Mythology “Everyone sometimes experiences depression, this is an everyday matter, such trifles will pass on their own. This is not a disease, the person just has nothing to do, so he invents a “bad” mood for himself, some kind of self-indulgence!” A very optimistic, but stupid and inert opinion, because

Mythology Alternatives and other astral magicians justify themselves by saying that the lack of effect is not scary: this is the point, so that a person would be healed by force

From the first written sources (the earliest pictographic texts of the so-called Uruk III - Jemdet-Nasr period date back to the end of the 4th - beginning of the 3rd millennium), the names (or symbols) of the gods Inanna, Enlil, etc. are known, and from the time of the so-called. n. the period of Abu-Salabiha (settlements near Nippur) and Fara (Shuruppak) 27-26 centuries. - theophoric names and the most ancient list of gods (the so-called “list A”).

The earliest actual mythological literary texts - hymns to the gods, lists of proverbs, presentation of some myths (for example, about Enlil) also go back to the Farah period and come from the excavations of Farah and Abu-Salabih. From the reign of the Lagash ruler Gudea (c. 22nd century BC), building inscriptions have come down that provide important material regarding cult and mythology (description of the renovation of the main temple of the city of Lagash Eninnu - the “temple of the fifty” for Ningirsu, the patron god of the city ). But the bulk of Sumerian texts of mythological content (literary, educational, actually mythological, etc., one way or another connected with myth) belong to the end. 3 - beginning 2nd thousand, to the so-called the Old Babylonian period - a time when the Sumerian language was already dying out, but the Babylonian tradition still preserved the system of teaching in it.

Thus, by the time writing appeared in Mesopotamia (late 4th millennium BC), a certain system of mythological ideas was recorded here. But each city-state retained its own deities and heroes, cycles of myths and its own priestly tradition. Until the end 3rd millennium BC e. there was no single systematized pantheon, although there were several common Sumerian deities: Enlil, “lord of the air,” “king of gods and men,” god of the city of Nippur, the center of the ancient Sumerian tribal union; Enki, lord of underground fresh waters and the world ocean (later the deity of wisdom), the main god of the city of Eredu, the ancient cultural center of Sumer; An, the god of keb, and Inanna, the goddess of war and carnal love, the deity of the city of Uruk, who rose to the top. 4 - beginning 3rd millennium BC e.; Naina, the moon god worshiped at Ur; the warrior god Ningirsu, worshiped in Lagash (this god was later identified with the Lagash Ninurta), etc.

The oldest list of gods from Fara (c. 26th century BC) identifies six supreme gods of the early Sumerian pantheon: Enlil, An, Inanna, Enki, Nanna and the solar god Utu. Ancient Sumerian deities, including astral gods, retained the function of a fertility deity, who was thought of as the patron god of a separate community. One of the most typical images is that of the mother goddess (in iconography she is sometimes associated with images of a woman holding a child in her arms), who was revered under different names: Damgalnuna, Ninhursag, Ninmah (Mah), Nintu. Mom, Mami. Akkadian versions of the image of the mother goddess - Beletili (“mistress of the gods”), the same Mami (who has the epithet “helping during childbirth” in Akkadian texts) and Aruru - the creator of people in Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian myths, and in the epic of Gilgamesh - “wild” man (symbol of 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 gods of fertility, a close connection between myth and cult can be traced. Cult songs from Ur (late 3rd millennium BC) speak of 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. Hymns to the deified kings of the 3rd dynasty of Ur and the 1st dynasty of Isin also show that a ritual of sacred marriage was annually performed 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 (constituting a single cycle “Inanna-Dumuzi”) includes motives for the courtship and wedding of hero-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 land. All the works of the cycle turn out to be the threshold of the drama-action, which formed the basis of the ritual and figuratively embodied the metaphor “life - death - life”. The numerous variants of the myth, as well as the images of departing (perishing) and returning deities (which in this case is Dumuzi), are connected, as in the case of the mother goddess, with the disunity of Sumerian communities and with the very metaphor “life - death - life” , constantly changing its appearance, but constant and unchanged in its renewal.

More specific is the idea of ​​replacement, which runs like a leitmotif through all the myths associated with the descent into the underworld. In the myth about Enlil and Ninlil, the role of the dying (departing) and resurrecting (returning) deity is played by the patron of the Nippur community, the lord of the air Enlil, who took possession of Ninlil by force, was expelled by the gods to the underworld for this, but managed to leave it, leaving instead himself, his wife and son "deputies". In form, the demand “for your head - for your head” looks like a legal trick, an attempt to circumvent the law, which is unshakable for anyone who has entered the “country of no return.” But it also contains the idea of ​​some kind of 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 Erra, the god of plague, this idea is formulated more clearly: Ishtar at the gates of the “land of no return” threatens, if she is not allowed in, to “release the dead eating the living,” and then “the dead will multiply more than the living,” and the threat is effective. Myths related to the cult of fertility provide information about the Sumerians' ideas about the underworld. There is no clear idea about the location of the underground kingdom (Sumerian Kur, Kigal, Eden, Irigal, Arali, secondary name - Kur-nugi, “land of no return”; Akkadian parallels to these terms - Erzetu, Tseru). They not only go down there, but also “fall through”; The border of the underworld is the underground river through which the ferryman ferries. Those entering the underworld pass through the seven gates of the underworld, where they are greeted by the chief gatekeeper Neti. The fate of the dead underground is difficult. Their bread is bitter (sometimes it is sewage), their water is salty (slop can also serve as a drink). The underworld is dark, full of dust, its inhabitants, “like birds, dressed in the clothing of wings.” There is no idea of ​​a “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 by the rules of morality. The souls for whom funeral rites were performed and sacrifices were made, as well as those who fell in battle and those with many children are awarded a tolerable life (clean drinking water, peace). The judges of the underworld, the Anunnaki, who sit before Ereshkigal, the mistress of the underworld, pronounce only death sentences. The names of the dead are entered into her table by the female scribe of the underworld Geshtinanna (among the Akkadians - Beletseri). Among the ancestors - inhabitants of the underworld - are many legendary heroes and historical figures, for example 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 misfortune; the buried are crossed across 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 ferryman of the underworld Ur-Shanabi or the demon Khumut-Tabal.

The actual cosmogonic Sumerian myths are unknown. The text "Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Underworld" says that certain events took place at the time "when the heavens were separated from the earth, when An took the sky for himself, and Enlil the earth, when Ereshkigal was given to Kur." The myth of the hoe and the ax says that Enlil separated the earth from the heavens, the myth of Lahar and. Ashnan, goddesses of livestock and grain, describes the still fused state of earth and heaven (“mountain of heaven and earth”), which, apparently, was in charge of An. The myth "Enki and Ninhursag" talks about the island of Tilmun as a primeval paradise.

Several myths have come down 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 the Abzu, the underground world ocean, and involve the goddess Nammu - “the mother who gave life to all gods” - in the creation process. The purpose of human creation is to work for the gods: to cultivate the land, graze cattle, collect fruits, and feed the gods with their victims. When a person is made, the gods determine his fate and arrange a feast for this occasion. At the feast, drunken Enki and Ninmah begin to sculpt people again, but they end up with monsters: a woman unable to give birth, a creature deprived of sex, etc.

In the myth about the goddesses of cattle and grain, the need to create man is explained by the fact that the Anunnaki gods who appeared before him do not know how to conduct any farming. The idea that people used to grow underground, like grass, comes up repeatedly. In the myth of the hoe, Enlil uses a hoe to make a hole in the ground and people come out. The same motive sounds in the introduction to the hymn of the city of Ered. Many myths are dedicated to the creation and birth of gods.

Cultural heroes are widely represented in Sumerian mythology. The creator-demiurges are mainly Enlil and Enki. According to various texts, the goddess Ninkasi is the founder of brewing, the goddess Uttu is the creator of weaving, Enlil is the creator of the wheel and grain; gardening is the invention of the gardener Shukalitudda. A certain archaic king Enmeduranka is declared to be the inventor of various forms of predicting the future, including predictions using the pouring out 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 the creator of writing. The eschatological line is reflected in the myths of the flood and the wrath of Inanna. In Sumerian mythology, very few stories have been preserved about the struggle of gods with monsters, the destruction of elemental forces, etc. (only two such legends are known - about the struggle of the god Ninurta with the evil demon Asag and 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 deeds of the gods are associated with their role as fertility deities (the most archaic moment) and bearers of culture (the most recent moment). The functional ambivalence of the image corresponds to the external characteristics of the characters: these omnipotent, omnipotent gods, creators of all life on earth, are evil, rude, cruel, their decisions are often explained by whims, drunkenness, promiscuity, their appearance can emphasize unattractive everyday features (dirt under the nails, Enki's dyed red, Ereshkigal's disheveled hair, etc.).

The degree of activity and passivity of each deity is also varied. Thus, Inanna, Enki, Ninhursag, Dumuzi, and some minor deities turn out to be the most alive. The most passive god is the “father of the gods” An. The images of Enki, Inaina and partly Enlil are comparable to the images of the demiurge gods, “carriers of culture”, whose characteristics emphasize elements of the comic, the gods of primitive cults living on earth, among people whose cult supplants the cult of the “supreme being”. But at the same time, no traces of “theomachy” - the struggle between old and new generations of gods - were found in Sumerian mythology. One canonical text of the Old Babylonian period begins with a listing of 50 pairs of gods who preceded Anu: their names are formed according to the scheme: “the lord (mistress) of so-and-so.” Among them, one of the oldest, according to some data, gods Enmesharra (“lord of all me”) is named. From an even later source (a New Assyrian spell of the 1st millennium BC) we learn that Enmesharra is “the one who gave the scepter and dominion to Anu and Enlil.” In Sumerian mythology, this is a chthonic deity, but there is no evidence that Enmesharra was forcibly cast into the underground kingdom.

Of the heroic tales, only the tales of the Uruk cycle have reached us. The heroes of the legends are three consecutive kings of Uruk: Enmerkar, the son of Meskingasher, the legendary founder of the First Dynasty of Uruk (27-26 centuries BC; according to legend, the dynasty originated from the sun god Utu, whose son Meskingasher was considered); Lugalbanda, fourth ruler of the dynasty, father (and possibly ancestral god) of Gilgamesh, the most popular hero of Sumerian and Akkadian literature. The common outer line for the works of the Uruk cycle is the theme of the connections of Uruk with the outside world and the motif of the journey (journey) of the heroes.

The theme of the hero's journey to a foreign country and the test of his moral and physical strength in combination with the motifs of magical gifts and a magical assistant not only shows the degree of mythologization of the work compiled as a heroic-historical monument, but also allows us to reveal the early motives associated with initiation rites. The connection of these motifs in the works, the sequence of a purely mythological level of presentation, brings Sumerian monuments closer to a fairy tale.

In the early lists of gods from Fara, the heroes Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh are assigned to the gods; in later texts they appear as 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 - the rulers of Uruk. Their names also appear in the so-called. “royal list” compiled during the period of the III dynasty of Ur (apparently ca. 2100 BC) (all dynasties mentioned in the list are divided into “antediluvian” and those who ruled “after the flood”, the kings, especially the antediluvian period, are attributed mythical number of years of reign: Meskingasher, the founder of the Uruk dynasty, “son of the sun god,” 325 years old, Enmerkar 420 years old, Gilgamesh, who is called the son of the demon Lilu, 128 years old). The epic and extra-epic tradition of Mesopotamia thus 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 posthumously deified as heroes. Things were different from the beginning of the Old Akkadian period. The first ruler who declared himself during his lifetime to be the “patron god of Akkad” was the Akkadian king of the 23rd century. BC e. Naram-Suen; During the III dynasty of Ur, cult veneration of the ruler reached its apogee. The development of the epic tradition from myths about cultural heroes, characteristic of many mythological systems, did not, as a rule, take place on Sumerian soil.

A characteristic actualization of ancient forms (in particular, the traditional motif of travel) often found in Sumerian mythological texts is the motif of a god’s journey to another, higher deity for a blessing (myths about Enki’s journey to Enlil after the construction of his city, about the journey of the moon god Naina to Nippur to Enlil, his divine father, for a blessing). The period of the III dynasty of Ur, the time from which most of the written mythological sources came, is the period of development of the ideology of royal power in the most complete form in Sumerian history.

Since myth remained the dominant and most “organized” area of ​​social consciousness, the leading form of thinking, it was through myth that the corresponding ideas were affirmed. Therefore, it is no coincidence that most of the texts belong to one group - the Nippur canon, compiled by the priests of the III dynasty of Ur, and the main centers most often mentioned in myths: Eredu, Uruk, Ur, gravitated towards Nippur as the traditional place of general Sumerian cult. “Pseudomyth”, a myth-concept (and not a traditional composition) is also a myth that explains the appearance of the Semitic tribes of the Amorites in Mesopotamia and gives the etiology of their assimilation in society - the myth of the god Martu (the very name of the god is a deification of the Sumerian name for the West Semitic nomads).

The myth underlying the text did not develop an ancient tradition, but was taken from historical reality. But traces of a general historical concept - ideas about the evolution of humanity from savagery to civilization (reflected - already on Akkadian material - in the story of the “wild man” Enkidu in the Akkadian epic of Gilgamesh) appear through the “actual” concept of myth. After the fall at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. e. under the onslaught of the Amorites and Elamites of the III dynasty of Ur, almost all the ruling dynasties of individual city-states of Mesopotamia turned out to be Amorites. However, in the culture of Mesopotamia, contact with the Amorite tribes left almost no trace.

At first, the entire world space was filled with the waters of the great ocean. It had neither beginning nor end. Nobody created it, it has always existed, and for many thousands of thousands of years there was nothing but it.

In the depths of this great ocean lurked the mighty goddess, the foremother of all things, Nammu. No one knows how much time passed before the moment when a giant mountain shaped like a hemisphere appeared in the womb of the goddess Nammu. The base of this mountain was made of soft clay, and the top was made of shiny flexible tin. At the top of this mountain lived the most ancient of the gods, the forefather An, and below on a flat disk floating in the primordial ocean lay the goddess Ki. They were inextricably linked to each other, and there was no one between them. Their mother was the ocean goddess Nammu, and they had no father.

From the marriage of Ana and Ki, a god was born Enlil. His airy members shone with extraordinary brilliance, and from his every movement a stormy wind arose, shaking the top and base of the world mountain.

Following Enlil, the first married couple had more and more children. The seven elder gods and goddesses, the wisest and most powerful, began to rule the entire world and determine the fate of the universe. Everything that existed became subject to them, and they predetermined in advance what would happen in the future. Without their will, Enlil himself did not dare to control the elements and establish world order. He was the eldest of An and Ki's children, the most respected among his brothers and sisters, but he did not consider himself omnipotent. Before determining the paths of the future, he convened the seven wisest gods and goddesses for a council. Enlil appointed one of them, the swift and indomitable god of fire Nusku, whose body was filled with unquenchable flame, as his chief assistant, the divine vizier, and entrusted him with carrying out the deeds decided in the meeting of the seven oldest gods. Sometimes fifty great gods and goddesses participated in the meeting. They gave advice to the Supreme Seven, but could not decide the fate of the world.

The youngest in the family of gods were the Anunnaki, named after their father An. These spirits, generated by the god An and descended to earth, were subordinate to the fifty elder gods. They unquestioningly followed the orders of the great gods, but had no right to make decisions on their own. The family of gods grew more and more. Following the first generation, the second appeared. The gods and goddesses grew up, got married, had children, and it became increasingly difficult for them in the close embrace of the heavenly father An and the earth mother Ki. They were eager for space and asked for help from their elder brother Enlil, who was growing by leaps and bounds and becoming stronger and more indomitable. And so Enlil decided on a great deed. With a copper knife he cut the edges of the sky. The sky god An with a groan broke away from his wife, the earth goddess Ki. The Great World Mountain cracked open. The flat disk on which the earth goddess ran remained on the surface of the primeval ocean that washed its edges, and the roof of the world - a huge tin hemisphere - hung in the air, and only small pieces that broke off here and there from it fell to the ground, and people The most valuable fragments of celestial metal are still found in the mountains. (Tin and lead were called "annaku" by the Sumerians and Akkadians - from the word "an", sky.)

This is how the first married couple separated. Heavenly forefather and mother earth were forever separated from each other. Great An remained to live at the top of the tin vault and never went down to his wife. Enlil became the master on earth. He founded the city of Nippur in the very middle of the earth's disk and settled gods and goddesses there. The huge space that formed between the earth and the sky was provided to them. Rushing across the vast expanses of the universe, they sometimes rose upward to their father Anu, then returned to Nippur.

The land liberated by Enlil sighed. Here and there high mountains rose, and stormy streams flowed from their slopes. The irrigated soil produced grasses and trees. The family of gods grew and, under the leadership of Enlil, brought order to the vast expanses of the universe, and the god An silently looked down on his children and grandchildren.

SUMERIAN CREATION MYTH

SOME ARTICLES FROM O. ZHANAIDAROV'S BOOK "TENGRIANism: MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE ANCIENT TURKICS"

The Sumerians explained the origin of the universe as follows.
In the beginning there was the primeval ocean. Nothing is said about his origin or birth. It is likely that in the minds of the Sumerians he existed forever.
The primordial ocean gave birth to a cosmic mountain, consisting of earth united with sky.
Created as gods in human form, the god An (Sky) and the goddess Ki (earth) gave birth to the god of air Enlil.
The god of air, Enlil, separated the sky from the earth. While his father An lifted up (carried away) the sky, Enlil himself sent down (carried away) the earth, his mother. S. Kramer, "History Begins in Sumer", p.97.
And now, for comparison, we present the ancient Turkic version of the myth about the origin of the universe, earth and sky. This myth was recorded by Verbitsky among the Altai people. Here is its content:
When there was neither earth nor sky, there was only a great ocean, without borders, without end or edge. Over all this, God - Tengri - named Ulken - that is, big, huge - flew tirelessly above all this. In some sources, even Kazakh ones, the name of this god is written Ulgen, which seems incorrect to me. Ulgen is the same as dead, Olgen. God, who is destined to give birth to life and create the universe, cannot be dead or bear the name “Dead”... Once in the East Kazakhstan region I had to visit an outpost called Uryl. The officers and soldiers could not explain why it was called that. I had to turn to the locals. It turns out that the outpost and the village of the same name are named “Or El”, that is, an village located high in the mountains. Almost like an Eagle! But in the army, by the border guards, all this is distorted into the incomprehensible and derogatory Uryl. The same thing, I think, happened with Ulken-Ulgen, whose name was also distorted when recorded in the 19th century, which the Kazakhs and Altaians themselves believed. Moreover, Eastern Kazakhstan and Altai are nearby.
But next door is Ulken - the huge, great, great Altai creator of the universe! Who should create the World if not the big and huge Ulken!
So, the Big God - Tengri Ulken - flew and flew tirelessly over the ocean of water, until some voice ordered him to grab onto a rock-rock that looked out of the water. Having sat down on this cliff by order from above, Tengri Ulken began to think:
“I want to create the World, the universe. But what should it be like? Who and how should I create?” At that moment, Ak Ana, the White Mother, living in the water, came to the surface and said to Tengri Ulken:
“If you want to create, then say the following sacred words: “I created, basta!” Basta, in the sense, it’s over, since I said it! But the trick is that in the Turkic language the word “Basta, Bastau” means “Begin, Beginning "The White Mother said so and disappeared.
Tengri Ulken remembered these words. He turned to the Earth and said: “Let the Earth arise!” and the Earth came into being.
Tengri Ulken turned to Heaven and said: “Let Heaven arise,” and Heaven arose.
Tengri Ulken created three fish and placed the World he created on the backs of these three fish. At the same time, the World was motionless, standing firmly in one place. After Tengri Ulken had thus created the World, he climbed the highest Golden Mountain reaching to heaven and sat there, watching.
The world was created in six days, on the seventh Tengri Ulken went to bed. Waking up, he looked around and examined what he had created.
He, it turns out, created everything except the Sun and Moon.
One day he saw a lump of clay in the water, grabbed it, and said: “Let him be a man!” The clay turned into a man, to whom Tengri Ulken gave the name “Erlik”, and began to consider him his brother.
But Erlik turned out to be an envious man, he envied Ulken that he himself was not like Erlik, that he was not the creator of the whole World.
Tengri Ulken created seven people, made their bones from reeds, and their muscles from earth and mud, and breathed life into them through their ears, and breathed intelligence into their heads through their noses. To lead people, Tengri Ulken created a man named Maytore and made him khan.
This Altai eclectic myth combines various elements from different religions, the influence of the Bible being most noticeable. It cannot be considered completely independent.
But the Sumerian theme of the great ocean and the world mountain, created in one period, is also noticeable. We can say that the Sumerian myth about the origin of the World was edited by Semitic biblical mythology, and the Altai (ancient Turkic) myth about the origin of the World was obtained.

“Victor: The new Hobbit should have an introduction like this:
Victor: Have you heard the tale of the dragon who Smog?"
bash.org

Sumerian-Akkadian mythology

TI A MAT (“sea”), in Akkadian mythology (cosmogonic poem “Enuma Elish”) the personification of the primordial element, the embodiment of world chaos. Tiamat, the creator along with her husband Apsu ( Abzu) the first gods, in a cosmic battle between a generation of elder gods (led by Tiamat) and younger gods led by Marduk, killed by Marduk; he cuts Tiamat's body into two parts, making heaven from the first and earth from the second. Depicted (presumably) as a monstrous dragon or a seven-headed hydra.

(“Myths of the Peoples of the World” in 2 vols., M. 1982)

NOISE E RO-AKK A BIRD MYTHOLOGY, the mythology of the peoples who in ancient times inhabited the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia, or Mesopotamia) - the Sumerians and Akkadians (Babylonians and Assyrians, whose language was Akkadian).

The history of the formation and development of mythological ideas can be traced on materials of fine art from approximately the middle. 6th millennium BC e., and according to written sources - from the beginning. 3rd thousand

Sumerian mythology

The Sumerians are tribes of unknown origin, at the end. 4th millennium BC e. mastered the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates and formed the first city-states in Mesopotamia. The Sumerian period in the history of Mesopotamia covers about one and a half thousand years, it ends at the end. 3 - beginning 2nd millennium BC e. the so-called III 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, the idea of ​​an anthropomorphic deity apparently had formed. The patron deities of the community were, first of all, the personification of the creative and productive forces of nature, with which the ideas about the power of the military leader of the tribe-community, combined (at first irregularly) with the functions of the high priest, are connected. From the first written sources (the earliest pictographic texts of the so-called Uruk III - Jemdet-Nasr period date back to the end of the 4th - beginning of the 3rd millennium), the names (or symbols) of the gods Inanna, Enlil, etc. are known, and from the time of the so-called. n. the period of Abu-Salabih (settlements near Nippur) and Fara (Shuruppak) 27 - 26 centuries. - theophoric names and the most ancient list of gods (the so-called “list A”). The earliest actual mythological literary texts - hymns to the gods, lists of proverbs, presentation of some myths (for example, about Enlil) also go back to the Farah period and come from the excavations of Farah and Abu-Salabih. From the reign of the Lagash ruler Gudea (c. 22nd century BC), building inscriptions have come down that provide important material regarding cult and mythology (description of the renovation of the main temple of the city of Lagash Eninnu - the “temple of the fifty” for Ningirsu, the patron god of the city ). But the bulk of Sumerian texts of mythological content (literary, educational, actually mythological, etc., one way or another connected with myth) belong to the end. 3 - beginning 2nd thousand, to the so-called the Old Babylonian period - a time when the Sumerian language was already dying out, but the Babylonian tradition still preserved the system of teaching in it. Thus, by the time writing appeared in Mesopotamia (late 4th millennium BC), a certain system of mythological ideas was recorded here. But each city-state retained its own deities and heroes, cycles of myths and its own priestly tradition. Until the end 3rd millennium BC e. There was no single systematized pantheon, although there were several common Sumerian deities: Enlil, “lord of the air”, “king of gods and men”, god of the city of Nippur, the center of the ancient Sumerian tribal union; Enki, lord of underground fresh waters and the world ocean (later the deity of wisdom), the main god of the city of Eredu (g), the ancient cultural center of Sumer; An, god of the sky, and Inanna, goddess of war and carnal love, deity of the city of Uruk, who rose to the top. 4 - beginning 3rd millennium BC e.; Nanna, a lunar god worshiped at Ur; warrior god Ningirsu, revered in Lagash (this god was later identified with the Lagash Ninurta), etc. The oldest list of gods from Fara (c. 26th century BC) identifies six supreme gods of the early Sumerian pantheon. Enlil, An, Inanna, Enki, Nanna and the solar god Utu.

Ancient Sumerian deities, including astral gods, retained the function of a fertility deity, who was thought of as the patron god of a separate community. One of the most typical images is the image mother goddess(in iconography, images of a woman with a child in her arms are sometimes associated with her), who was revered under different names: Damgalnuna, Ninhursag, Ninmah (Mah), Nintu, Mama, Mami. Akkadian versions of the image of the mother goddess - Beletili (“mistress of the gods”), the same Mami (who has the epithet “helping during childbirth” in Akkadian texts) and Aruru - the creator of people in Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian myths, and in the epic of Gilgamesh - “wild” man (symbol of 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 Bau and Gatumdug also bear the epithets “mother”, “mother of all cities”.

In the myths about the gods of fertility, a close connection between myth and cult can be traced. Cult songs from Ur (late 3rd millennium BC) speak of 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. Hymns to the deified kings of the 3rd dynasty of Ur and the 1st dynasty of Isin also show that a ritual of sacred marriage was annually performed 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 (constituting a single cycle “Inanna - Dumuzi”) includes motives for the courtship and wedding of hero-gods, the descent of the goddess into the underworld (“the land of no return”) and her replacement with a hero, the death of the hero and crying for him and return (to limited time, but, apparently, periodically) the hero to earth (for a description of the myths, see Art. Inanna). All the works of the cycle turn out to be the threshold of the drama-action, which formed the basis of the ritual and figuratively embodied the metaphor “life - death - life”. The numerous variants of the myth, as well as the images of departing (perishing) and returning deities (which in this case is Dumuzi), are connected, as in the case of the mother goddess, with the disunity of Sumerian communities and with the very metaphor “life - death - life” , constantly changing its appearance, but constant and unchanged in its renewal. More specific is the idea of ​​replacement, which runs like a leitmotif through all the myths associated with the descent into the underworld. In the myth about Enlil and Ninlil, the role of the dying (departing) and resurrecting (returning) deity is played by the patron of the Nippur community, the lord of the air Enlil, who took possession of Ninlil by force, was expelled by the gods to the underworld for this, but managed to leave it, leaving instead himself, his wife and son "deputies". In form, the demand “for your head - for your head” looks like a legal trick, an attempt to circumvent the law, which is unshakable for anyone who has entered the “country of no return.” But it also contains the idea of ​​some kind of balance, the desire for harmony between the world of the living and the dead. In the Akkadian text about the descent Ishtar(corresponds to the Sumerian Inanna), as well as in the Akkadian epic about Erra, the god of the plague, this idea is formulated more clearly: Ishtar, at 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 is effective.

Myths related to the cult of fertility provide information about the Sumerians' ideas about the underworld. On the location of the underground kingdom (Sumerian. Kur, Ki-gal, Eden, Irigal, Arali, secondary name - kur-nu-gi, “land of no return”; Akkadian parallels to these terms - erzetu, tseru) there is no clear idea. They not only go down there, but also “fall through”; The border of the underworld is the underground river through which the ferryman ferries. Those entering the underworld pass through the seven gates of the underworld, where they are greeted by the chief gatekeeper Neti. The fate of the dead underground is difficult. Their bread is bitter (sometimes it is sewage), their water is salty (slop can also serve as a drink). The underworld is dark, full of dust, its inhabitants, “like birds, dressed in the clothing of wings.” There is no idea of ​​a “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 by the rules of morality. The souls for whom funeral rites were performed and sacrifices were made, as well as those who fell in battle and those with many children are awarded a tolerable life (clean drinking water, peace). Judges of the underworld, the Anunnaki, sitting in front of Ereshkigal, mistress of the underworld, only death sentences are passed. The names of the dead are entered into her table by the female scribe of the underworld Geshtinanna (among the Akkadians - Belet-tseri). Among the ancestors - inhabitants of the underworld - are many legendary heroes and historical figures, for example 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 misfortune; the buried are crossed across 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 ferryman of the underworld Ur-Shanabi or the demon Khumut-Tabal.

The actual cosmogonic Sumerian myths are unknown. The text "Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Underworld" says that certain events took place at the time "when the heavens were separated from the earth, when An took the sky for himself, and Enlil the earth, when Ereshkigal was given to Kur." The myth of the hoe and the ax says that Enlil separated the earth from the heavens, the myth of Laharand Ashnan, goddesses of livestock and grain, describes the still fused state of earth and heaven (“mountain of heaven and earth”), which, apparently, was in charge of An. The myth "Enki and Ninhursag" tells about the island Tilmun like a pristine paradise.

Several myths have come down about the creation of people, but only one of them is completely independent - about Enki and Ninmah. Enki and Ninmah sculpt a man from clay Abzu, underground world ocean, and involve the goddess Nammu - “the mother who gave life to all gods” - in the creation process. The purpose of human creation is to work for the gods: to cultivate the land, graze cattle, collect fruits, and feed the gods with their victims. When a person is made, the gods determine his fate and arrange a feast for this occasion. At the feast, drunken Enki and Ninmah begin to sculpt people again, but they end up with monsters: a woman unable to give birth, a creature deprived of sex, etc. In the myth about the goddesses of cattle and grain, the need to create man is explained by the fact that the gods who appeared before him The Anunnaki do not know how to conduct any kind of farming. The idea that people used to grow underground, like grass, comes up repeatedly. In the myth of the hoe, Enlil uses a hoe to make a hole in the ground and people come out. The same motive sounds in the introduction to the hymn to the city of Ered (g).

Many myths are dedicated to the creation and birth of gods. Widely represented in Sumerian mythology cultural heroes. Creators-demiurges are mainly Enlil And Enki. According to various texts, the goddess Ninkasi is the founder of brewing, the goddess Uttu is the creator of weaving, Enlil is the creator of the wheel and grain; gardening is the invention of the gardener Shukalitudda. A certain archaic king Enmeduranka is declared to be the inventor of various forms of predicting the future, including predictions using the pouring out 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 the creator of writing.

The eschatological line (although not in the literal sense of the word) is reflected in the myths about the flood (see Art. Ziusudra) and about "anger" Inanna» .

In Sumerian mythology, very few stories have been preserved about the struggle of gods with monsters, the destruction of elemental forces, etc. [so far only two such legends are known - about the struggle of the god Ninurta (option - Ningirsu) 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 deeds of the gods are associated with their role as fertility deities (the most archaic moment) and bearers of culture (the most recent moment). The functional ambivalence of the image corresponds to the external characteristics of the characters: these omnipotent, omnipotent gods, creators of all life on earth, are evil, rude, cruel, their decisions are often explained by whims, drunkenness, promiscuity, their appearance can emphasize unattractive everyday features (dirt under the nails, Enki's dyed red, Ereshkigal's disheveled hair, etc.). The degree of activity and passivity of each deity is also varied. Thus, Inanna, Enki, Ninhursag, Dumuzi, and some minor deities turn out to be the most alive. The most passive god is the “father of the gods” An . The images of Enki, Inanna and partly Enlil are comparable to the images of the demiurge gods, “carriers of culture”, whose characteristics emphasize elements of the comic, the gods of primitive cults living on earth, among people, whose cult supplants the cult of the “supreme being”. But at the same time, no traces of “theomachy” - the struggle between old and new generations of gods - were found in Sumerian mythology. One canonical text of the Old Babylonian period begins with a listing of 50 pairs of gods who preceded Anu: their names are formed according to the scheme: “the lord (mistress) of so-and-so.” Among them, one of the oldest, according to some data, gods Enmesharra (“lord of all me”) is named. From an even later source (a New Assyrian spell of the 1st millennium BC) we learn that Enmesharra is “the one who gave the scepter and dominion to Anu and Enlil.” In Sumerian mythology, this is a chthonic deity, but there is no evidence that Enmesharra was forcibly cast into the underground kingdom.

Of the heroic tales, only the tales of the Uruk cycle have reached us. The heroes of the legends are three successive kings of Uruk: Enmerkar, son of Meskingasher, the legendary founder of the First Dynasty of Uruk (27th - 26th centuries BC; according to legend, the dynasty originated from the sun god Utu, whose son Meskingasher was considered); Lugalbanda, fourth ruler of the dynasty, father (and possibly ancestral god) Gilgamesh, the most popular hero of Sumerian and Akkadian literature.

The common outer line for the works of the Uruk cycle is the theme of the connections of Uruk with the outside world and the motif of the journey (journey) of the heroes. The theme of the hero's journey to a foreign country and the test of his moral and physical strength in combination with the motifs of magical gifts and a magical assistant not only shows the degree of mythologization of the work compiled as a heroic-historical monument, but also allows us to reveal the early motives associated with initiation rites. The connection of these motifs in the works, the sequence of a purely mythological level of presentation, brings Sumerian monuments closer to a fairy tale.

In the early lists of gods from Fara, the heroes Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh are assigned to the gods; in later texts they appear as 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 - the rulers of Uruk. Their names also appear in the so-called. “royal list” compiled during the period of the III dynasty of Ur (apparently ca. 2100 BC) (all dynasties mentioned in the list are divided into “antediluvian” and those who ruled “after the flood”, the kings, especially the antediluvian period, are attributed mythical number of years of reign: Meskingasher, the founder of the Uruk dynasty, “son of the sun god,” 325 years old, Enmerkar 420 years old, Gilgamesh, who is called the son of the demon Lilu, 126 years old). The epic and extra-epic tradition of Mesopotamia thus 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 posthumously deified as heroes. Things were different from the beginning of the Old Akkadian period. The first ruler who declared himself during his lifetime to be the “patron god of Akkad” was the Akkadian king of the 23rd century. BC e. Naram-Suen; During the III dynasty of Ur, cult veneration of the ruler reached its apogee.

The development of the epic tradition from myths about cultural heroes, characteristic of many mythological systems, did not, as a rule, take place on Sumerian soil. Myths about gods-inventors were mostly relatively late works. These myths were not so much rooted in the tradition or historical memory of the people, but were developed by methods of conceptual speculative thinking, as can be seen from the artificial formation of the names of many minor gods - “cultural figures”, which are the deification of any function. But the theme developed in mythological epics is, in most cases, relevant and carries certain ideological guidelines, although the basis could be an ancient traditional action. A characteristic actualization of ancient forms (in particular, the traditional motif of travel) also appears, often found in Sumerian mythological texts, as the motif of a god’s journey to another, higher, deity for a blessing (myths about Inanna and Me, about Enki’s journey to Enlil after the construction of his city, about the journey moon god Nanna to Nippur to Enlil, his divine father, for a blessing).

The period of the III dynasty of Ur, the time from which most of the written mythological sources came, is the period of development of 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, insofar as it was through myth that the corresponding ideas were affirmed. Therefore, it is no coincidence that most of the texts belong to one group - the Nippur canon, compiled by the priests of the III dynasty of Ur, and the main centers most often mentioned in myths: Eredu (g), Uruk, Ur, gravitated towards Nippur, as a traditional place of general Sumerian cult. A “pseudo-myth”, a myth-concept (rather than a traditional composition) is also a myth that explains the appearance of the Semitic tribes of the Amorites in Mesopotamia and gives the etiology of their assimilation in society - the myth of God Martu(the very name of God is a deification of the Sumerian name for the West Semitic nomads). The myth underlying the text did not develop an ancient tradition, but was taken from historical reality. But traces of a general historical concept - ideas about the evolution of humanity from savagery to civilization (reflected - already on Akkadian material - in the story of the “wild man” Enkidu in the Akkadian epic of Gilgamesh) appear through the “actual” concept of myth. After the fall at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. e. under the onslaught of the Amorites and Elamites of the III dynasty of Ur, almost all the ruling dynasties of individual city-states of Mesopotamia turned out to be Amorites; Babylon rises with the Amorite dynasty (Old Babylonian period). However, in the culture of Mesopotamia, 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 Mesopotamia, were neighbors of the Sumerians and were under strong Sumerian influence. In the 2nd half of the 3rd millennium BC. e. The Akkadians also established themselves in the south of Mesopotamia, which was facilitated by the unification of Mesopotamia by the ruler of the city of Akkad, Sarton. Ancient to the “kingdom of Sumer and Akkad” (later, with the rise of Babylon, this territory became known as Babylonia). History of Mesopotamia in the 2nd millennium BC. e. - this is 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 Sumerian culture and its replacement with a new, Semitic one.

Not a single early purely Semitic cult has yet been discovered on the territory of Mesopotamia. All Akkadian gods known to us are of Sumerian origin or have long been identified with 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, “lord.” With the rise of Babylon, the main god of this city begins to play an increasingly important role. Marduk, 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; Not a single text was received in full. All main sources on Akkadian mythology date back to the 2nd - 1st millennium BC. e., that is, by the time after the Old Babylonian period.

If very fragmentary information has been preserved about Sumerian cosmogony and theogony, then the Babylonian cosmogonic doctrine is represented by the large cosmogonic epic poem “Enuma elish” (according to the first words of the poem - “When above”; the earliest version dates back to the beginning of the 10th century BC) . The poem plays a major role in. creation of the world to Marduk, who gradually occupied the main place in the pantheon of the 2nd millennium, and by the end of the Old Babylonian period received universal recognition outside Babylon (for a presentation of the cosmogonic myth, see Art. Abzu And Marduk).

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 is superior to the previous one, of 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 the 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 receives power not only on the basis of legal succession, but also by the right of the strongest, therefore the theme of struggle and the violent overthrow of ancient forces is the leitmotif of the legend. The traits of Enki - Eya, like other gods, are transferred to Marduk, but Eya becomes the father of the “lord of the gods” and his advisor.

Paris, Louvre. " href="/dragons/books-and-articles/articles/shumer/shumer/kudurru.jpg"> Paris, Louvre. " src="/dragons/books-and-articles/articles/shumer/shumer/tn_kudurru.jpg ">

Kudurru (boundary stone) of Melishipaka (12th century BC) from Susa, on which the symbols of the gods of the Sumerian-Akkadian pantheon are most fully represented.
Paris, Louvre.

In the Ashur version of the poem (late 2nd millennium BC), Marduk is replaced by Ashur, the main god of the city of Ashur and the central deity of the Assyrian pantheon. This became a manifestation of a general tendency towards unification and monotheism, or more precisely, monolatry, expressed in the desire to highlight the main god and rooted not only in the ideological, but also in the socio-political situation of the 1st millennium BC. e. A number of cosmological motifs from the Enuma Elish have come down to us in Greek adaptations by a Babylonian priest of the 4th - 3rd centuries. BC e. Berossus (through Polyhistor and Eusebius), as well as the Greek writer of the 6th century. n. e. Damascus. Damascus has a number of generations of gods: Taute and Apason and their son Mumiyo (Tiamat, Apsu, Mummu), as well as Lahe and Lahos, Kissar and Assoros (Lahmu and Lahamu, Anshar and Kishar), their children Anos, Illinos, Aos (Anu , Enlil, Eya). Aos and Dauke (i.e., the goddess Damkina) create the demiurge god Bel (Marduk). In Berossus, the mistress corresponding to Tiamat is a certain Omorka (“sea”), who dominates darkness and waters and whose description is reminiscent of the description of the evil Babylonian demons. God Bel cuts it down, creates heaven and earth, organizes the world order and orders the head of one of the gods to be cut off 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, deaths, and even the destruction of the universe. As in the Sumerian monuments, the Babylonian legends emphasize that the cause of disasters is the anger of the gods, their desire to reduce the number of the ever-growing human race, which bothers the gods with its noise. Disasters are perceived not as legal retribution for human sins, but as the evil whim of a 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 differing little from the first), and also preserved in the Greek transmission of Berossus. The myth of the plague god also tells about the punishment of people. Erre, fraudulently taking power from Marduk. 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). Traditional for Mesopotamia (since the Sumerian period) is the idea of ​​​​the connection of a deity with his statue: by leaving the country and the statue, the god thereby changes his place of residence. This is done by Marduk, and the country is damaged, and the universe is threatened with destruction. It is characteristic that in all epics about the destruction of humanity, the main disaster - the flood - was caused not by a flood from the sea, but by a rain storm. Connected with this is the significant role of the gods of storms and hurricanes in the cosmogony of Mesopotamia, especially the northern one. In addition to the special gods of wind and thunderstorms, storms (the main Akkadian god is Adad), 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 “lord (breath) of the wind”, or “lord-wind”], although he is basically the god of air in the broad sense of the word. But still Enlil owned destructive storms, with which he destroyed enemies and cities that he hated. Enlil's sons Ninurta and Ningirsu are also associated with the storm. The winds of the four directions were perceived as deities, at least as personified higher powers (the southern wind played a particularly important role - cf. the myth of Adapa or the fight with Anzu, where the southern wind is Ninurta’s assistant).

The Babylonian legend of 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 a hero-god with a monster - the personification of the elements, gave rise to the theme of a hero-god in Babylonian epic-mythological literature (and not a mortal hero, as in Sumerian literature).

The motif of tables of fate is associated with Sumerian ideas about meh. According to Akkadian concepts, tables of fate determined the movement of the world and world events. Their possession ensured world domination (cf. Enuma Elish, where they were initially 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 was the goddess Belet-tseri); Apparently, this was a recording of death sentences, as well as the names of the dead.

If the number of god-heroes in Babylonian mythological literature prevails in comparison with Sumerian, then about mortal heroes, except for the epic of Atrahasis, only the legend (obviously of Sumerian origin) is known about Etane - a hero who tried to fly up to heaven on an eagle, and a relatively late story about Adape - the sage who dared to “break off the wings” of the wind and provoke the wrath of the sky god An, but missed the opportunity to gain immortality, and the famous epic of Gilgamesh is not a simple repetition of Sumerian legends about the hero, but a work that reflected the complex ideological evolution that the heroes made together with the Babylonian society Sumerian works. 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 trying to achieve immortality.

The monarchical-state, rather than communal (as in Sumerian mythology) nature of the official Babylonian religion, as well as the suppression of the social life of the population, leads to the fact that the features of 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 for each person, who facilitates his access to the great gods and introduces him to them, arose (or, in any case, spread) from the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur and in the Old Babylonian period. On reliefs and seals of this time there are often scenes depicting how the patron deity leads a person to the supreme god to determine his fate and to receive blessings. During the Third Dynasty of Ur, when the king was seen as the protector-guardian of his country, he assumed some of the functions of a protective god (especially the deified king). It was believed that with the loss of his protector god, a person became defenseless against the evil willfulness of the great gods and 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 shedu (cf. Sumerian, Alad) - anthropomorphized or zoomorphized life force. In addition to these defenders, a resident of Babylonia in the 2nd - 1st millennium BC. e. his own personal guardian also appears - lamassu, the bearer of his personality, possibly associated with the cult of the placenta. A person’s “name” or his “glory” (shumu) was also considered as a material substance, without which his existence was unthinkable and which was passed on to his heirs. On the contrary, the “soul” (napishtu) is something impersonal; it was identified either with breath or with blood. Personal guardian gods opposed evil and were, as it were, the antipodes of the evil forces surrounding man. Among them is the lion-headed Lamashtu, rising from the underworld and leading with her all kinds of diseases, the evil spirits of diseases themselves, ghosts, embittered shadows of the dead who do not receive victims, various kinds of serving spirits of the underworld (utukki, asakki, etimme, galle, galle lemnuti - “evil devils,” etc.), the god-fate Namtar, who comes to a person at the hour of his death, the night spirits-incubus Lilu, visiting women, the succubi Lilith (Lilitu), possessing men, etc. A complex system of demonological ideas , which developed in Babylonian mythology (and was not attested in Sumerian monuments), was also reflected in the visual arts.

The general structure of the pantheon, the formation of which dates back to the III dynasty of Ur, basically remains without much change throughout the entire era of antiquity. The entire world is officially headed by the triad of Anu, Enlil and Eya, surrounded by a council of seven or twelve “great gods” who determine the “shares” (shimata) of everything in the world. All gods are thought of as divided into two clan groups - the Igigi and the Anunnaki; the gods of the earth and the underworld, as a rule, are among the latter, although among the heavenly gods there are also Anunnaki gods. In the underworld, however, it is no longer Ereshkigal who rules so much as her husband Nergal, who has subjugated his wife, which corresponds to the general decrease in the role of female deities in Babylonian mythology, who, as a rule, were relegated almost exclusively to the position of impersonal consorts of their divine husbands (essentially a special Only the goddess of healing Gula and Ishtar remain important, although, judging by the Epic of Gilgamesh, her position is under threat). But steps in the direction of a certain monolatrity, manifested in the strengthening of the cult of Marduk, which monopolized the con. By the 2nd millennium, almost all areas of divine activity and power were being developed further. Enlil and Marduk (in Assyria - Enlil and Ashur) merge into a single image of the “lord” - Bel. In the 1st millennium BC. e. Marduk in a number of centers is gradually beginning to be replaced by his son, the god of scribal art Nabu, who tends to become a pan-Babylonian deity. The properties of one god are endowed with other deities, and the qualities of one god are determined using the qualities of other gods. This is another way to create the image of a single omnipotent and all-powerful deity in a purely abstract way.

Monuments (mostly from the 1st millennium) make it possible to reconstruct the general system of cosmogonic views of Babylonian theologians, although there is no complete certainty that such a unification was carried out by the Babylonians themselves. The microcosm seems to be a reflection of the macrocosm - “bottom” (earth) - as if a reflection of the “top” (heaven). The entire universe seems to float in the world's oceans, the earth is likened to a large inverted round boat, and the sky is like a solid semi-vault (dome) covering the world. The entire celestial space is divided into several parts: the “upper sky of Anu”, the “middle sky” belonging to the Igigi, in the center of which was the lapis lazuli cella of Marduk, and the “lower sky”, already visible to people, on which the stars are located. All heavens are made of different types of stone, for example, the “lower heaven” is made of blue jasper; above these three heavens there are four more heavens. The sky, like a building, rests on a foundation attached to the heavenly ocean with pegs and, like an earthly palace, protected from water by a rampart. The highest part of the vault of heaven is called the “middle of the heavens.” The outside of the dome (the "inside of heaven") emits light; This is the space where the moon - Siya - hides during her three-day absence and where the sun - Shamash spends the night. In the east there is the “mountain of sunrise”, in the west there is the “mountain of sunset”, which are locked. Every morning Shamash opens the “mountain of sunrise”, sets out on a journey across the sky, and in the evening through the “mountain of sunset” he disappears into the “inside of heaven”. The stars in the firmament are “images” or “writings,” and each of them is assigned a firm place so that none “goes astray from its path.” Earthly geography corresponds to celestial geography. 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. Thus, the heavenly temple is approximately twice the size of the earthly one. The plan of Nineveh was originally drawn in heaven and existed from ancient times. The celestial Tigris is located in one constellation, and the celestial Euphrates in the other. Each city corresponds to a specific constellation: Sippar - the constellation Cancer, Babylon, Nippur - others, whose names are not identified with modern ones. Both the sun and the month are divided into countries: on the right side of the month is Akkad, on the left is Elam, the upper part of the month is Amurru (Amorites), the lower part is 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 (an ocean of fresh water or groundwater), in the lower part - the possessions of the earth gods, the Anunnaki, and the underworld. According to other views, seven earths correspond to the seven heavens, 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 the Milky Way. The upper land, as you know, belongs to the god Znlil. His temple Ekur (“house of the mountain”) and one of its central parts - Duranki (“connection of heaven and earth”) symbolize the structure of the world.

Thus, a certain evolution is outlined in the religious and mythological views of the peoples of Mesopotamia. If the Sumerian religious-mythological system can be defined as based primarily on communal cults, then in the Babylonian system one can see a clear desire for monolatry and for a 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, no matter in what rudimentary form they may be expressed.

Lit.: Literature of Sumer and Babylonia, in the book: Poetry and prose of the Ancient East, M., 1973; Reader on the history of the Ancient East, parts I - 2, M., 1980; The Epic of Gilgamesh (“The One Who Has Seen All”), trans. from Akkad., M. - L.. 1961; Kramer S.N. History begins in Sumer, [trans. from English], M., 1965; his, Mythology of Sumer and Akkad, in the collection: Mythologies of the Ancient World, M., 1977; Afanasyeva V.K., Gilgamesh and Enkidu, M., 1979; Deimel A. (ed.). Pantheon Babylonicum, Romae, 1914; Dhorme E. P., Les religions de Babylonie et d'Assyrie, P., 1949; Bottego J., La religion babylonienne. P., 1952; his, Les divinites semitiques en Mesopotamie anciennes, “Studi semitici.” 1958, No. 1; Falkenstein A., Soden W. von, Sumerische und akkadische Hymnen und Gebete, Z. - Stuttg., 1953; L.ambert W. G., Babylonian wisdom literature, Oxf., 1960; Kramer S. N.. Sumerian mythology, N. Y., 1961; his, The sacred marriage rite, Bloomington, )