Two Rivers.
All the Akkadian gods known to us are of Sumerian origin or have long been identified with the Sumerian ones.
Thus, the Akkadian sun god Shamash was identified with the Sumerian Utu, the goddess Ishtar with Inanna and a number of other Sumerian goddesses, the storm god Adad with Ishkur, etc.
The god Enlil receives the Semitic epithet Bel (or Balu, or Baal), "lord".
With the rise of Babylon, the main god of this city, Marduk, begins to play an increasingly important role, but this name is also Sumerian in origin.
The Akkadian mythological texts of the Old Babylonian period are much less known than the Sumerian ones; none of the texts have survived completely.
All the main sources on Akkadian mythology belong to the II I millennium BC, that is, to the time after the Old Babylonian period.
If very fragmentary information about Sumerian cosmogony and theogony has been preserved, then the Babylonian cosmogonic teaching is represented by a large cosmogonic epic poem "Enuma Elish" (according to the first words of the poem — "When above"; the earliest version dates from the beginning of the 10th century BC).
The poem assigns the main role in the creation of the world to Marduk, who gradually occupies the main place in the pantheon of the second millennium, and by the end of the Old Babylonian period, he receives universal recognition outside Babylon.
In comparison with the Sumerian ideas about the universe, what is new in the cosmogonic part of the poem is the idea of successive generations of gods, each of which surpasses the previous one, about the theomachy — the battle of old and new gods and the unification of many divine images of the creators into one.
The idea of the poem is to justify the exaltation of Marduk, the purpose of its creation is to prove and show that Marduk is the direct and legitimate heir of ancient powerful forces, including the Sumerian deities.
The" primordial " Sumerian gods turn out to be young heirs of more ancient forces, which they crush.
He gets power not only on the basis of legal succession, but also by the right of the strongest, so the theme of the struggle and the violent overthrow of ancient forces is the leitmotif of the legend.
The features of Enki Ei, like other gods, are transferred to Marduk, but Ei becomes the father of the "lord of the gods" and his adviser.
In the Ashur version of the poem (the end of the II millennium BC) Marduk is replaced by Ashur, the main god of the city of Ashur and the central deity of the Assyrian pantheon.
This was a manifestation of the general trend towards monotheism, expressed in the desire to single out the main god and rooted not only in the ideological, but also in the socio political situation of the first millennium BC.
A number of cosmological motifs of "Enuma elish" have come down to us in the Greek versions of the Babylonian priest of the III century BC Beros (through Polyhistor and Eusebius), as well as the Greek writer of the VI century Damaski.
Damascus has a number of generations of gods: Taute and Apason and their son Mumie (Tiamat, Apsu, Mummu), as well as Lakhe and Lakhos, Kissar and Assoros (Lakhmu and Lahamu, Anshar and Kishar), their children Anos, Illinos, Aos (Anu, Enlil, Eyya).
Aos and Dauke (i.e. the goddess Damkina) create the demiurge god Bel (Marduk).
In Beros, the lady corresponding to Tiamat is a certain Omorka ("sea"), which dominates the darkness and waters and whose description resembles the description of the evil Babylonian demons.
The god Bel cuts it, creates heaven and earth, organizes the world order and orders to cut off the head of one of the gods in order to create people and animals from his blood and earth.
Myths about the creation of the world and the human race in Babylonian literature and mythography are associated with tales of human disasters, the death of people and even the destruction of the universe.
As in the Sumerian monuments, Babylonian legends emphasize that the cause of disasters is the malice of the gods, their desire to reduce the number of the ever growing and annoying human race to the gods with their noise.
Disasters are perceived not as a legitimate retribution for human sins, but as an evil whim of the deity.
The myth of the flood, which, according to all data, was based on the Sumerian legend of Ziusudra, came down in the form of the myth of Atrahasis and the story of the flood, inserted into the epic of Gilgamesh (and not much different from the first), and also preserved in the Greek transmission of Beros.
The myth of the plague god Erre, who fraudulently takes power from Marduk, also tells about the punishment of people.
This text sheds light on the Babylonian theological concept of a certain physical and spiritual balance of the world, depending on the presence of the rightful owner in its place (cf.the Sumerian Akkadian motif of balance between the world of the living and the dead).
The traditional idea of the connection of the deity with his statue is also traditional for the Two Rivers (since the Sumerian period): when leaving the country and the statue, the god thereby changes his residence.
Marduk does this, and the country is damaged, and the universe is threatened with destruction.
It is characteristic that in all epics about the destruction of mankind, the main disaster — the flood, is caused not by a flood from the sea, but by a rain storm.
This is also connected with the significant role of the storm and hurricane gods in the cosmogony of the Two Rivers, especially the northern one.
In addition to the special gods of wind and thunderstorms, storms (the main Akkadian god is Adad), the winds were the sphere of activity of various gods and demons.
So, according to tradition, he was probably the supreme Sumerian god Enlil (the literal meaning of the name is "wind breath", or "lord of the wind"), although he is basically the god of air in the broad sense of the word.
But still Enlil possessed destructive storms with which he destroyed enemies and hated cities.
Enlil's sons, Ninurta and Ningirsu, are also associated with the storm.
The winds of the four sides were perceived as deities, at least as personified higher forces.
The Babylonian legend about the creation of the world, the plot of which was built around the personality of a powerful deity, the epic development of episodes telling about the battle of the hero god with a monster - the personification of the elements, gave rise to the theme of the hero god in Babylonian epic mythological literature (and not a mortal hero, as in Sumerian literature).
According to Akkadian concepts, the tables of fate determined the movement of the world and world events.
Their possession ensured world domination (in Enuma Elish, they were originally owned by Tiamat, then by Kingu, and finally by Marduk).
The scribe of the tables of destinies — the god of scribal art and the son of Marduk Nabu was also sometimes perceived as their owner.
Tables were also written in the underworld (the scribe is the goddess Beletzeri); apparently, this was a record of death sentences, as well as the names of the dead.
If the number of hero gods prevails in Babylonian mythological literature compared to Sumerian, then only the legend (obviously of Sumerian origin) about Ethan, the hero who tried to fly up to heaven on an eagle, and the relatively late story about Adapa, the sage, who dared to "break off the wings" of the wind and cause the wrath of the sky god Anu, but missed the opportunity to get immortality, and the famous epic about Gilgamesh, are known about mortal heroes, except for the epic about Atrahasis — not a simple repetition of the Sumerian legends about the hero, but a work that reflected the complex ideological evolution that the heroes of Sumerian works did together with the Babylonian society.
The leitmotif of the epic works of Babylonian literature is the failure of man to achieve the fate of the gods, despite all his aspirations, the futility of human efforts in an attempt to obtain immortality.
The monarchically state, and not the communal (as in Sumerian mythology) nature of the official Babylonian religion, as well as the suppression of the public life of the population, leads to the fact that the features of the archaic religious and magical practice are gradually suppressed.
Over time, "personal" gods begin to play an increasingly important role.
The idea of a personal god of each person, which facilitates his access to the great gods and introduces him to them, arises (or, in any case, spreads) from the time of the third dynasty of Ur and in the Old Babylonian period.
On the reliefs and seals of this time, there are frequent scenes depicting how the patron deity leads a person to the supreme god to determine his fate and to receive a blessing.
In the period of the third dynasty of Ur, when the king was considered as the protector of the guardian of his country, he assumed some functions of the protector god (especially the deified king).
It was believed that with the loss of his protector god, a person became defenseless before the evil willfulness of the great gods, could easily be attacked by evil demons.
In addition to the personal god, who was primarily supposed to bring good luck to his patron, and the personal goddess, who personified his life "share", each person also had his own demon spirit sheda — among the Sumerians, alad) - an anthropomorphized or zoomorphized life force.
In addition to these defenders, a resident of Babylonia with I The first millennium BC also has its own personal guardian lamassu, the bearer of his personality, possibly associated with the cult of the placenta.
The" name "of a person or his "glory" (noise) they were also considered as a material substance, without which his existence is unthinkable and which was passed on to his heirs.
On the contrary ,the "soul" (write) is something impersonal, it was identified with the breath, then with the blood.
Personal guardian gods opposed evil and were, as it were, the antipodes of the evil forces surrounding man.
Among them are the lion — headed Lamashtu, rising from the underworld and leading all kinds of diseases, the evil spirits of diseases themselves, ghosts, embittered shadows of the dead who do not receive victims, various kinds of service spirits of the underworld (utukki, asakki, etymme, galle, galle lemnuti — "evil devils", etc.), the god fate Namtar, who comes to a person at the hour of his death, the night spirits of the incubus Lilu, visiting women, succubi Lilit or Lilith, possessing men, and other evil demons.
The most complex system of demonological representations, which developed in Babylonian mythology (and was not attested in Sumerian monuments), was also reflected in fine art.
The general structure of the pantheon, the addition of which dates back to the third dynasty of Ur, basically remains unchanged throughout the entire era of antiquity.
At the head of the whole world is officially the triad of Anu, Enlil and Eya, surrounded by a council of seven or twelve " great gods "who determine the" shares " (shimatu) of everything in the world.
All the gods are thought to be divided into two generic groups — Igigs and Anunnaki, the gods of the earth and the underworld, as a rule, are among the latter, although there are also Anunnaki gods among the heavenly gods.
In the underworld, however, it is no longer so much Ereshkigal who rules as her husband Nergal, who subdued his wife, which corresponds to the general decrease in the role of female deities in Babylonian mythology, who, as a rule, are reduced almost exclusively to the position of impersonal spouses of their divine husbands (in fact, only the goddess of healing Gula and Ishtar retain special significance, although, judging by the epic of Gilgamesh, her position is also under threat).
But the steps in the direction of monotheism, manifested in the strengthening of the cult of Marduk, which monopolized almost all areas of divine activity and power by the end of the second millennium BC, continue to occur.
Enlil and Marduk (in Assyria — Enlil and Ashur) merge into a single image of the "lord" — Bel (Baal).
In the first millennium BC, Marduk was gradually replaced in a number of centers by his son, the god of scribal art Nabu, who tends to become a single Babylonian deity.
Other deities are endowed with the properties of one god, and the qualities of one god are determined by the qualities of other gods.
This is another way to create an image of a single omnipotent and all powerful deity in a purely abstract way.
The monuments (mainly of the first millennium BC) make it possible to reconstruct the general system of cosmogonic views of Babylonian theologians, although there is no complete certainty that such unification was carried out by the Babylonians themselves.
The microcosm is represented by a reflection of the macrocosm — "bottom" (earth) - as if a reflection of the" top " (heaven).
The whole universe seems to float in the world ocean, the earth is like a large inverted round canoe, and the sky is a solid half dome (dome) covering the world.
The entire celestial space is divided into several parts: the "upper sky of Anu", the "middle sky" belonging to the Igigs, in the center of which was the lapis lazuli cell of Marduk, and the "lower sky", already visible to people, on which the stars are located.
All the heavens are made of different types of stone, for example, the "lower sky" is made of blue jasper; four more heavens are placed above these three heavens.
The sky, like a building, rests on a base attached to the celestial ocean by pegs and, like an earthly palace, protected from water by a rampart.
The highest part of the firmament is called "the middle of the heavens".
The outer side of the dome ("the interior of the heavens") emits light; this is the space where the moon Sin hides during his three day absence and where the sun Shamash spends the night.
In the east there is the "mountain of sunrise", in the west the "mountain of sunset", which are locked.
Every morning, Shamash opens the "mountain of sunrise", sets off on a journey through the sky, and in the evening, through the "mountain of sunset", he disappears into the "interior of heaven".
The stars in the firmament are "images" or "writings", and each of them has a fixed place, so that none "goes astray from its path".
The geography of the earth corresponds to the geography of the sky.
The prototypes of everything that exists: countries, rivers, cities, temples - exist in the sky in the form of stars, earthly objects are only reflections of heavenly ones, but both substances each have their own dimensions.
So, the heavenly temple is about twice as large as the earthly one.
The plan of Nineveh was originally drawn in heaven and has existed since ancient times.
In one constellation is the heavenly Tiger, in the other the heavenly Euphrates.
Each city corresponds to a certain constellation: Sippar — the constellation of Cancer, Babylon, Nippur others whose names are not identified with modern ones.
The sun and the month are divided into countries: on the right side of the month — Akkad, on the left Elam, the upper part of the month — Amurru( Amorei), the lower part — the country of Subartu.
Under the firmament lies (like an overturned boat) "ki" - the earth, which is also divided into several tiers.
People live in the upper part, in the middle part — the possessions of the god Eya (the ocean of fresh water or subsurface waters), in the lower part the possessions of the earth gods, the Anunnaki, and the underground kingdom.
According to other views, the seven heavens correspond to the seven earths, but nothing is known about their exact division and location.
To strengthen the earth, it was tied to the sky with ropes and secured with pegs.
These ropes are ropes — the Milky Way.
The upper earth, as we know, belongs to the god Enlil.
His temple is Ekur ("the house of the mountain") and one of its central parts is Duranki ("the connection of heaven and earth") they symbolize the structure of the world.
Thus, a certain evolution is outlined in the religious and mythological views of the peoples of the Two Rivers.
If the Sumerian religious and mythological system can be defined as based primarily on communal cults, then the Babylonian system shows a clear desire for monolatry and for more individual communication with the deity.
From very archaic ideas, a transition is planned to a developed religious mythological system, and through it to the field of religious and ethical views, in whatever rudimentary form they may be expressed.
Hurrian mythology is the mythology of the peoples who inhabited the Northern Mesopotamia in the III II millennium BC.
Assyrian mythology is the mythology of the peoples of Assyria, located in the Northern Mesopotamia in the XIV VII centuries BC; it was based on Sumero Akkadian mythology, and after the capture of Assyria by the Babylonian kingdom, it had a strong influence on Babylonian mythology.
Babylonian mythology — the mythology of Babylonia, a state in the south of Mesopotamia in the XX VI centuries BC; it was influenced by Assyrian mythology.
The history of the formation and development of the mythological representations of Sumer and Akkad is known from the materials of fine art from about the middle of the VI millennium BC, and from written sources from the beginning of the III millennium BC.
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Gallery of paintings Mythical creatures Amazons Dryads Banshees Centaurs Valkyries Maenads Werewolves Nibelungs Magi Nymphs Harpies Satyrs Dwarves Sidhe Goblins Trolls Gorgons Fairies Graces Fomors Demons Alva Dragons Elves Paintings by Viktor Korolkov
