Gemini is the third astrological sign in the zodiac, originating from the constellation of Gemini. Under the tropical zodiac, the sun transits this sign between about May 21 and June 21. Gemini is represented by the twins Castor and Pollux, known as the Dioscuri.
Isimud (also Isinu; Usmû; Usumu (Akkadian)) is a minor god, the messenger of the god Enki, in Sumerian mythology. In ancient Sumerian artwork, Isimud is easily identifiable because he is always depicted with two faces facing in opposite directions in a way that is similar to the ancient Roman god Janus.
Ishara is an ancient pre-Hurrian and perhaps pre-Semitic deity of unknown origin from northern modern Syria. She first appeared as one of the chief goddesses of Ebla in the mid 3rd millennium, and by the end of the 3rd millennium, she had temples in Nippur, Sippar, Kish, Harbidum, Larsa, and Urum. Her name appears as an element in theophoric names in Mesopotamia in the later 3rd millennium (Akkad period).
The etymology of Ishara is unknown. Ishara first appears in the pre-Sargonic texts from Ebla and then as a goddess of love in Old Akkadian potency-incantations. Her main epithet was belet rame, lady of love, which was also applied to Ishtar. In the Epic of Gilgamesh (Tablet II, col. v.28) it says: ‘For Ishara the bed is made’ and in Atra-hasis (I 301-304) she is called upon to bless the couple on the honeymoon.”
She was then incorporated to the Hurrian pantheon. She was worshipped with Teshub and Simegi at Alakh, and also at Ugarit, Emar and Chagar Bazar. She then entered the Hittite pantheon and had her main shrine in Kizzuwatna. Ishara is the Hittite word for “treaty, binding promise”, also personified as a goddess of the oath.
As a goddess, Ishara could inflict severe bodily penalties to oathbreakers, in particular ascites. In this context, she came to be seen as a “goddess of medicine” whose pity was invoked in case of illness. There was even a verb, isharis- “to be afflicted by the illness of Ishara”.
In Hurrian and Semitic traditions, Išḫara is a love goddess, often identified with Ishtar. She was invoked to heal the sick. In Alalah, her name was written with the Akkadogram IŠTAR plus a phonetic complement -ra, as IŠTAR-ra.
Variants of the name appear as Ašḫara (in a treaty of Naram-Sin of Akkad with Hita of Elam) and Ušḫara (in Ugarite texts). In Ebla, there were various logographic spellings involving the sign AMA “mother”.
She was associated with the underworld. Her astrological embodiment is the constellation Scorpio and she is called the mother of the “Seven” or the “Seven Gods” (“the Seven Stars”; Sumerian Iminbi; Akkadian Sebittu), minor war gods in Babylonian and Akkadian tradition whose power could be marshalled beneficently against demons and their influence by the means of magical incantations and depiction.
The Seven gods are known from a range of Akkadian incantation texts: their demonic names vary, but their number, seven, is invariable. They are the children of the god Anu, the sons of heaven and earth, and follow the god Erra into battle.
The Seven gods are “champions without peer”, and have been called “personified weapons”. They are each assigned a destructive destiny by Anu. They are in differing traditions of good and evil influence.
Nergal
The Seven gods are sometimes evoked (as “Seven and seven”) with yet another group of seven deities who may be the children of Enmeshara, an underworld god of the law in Sumerian and Akkadian mythology. Enmeshara has been described as an ancestor of Enlil, and it has been claimed that Enlil slew him.
Enmeshara is described as a Sun god, protector of flocks and vegetation, and therefore he has been equated with Nergal, a deity that was worshipped throughout ancient Mesopotamia with the main seat of his worship at Cuthah represented by the mound of Tell-Ibrahim.
Nergal developed over time from being a war god to a god of the underworld. In the mythology, this occurred when Enlil and Ninlil gave him the underworld. In this capacity he has associated with him a goddess Allatu or Ereshkigal, though at one time Allatu may have functioned as the sole mistress of Aralu, ruling in her own person.
Nergal seems to be in part a solar deity, sometimes identified with Shamash, but only representative of a certain phase of the sun. He seems to represent the sun of noontime and of the summer solstice that brings destruction, high summer being the dead season in the Mesopotamian annual cycle. He has also been called “the king of sunset”.
Nergal is in hymns and myths portrayed as a god of war and pestilence. As god of the plague, he was invoked during the “plague years” during the reign of the Hittite king Suppiluliuma, when this disease spread from Egypt.
In the late Babylonian astral-theological system Nergal is related to the planet Mars. As a fiery god of destruction and war, Nergal doubtless seemed an appropriate choice for the red planet, and he was equated by the Greeks to the war-god Ares (Latin Mars)—hence the current name of the planet.
Amongst the Hurrians and later Hittites Nergal was known as Aplu, a name derived from the Akkadian Apal Enlil, (Apal being the construct state of Aplu) meaning “the son of Enlil”. Aplu may be related with Apaliunas who is considered to be the Hittite reflex of *Apeljōn, an early form of the name Apollo.
Erra
Other names for Nergal are Erra or Irra and Sibitti or Seven. Erra (sometimes called Irra) is an Akkadian plague god known from an ‘epos’ of the eighth century BC. Erra is the god of mayhem and pestilence who is responsible for periods of political confusion.
In the epic that is given the modern title Erra, the writer Kabti-ilani-Marduk, a descendant, he says, of Dabibi, presents himself in a colophon following the text as simply the transcriber of a visionary dream in which Erra himself revealed the text.
The poem opens with an invocation. The god Erra is sleeping fitfully with his consort (identified with Mamītum and not with the mother goddess Mami) but is roused by his advisor Išum and the Seven (Sibitti or Sebetti).
The Sibitti call on Erra to lead the destruction of mankind. Išum tries to mollify Erra’s wakened violence, to no avail. Foreign peoples invade Babylonia, but are struck down by plague. Even Marduk, the patron of Babylon, relinquishes his throne to Erra for a time.
Tablets II and III are occupied with a debate between Erra and Išum. The world is turned upside down: righteous and unrighteous are killed alike. Erra orders Išum to complete the work by defeating Babylon’s enemies. Then the god withdraws to his own seat in Emeslam with the terrifying Seven, and mankind is saved. A propitiatory prayer ends the work.
The poem must have been central to Babylonian culture: at least thirty-six copies have been recovered from five first-millennium sites—Assur, Babylon, Nineveh, Sultantepe and Ur—more, even, as the assyriologist and historian of religions Luigi Giovanni Cagni points out, than have been recovered of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The text appears to some readers to be a mythologisation of historic turmoil in Mesopotamia, though scholars disagree as to the historic events that inspired the poem: the poet exclaims (tablet IV:3) “You changed out of your divinity and made yourself like a man.”
The Erra text soon assumed magical functions. Parts of the text were inscribed on amulets employed for exorcism and as a prophylactic against the plague. It has been equated with with the Seven Against Thebes, widely assumed by Hellenists to have had a historical basis.
The seven sages
In ancient Mesopotamian myth and legends there are stories about very curious looking beings known as the Apkallu (Akkadian) and Abgal (Sumerian), terms that are found in cuneiform inscriptions that in general mean either “wise” or “sage.” They were Antediluvian demi-gods and sages created by God Enki to impart knowledge to people.
For the Sumerians these creatures were called the Ab.gal “big fish.” These fish-man hybrids, occasionally depicted with bird heads are a symbol of ancient wisdom. They are associated with human wisdom and often referred to in scholarly literature as the Seven Sages.
Sometimes the sages are associated with a specific primeval king. After the deluge further sages and kings are listed. Post-deluge, the sages are considered human, and in some texts are distinguished by being referred to as Ummanu (“craftsman”), not Apkallu.
The seven sages are also mentioned in the Epic of Erra (aka ‘Song of Erra’, or ‘Erra and Ishum’); here again they are referenced as paradu-Fish. In this text is described how after the Flood, Marduk banished them back to Abzu. The epic contains several clever etymological wordplays on the names of apkallu, both textual and phonetic.
Once the apkallu are banished, Marduk’s phrasing becomes rhetorical (left): Finally Erra persuades Marduk to leave his temple and fetch back the apkallu from their banishment, reassuring that he will keep order whilst Marduk is away.
However, chaos breaks out; though some of the text is missing it seems that the subsequent outcome was that instead, earthly ummanus are given the task of cleansing Marduk’s shrine. It can be understood by this that the mythological role of the apkallu was to aid the god (Marduk) in keeping creation stable by maintenance of Marduk’s idol.
This text appears to have a completely different role for the apkallu from that given in the lists of sages and kings — essentially, Kvanvig proposes that the pre-deluge king-sage list was retroactively inserted onto a Sumerian king list, so to combine the historical record with the flood legend. In doing so it creates an pre-flood origin story for the Sumerian kings.
Lugal-irra and Meslamta-ea
Nergal’s chief temple at Cuthah bore the name Meslam, from which the god receives the designation of Meslamtaeda or Meslamtaea, “the one that rises up from Meslam”. The name Meslamtaeda/Meslamtaea indeed is found as early as the list of gods from Fara while the name Nergal only begins to appear in the Akkadian period.
In Babylonian astronomy, the stars Castor and Pollux were known as the Great Twins. The Twins were regarded as minor gods and were called Meshlamtaea and Lugalirra, meaning respectively “The One who has arisen from the Underworld” and the “Mighty King”. Both names can be understood as titles of Nergal, the major Babylonian god of plague and pestilence, who was king of the Underworld.
In ancient Mesopotamian religion, Lugal-irra and Meslamta-ea are a set of twin gods who were worshipped in the village of Kisiga, located in northern Babylonia. They were regarded as guardians of doorways and they may have originally been envisioned as a set of twins guarding the gates of the Underworld, who chopped the dead into pieces as they passed through the gates.
During the Neo-Assyrian period, small depictions of them would be buried at entrances, with Lugal-irra always on the left and Meslamta-ea always on the right. They are identical and are shown wearing horned caps and each holding an axe and a mace. They are identified with the constellation Gemini, which is named after them.
Gemini
Gemini is the third astrological sign in the zodiac, originating from the constellation of Gemini. Gemini lies between Taurus to the west and Cancer to the east, with Auriga and Lynx to the north and Monoceros and Canis Minor to the south.
Under the tropical zodiac, the sun transits this sign between about May 21 and June 21. Its name is Latin for “twins,” and it is associated with the twins Castor and Pollux, known as the Dioscuri in Greek mythology.
In Greek mythology, Gemini was associated with the myth of Castor and Pollux, the children of Leda and Argonauts both. Pollux was the son of Zeus, who seduced Leda, while Castor was the son of Tyndareus, king of Sparta and Leda’s husband.
Castor and Pollux were also mythologically associated with St. Elmo’s fire in their role as the protectors of sailors. When Castor died, because he was mortal, Pollux begged his father Zeus to give Castor immortality, and he did, by uniting them together in the heavens.
Solar mythology
According to Macrobius who cites Nigidius Figulus and Cicero, Janus and Jana (Diana) are a pair of divinities, worshipped as Apollo or the sun and moon, whence Janus received sacrifices before all the others, because through him is apparent the way of access to the desired deity.
A similar solar interpretation has been offered by A. Audin who interprets the god as the issue of a long process of development, starting with the Sumeric cultures, from the two solar pillars located on the eastern side of temples, each of them marking the direction of the rising sun at the dates of the two solstices: the southeastern corresponding to the Winter and the northeastern to the Summer solstice.
These two pillars would be at the origin of the theology of the divine twins, one of whom is mortal (related to the NE pillar, as confining with the region where the sun does not shine) and the other is immortal (related to the SE pillar and the region where the sun always shines). Later these iconographic models evolved in the Middle East and Egypt into a single column representing two torsos and finally a single body with two heads looking at opposite directions.
Isimud (also Isinu; Usmû; Usumu in Akkadian) is a minor god, the messenger of the god Enki, in Sumerian mythology. He plays a similar role to Ninshubur, Inanna’s sukkal. Isimud also appears in the myth of Enki and Ninhursag, in which he acts as Enki’s messenger and emissary.
In ancient Sumerian artwork, Isimud is easily identifiable because he is always depicted with two faces facing in opposite directions in a way that is similar to the ancient Roman god Janus, the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways,[1] passages, and endings.
Ishum and Papsukkal
Ishum is a minor god in Akkadian mythology, the brother of Shamash and an attendant of Erra. He may have been a god of fire and, according to texts, led the gods in war as a herald but was nonetheless generally regarded as benevolent. Ishum is known particularly from the Babylonian legend of Erra and Ishum.
He developed from the Sumerian figure of Endursaga, the herald god in the Sumerian mythology. He leads the pantheon, particularly in times of conflict. In Akkadian times he becomes Ishum. The Akkadians associated the god Papsukkal, the messenger god and gatekeeper for the rest of the pantheon in the Akkadian pantheon, with a lamassu and the god Išum with shedu.
Papsukkal was syncretized with Ninshubur, the sukkal or second-in-command of the goddess Inanna in Sumerian mythology. Her name means “Queen of the East” in ancient Sumerian. Much like Iris or Hermes in later Greek mythology, Ninshubur served as a messenger to the other gods.
Lamassu
A lamassu (Cuneiform: an.kal; Sumerian: dlammař; Akkadian: lamassu; sometimes called a lamassus) is an Assyrian protective deity, often depicted as having a human head, the body of a bull or a lion, and bird wings. In art, lamassu were depicted as hybrids, with bodies of either winged bulls or lions and heads of human males.
In some writings, it is portrayed to represent a female deity. A less frequently used name is shedu (Cuneiform: an.kal×bad; Sumerian: dalad; Akkadian, šēdu), which refers to the male counterpart of a lamassu. Female lamassu were called “apsasû”.
The lamassu and shedu were household protective spirits of the common Babylonian people, becoming associated later as royal protectors, and were placed as sentinels at entrances. In Hittite, the Sumerian form dlamma is used both as a name for the so-called “tutelary deity”, identified in certain later texts with Inara, and a title given to similar protective gods.
To protect houses, the lamassu were engraved in clay tablets, which were then buried under the door’s threshold. They were often placed as a pair at the entrance of palaces. At the entrance of cities, they were sculpted in colossal size, and placed as a pair, one at each side of the door of the city, that generally had doors in the surrounding wall, each one looking towards one of the cardinal points.
The ancient Jewish people were influenced by the iconography of Assyrian culture. The prophet Ezekiel wrote about a fantastic being made up of aspects of a human being, a lion, an eagle and a bull. Later, in the early Christian period, the four Gospels were ascribed to each of these components. When it was depicted in art, this image was called the Tetramorph.
Lamassu represent the zodiacs, parent-stars, or constellations. They are depicted as protective deities because they encompass all life within them. In the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, they are depicted as physical deities as well, which is where the lammasu iconography originates, these deities could be microcosms of their microcosmic zodiac, parent-star, or constellation.
Although lamassu had a different iconography and portrayal in the culture of Sumer, the terms “lamassu”, “alad”, and “shedu” evolved throughout the Assyro-Akkadian culture from the Sumerian culture to denote the Assyrian-winged-man-bull symbol and statues during the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
Standard iconography pictured Nergal as a lion, and boundary-stone monuments symbolise him with a mace surmounted by the head of a lion. In Assyro-Babylonian ecclesiastical art the great lion-headed colossi serving as guardians to the temples and palaces seem to symbolise Nergal, just as the bull-headed colossi probably typify Ninurta.
Anu
Anu or An is the divine personification of the sky, supreme God, and ancestor of all the deities in ancient Mesopotamian religion. Anu was believed to be the utmost power, the supreme source of all authority, for the other gods and for all mortal rulers, and he is described in one text as the one “who contains the entire universe”.
Though Anu was the supreme God, he was rarely worshipped, and, by the time that written records began, the most important cult was devoted to his son Enlil. Anu was rarely worshipped, and veneration was instead devoted to his son Enlil, but, throughout Mesopotamian history, the highest deity in the pantheon was always said to possess the anûtu, meaning “Heavenly power”.
Anu’s primary role in myths is as the ancestor of the Anunnaki, which means “offspring of Anu. Although it is sometimes unclear which deities were considered members of the Anunnaki, the group probably included the “seven gods who decree”: Anu, Enlil, Enki, Ninhursag, Nanna, Utu, and Inanna.
The Annunaki was “the major deities of Sumerian religion, the most prominent of these deities being Enlil, god of the air. According to legends, heaven and earth were once inseparable until Enlil was born; Enlil cleaved heaven and earth in two. An carried away heaven. Ki, in company with Enlil, took the earth.
Some authorities question whether Ki was regarded as a deity since there is no evidence of a cult and the name appears only in a limited number of Sumerian creation texts. She has been identified with the Sumerian mother goddess Ninhursag and can originally has been the same figure.
Cuneiform KI is the sign for “earth”. It is also read as GI, GUNNI (=KI.NE) “hearth”, KARAŠ (=KI.KAL.BAD) “encampment, army”, KISLAḪ (=KI.UD) “threshing floor”, and SUR (=KI.GAG). In Akkadian orthography, it functions as a determiner for toponyms and has the syllabic values gi, ge, qi, and qe.
Anu’s consort in the earliest Sumerian texts is the Earth goddess Uraš, but she is later the goddess Ki and, in Babylonian and Akkadian texts, the goddess Antu (from Sumerian An), whose name is a feminine form of Anu. However, Uras may only have been another name for Antum, Anu’s wife. The name Uras even became applied to Anu himself, and acquired the meaning “heaven”.
In ancient Hittite religion, Anu is a former ruler of the gods, who was overthrown by his son Kumarbi, who bit off his father’s genitals and gave birth to the storm god Teshub. Teshub overthrew Kumarbi, avenged Anu’s mutilation, and became the new king of the gods. This story was the later basis for the castration of Ouranos in Hesiod’s Theogony.
His primary cult center was the Eanna temple in the city of Uruk, but, by the Akkadian Period (c. 2334 – 2154 BC), his authority in Uruk had largely been ceded to the goddess Inanna, the Queen of Heaven.
The Amorite god Amurru or Martu (MAR.TU), sometimes described as a ‘shepherd’ or as a storm god, and as a son of the sky-god Anu, was sometimes equated with Anu. Later, during the Seleucid Empire (213 BC — 63 BC), Anu was identified with Enmešara and Dumuzid, later known by the alternate form Tammuz.
Tammuz is an ancient Mesopotamian god associated with shepherds, who was also the primary consort of the goddess Inanna (later known as Ishtar). In Sumerian mythology, Dumuzid’s sister was Geshtinanna, the ancient Sumerian goddess of agriculture, fertility, and dream interpretation, the so-called “heavenly grape-vine”.
In Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld, Dumuzid fails to mourn Inanna’s death and, when she returns from the Underworld, she allows the galla demons to drag him down to the Underworld as her replacement.
Inanna later regrets this decision and decrees that Dumuzid will spend half the year in the Underworld, but the other half of the year with her, while his sister Geshtinanna stays in the Underworld in his place, thus resulting in the cycle of the seasons.
Amurru
Amurru is sometimes called “lord of the mountain”, “He who dwells on the pure mountain” and “who inhabits the shining mountain”. It has been suggested that this Bêl Šadê might be the same as the Biblical ’Ēl Šaddāi who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the “Priestly source” of narrative, according to the documentary hypothesis.
Bêl Šadê could also have become the fertility-god ‘Ba’al’, possibly adopted by the Canaanites, a rival and enemy of the Hebrew God YHWH, and famously combatted by the Hebrew prophet Elijah.
Amurru also has storm-god features. Like Adad, Amurru bears the epithet “thunderer”, and he is even called “hurler of the thunderbolt” and “Adad of the delug”. Yet his iconography is distinct from that of Adad, and he sometimes appears alongside Adad with a baton of power or throwstick, while Adad bears a conventional thunderbolt.
Amurru’s wife is usually the goddess Ašratum, generally considered identical with the Ugaritic goddess ʼAṯirat (Athirat), a mother goddess who appears in a number of ancient sources, who in northwest Semitic tradition and Hittite tradition appears as wife of the god Ēl.
El is a Northwest Semitic word meaning “god” or “deity”, or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities, which suggests that Amurru may indeed have been a variation of that god. A rarer form, ‘ila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite.
The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic archaic biliteral ʾ‑l, meaning “god”. Specific deities known as ʾEl or ʾIl include the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period.
Asherah
Asherah is identified as the queen consort of the Sumerian god Anu, and Ugaritic El, the oldest deities of their respective pantheons, as well as Yahweh, the god of Israel and Judah. This role gave her a similarly high rank in the Ugaritic pantheon. Despite her association with Yahweh in extra-biblical sources, Deuteronomy 12 has Yahweh commanding the destruction of her shrines so as to maintain purity of his worship.
The name Dione, which like ‘Elat means “Goddess”, is clearly associated with Asherah in the Phoenician History of Sanchuniathon, because the same common epithet (‘Elat) of “the Goddess par excellence” was used to describe her at Ugarit. The Book of Jeremiah, written circa 628 BC, possibly refers to Asherah when it uses the title “Queen of Heaven” in Jeremiah 7:16-18 and Jeremiah 44:17-19, 25.
Sources from before 1200 BC almost always credit Athirat with her full title rabat ʾAṯirat yammi, “Lady Athirat of the Sea” or as more fully translated “she who treads on the sea”. This occurs 12 times in the Baʿal Epic alone.
The name is understood by various translators and commentators to be from the Ugaritic root ʾaṯr “stride”, cognate with the Hebrew root ʾšr, of the same meaning. There she appears to champion Yam, god of the sea, in his struggle with Ba’al.
Her other main divine epithet was qaniyatu ʾilhm which may be translated as “the creatrix of the Gods (Elohim)”. In those texts, Athirat is the consort of the god El; there is one reference to the 70 sons of Athirat, presumably the same as the 70 sons of El. She is also called Elat, “Goddess”, the feminine form of El (compare Allat) and Qodesh, “holiness”.
Athirat in Akkadian texts appears as Ashratum (or, Antu), the wife of Anu, the God of Heaven. In contrast, ʿAshtart is believed to be linked to the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar who is sometimes portrayed as the daughter of Anu while in Ugaritic myth, ʿAshtart is one of the daughters of El, the West Semitic counterpart of Anu. Among the Hittites this goddess appears as Asherdu(s) or Asertu(s), the consort of Elkunirsa (“El the Creator of Earth”) and mother of either 77 or 88 sons.
Dingir
Dingir (usually transliterated DIĜIR, Sumerian pronunciation: [tiŋiɾ]) is a Sumerian word for “god.” Its cuneiform sign is most commonly employed as the determinative for religious names and related concepts, in which case it is not pronounced and is conventionally transliterated as a superscript “D” as in e.g. DInanna.
The cuneiform sign by itself was originally an ideogram for the Sumerian word an (“sky” or “heaven”); its use was then extended to a logogram for the word diĝir (“god” or goddess) and the supreme deity of the Sumerian pantheon An, and a phonogram for the syllable /an/.
Akkadian took over all these uses and added to them a logographic reading for the native ilum and from that a syllabic reading of /il/. In Hittite orthography, the syllabic value of the sign was again only an.
The concept of “divinity” in Sumerian is closely associated with the heavens, as is evident from the fact that the cuneiform sign doubles as the ideogram for “sky”, and that its original shape is the picture of a star. The original association of “divinity” is thus with “bright” or “shining” hierophanies in the sky.
Elamite mythology
Temples to the Seven were to be found in the Neo-Assyrian period in the capital cities of Dur-šarrukin (Khorsabad), Kalhu-Nimrud and Nineveh, illustrating their integration into Mesopotamian belief systems, although their origins were probably originally Elamite – they operate in tandem with their sister, the goddess Narudu, probably originally the Elamite female deity Narunte, who was associated with Inanna/Ishtar.
Narunte was a Elamite mother goddess who was worshiped in Susa. A statue depicting the goddesses shows her holding a goblet and palm leaf over her breast. This is thought to symbolize her role as a mother goddess and nourishing goddess. As a mother goddess, she may have been associated with the fertility of people and of the earth. ‘
The headdress depicted on the statue is made of three pairs of horns – a motif borrow from Sumer to show someone of high rank. Her dress is also a Sumerian influence. The statue also has lions decorating the armrests and two lions beneath her feat. Lions were a symbol of Inanna (Ishtar) – the Mesopotamian goddess of love, war, sex and beauty. Narudi was most likely also associated with Inanna’s attributes.
Due to her association with Ishushinak, a major god of Elam and a protector deity, Narudi may have been his consort. He had a temple at Susa which he shared with the god, Napirisha, who was the main god of Elam at one point. Napirisha was also referred to as “God of the Elamite Highlands”, and was most likely associated with mountains.
Little figures with wheels of lions sitting on a flat cart were found in Susa, near the temple of Ishushinak. These may have been offerings to the god or toys that children played with. As offers, this would associate Ishushinak with the lion – an animal symbolizing power and strength. The lion was a popular motif in Elam. However, the lion figures may also have been representative of the goddess Narundi.
Napirisha was the god of the primordial waters, life-giving waters, of the abyss. He is the start of all life. His symbol was the snake or serpent and over time he was associated with the Mesopotamian god, Enki. His consort is said to be Kiririsha. Together they had a son, Khutran (“overwhelmer”, who most likely was a god of war and soldiers.
Napirisha may have also been known as the god (d)GAL or “Great God. This would make him a supreme god or another name for Khumban, also known as Humban, who was the supreme god of the pantheon. At the same time, the idea that Napirisha is a god of his own is also very possible. He may have been a god to rule over the world and universe alongside Khumban.
Khumban was the god of the sky and compared to the Mesopotamian god, Anu. He may have also been called (d)GAl or Dingir.Gal – a name that means “Great God”. Khumban, alongside Inshushinak and Nahundi, was frequently invoked to punish wrong-doings and enemies of Elam or the king. Khumban may have also been a god of the earth.
Khumban was either the consort of Kiririsha, who was known as “Lady of Liyan” and “The Great Goddess”, or Pinikir, who may have been another goddess or another name for Kiririsha. He may have been the consort of both goddesses depending on the location.
Pinikir was the mother goddess and the the supreme goddess of northern Elam. It seems like her connection to Kiririsha, who was a patron goddess of the southern parts of Elam alongside the gods Khumban and Inshushinak, comes from the fact that both are supreme goddesses.
As the supreme god of the pantheon, he was likely associated with both goddesses as power shifted from the north to the south. As power shifted south, it is thought that the patron goddess changed from Pinikir to Kiririsha.
As a mother goddess, Pinikir may have been associated with motherhood and fertility both of the land and of people. She is compared to the Babylonian goddess, Inanna (Ishtar). From this association, we can speculate that Pinikir (and Kiririsha) was a goddess of love, beauty, war and justice as well as the “Queen of heaven”.
Kiririsha was also refereed to as “The Divine Mother”. Being a goddess of the Elamite Kingdom, Kiririsha was probably a goddess of kings, kingship, and sovereign. As the “divine mother” should may have also been associated with motherhood, fertility (of people and the land) and the cosmos (heavenly stars).
As a goddess of the port, Liyan, she may have also been associated with fishing, trade and the sea. All of these associations are speculation however, as not much is known about the ancient Emalites. Kiririsha may have also been known by the name Pinikir.
The god Jabru was the god of the underworld and compared to the Akkadian god, Anu. Jabru is also regarded as the father of all of the gods of the Elamite pantheon.
Pleiades
The iconography of the Seven Gods is well-established by the Neo-Assyrian period, when they appear in royal palace reliefs. The Seven are depicted as wearing long, open robes and tall cylindrical headdresses with feathered tops and frontal rows of horns.
They carry both an axe and a knife, together with a bow and quiver these being the attributes attributed to the Seven when – on a more domestic level their protective figurines are to be placed at prescribed locations around a dwelling.
Astronomically, the Seven were identified with the Pleiades, explaining the basis for their representation – by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, at the latest – with the symbol of seven dots or, on occasion, by seven stars.
The constellation Taurus (Latin for “the Bull”), one of the constellations of the zodiac, hosts two of the nearest open clusters to Earth, the Pleiades, also named the “Seven Sisters”, and the Hyades, both of which are visible to the naked eye.
The name “seven sisters” has been used for the Pleiades in the languages of many cultures, including indigenous groups of Australia, North America and Siberia. This suggests that the name may have a common ancient origin.
Taurus marked the point of vernal (spring) equinox in the Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age, from about 4000 BC to 1700 BC, after which it moved into the neighboring constellation Aries. The Pleiades were closest to the Sun at vernal equinox around the 23rd century BC.
Taurus is a large and prominent constellation in the northern hemisphere’s winter sky. It is one of the oldest constellations, dating back to at least the Early Bronze Age when it marked the location of the Sun during the spring equinox.
Its importance to the agricultural calendar influenced various bull figures in the mythologies of Ancient Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. A number of features exist that are of interest to astronomers.
The brightest member of this constellation is Aldebaran, designated α Tauri (Latinized to Alpha Tauri, abbreviated Alpha Tau, α Tau). Its name derives from al-dabarān, Arabic for “the follower”, probably from the fact that it follows the Pleiades during the nightly motion of the celestial sphere across the sky.
The Bull of Heaven
In early Mesopotamian art, the Bull of Heaven was closely associated with Inanna. One of the oldest depictions shows the bull standing before the goddess’ standard; since it has 3 stars depicted on its back (the cuneiform sign for “star-constellation”), there is good reason to regard this as the constellation later known as Taurus.
In ancient Mesopotamian mythology, the Bull of Heaven is a mythical beast fought by the hero Gilgamesh. The story of the Bull of Heaven has two different versions: one recorded in an earlier Sumerian poem and a later version in the standard Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh.
In the Sumerian poem, the Bull is sent to attack Gilgamesh by the goddess Inanna for reasons that are unclear. The more complete Akkadian account comes from Tablet VI of the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which Gilgamesh rejects the sexual advances of the goddess Ishtar, the East Semitic equivalent of Inanna, leading the enraged Ishtar to demand her father Anu for the Bull of Heaven, so that she may send it to attack Gilgamesh in Uruk.
Anu gives her the Bull and she sends it to attack Gilgamesh and his companion, the hero Enkidu, who slay the Bull together. After defeating the Bull, Enkidu hurls the Bull’s right thigh at Ishtar, taunting her. Enkidu tears off the bull’s hind part and hurls the quarters into the sky where they become the stars we know as Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.
Ursa Major (also known as the Great Bear) is a constellation in the northern sky, whose associated mythology likely dates back into prehistory. It is primarily known from the asterism of its main seven relatively bright stars comprising the “Big Dipper”, “the Wagon”, “Charles’s Wain” or “the Plough” (among others), with its stellar configuration mimicking the shape of the “Little Dipper”.
As many of its common names allude, its shape is said to resemble either a ladle, an agricultural plough or wagon; in the context of Ursa Major, they are commonly drawn to represent the hindquarters and tail of the Great Bear.
Ursa Major is visible throughout the year from most of the northern hemisphere, and appears circumpolar above the mid-northern latitudes. From southern temperate latitudes, the main asterism is invisible, but the southern parts of the constellation can still be viewed.
The general constellation outline often significantly features in numerous world cultures, and frequently is used as a symbol of the north. The asterism’s two brightest stars, named Dubhe and Merak (α Ursae Majoris and β Ursae Majoris), can be used as the navigational pointer towards the place of the current northern pole star, Polaris in Ursa Minor.
Ursa Minor (Latin: “Lesser Bear”, contrasting with Ursa Major), also known as the Little Bear, is a constellation in the Northern Sky. Like the Great Bear, the tail of the Little Bear may also be seen as the handle of a ladle, hence the North American name, Little Dipper: seven stars with four in its bowl like its partner the Big Dipper.
In the Babylonian star catalogues, Ursa Minor was known as Margiddaanna (“Wagon of Heaven”), also associated with the Earth mother goddess Damkina (“true wife”) or Damgalnuna (“great wife of the prince”), the consort of the god Enki. It is listed in the MUL.APIN catalogue, compiled around 1000 BC among the “Stars of Enlil”—that is, the northern sky.
Ninḫursaĝ, also known as Damgalnuna or Ninmah, was the ancient Sumerian mother goddess of the mountains, and one of the seven great deities of Sumer. She is principally a fertility goddess, and kings of Sumer were “nourished by Ninhursag’s milk”. She is the tutelary deity to several Sumerian leaders.
In creation texts, Ninmah (another name for Ninhursag) acts as a midwife whilst the mother goddess Nammu makes different kinds of human individuals from lumps of clay at a feast given by Enki to celebrate the creation of humankind. The mother goddess had many epithets including “womb goddess”, “midwife of the gods”, “mother of all children” and “mother of the gods”. In this role she is identified with Ki in the Enuma Elish.
Temple hymn sources identify her as the “true and great lady of heaven” (possibly in relation to her standing on the mountain). Sometimes her hair is depicted in an omega shape and at times she wears a horned head-dress and tiered skirt, often with bow cases at her shoulders. Frequently she carries a mace or baton surmounted by an omega motif or a derivation, sometimes accompanied by a lion cub on a leash.
The omega symbol is associated with the Egyptian cow goddess Hathor, and may represent a stylized womb. The symbol appears on very early imagery from Ancient Egypt. Hathor is at times depicted on a mountain, so it is likely that the two goddesses are connected.
According to Diogenes Laërtius, citing Callimachus, Thales of Miletus “measured the stars of the Wagon by which the Phoenicians sail”. Diogenes identifies these as the constellation of Ursa Minor, which for its reported use by the Phoenicians for navigation at sea were also named Phoinikē.
The tradition of naming the northern constellations “bears” appears to be genuinely Greek, although Homer refers to just a single “bear”. The original “bear” is thus Ursa Major, and Ursa Minor was admitted as second, or “Phoenician Bear” (Ursa Phoenicia, hence Phoenice) only later, according to Strabo due to a suggestion by Thales, who suggested it as a navigation aid to the Greeks, who had been navigating by Ursa Major.
In classical antiquity, the celestial pole was somewhat closer to Beta Ursae Minoris than to Alpha Ursae Minoris, and the entire constellation was taken to indicate the northern direction. Since the medieval period, it has become convenient to use Alpha Ursae Minoris (or “Polaris”) as the north star, even though it was still several degrees away from the celestial pole. Its New Latin name of stella polaris was coined only in the early modern period. The ancient name of the constellation is Cynosura. The origin of this name is unclear.
Because Ursa Minor consists of seven stars, the Latin word for “north” (i.e., where Polaris points) is septentrio, from septem (seven) and triones (oxen), from seven oxen driving a plough, which the seven stars also resemble. This name has also been attached to the main stars of Ursa Major.
The slaying of the Bull results in the gods condemning Enkidu to death, an event which catalyzes Gilgamesh’s fear for his own death, which drives the remaining portion of the epic. Some locate Gilgamesh as the neighboring constellation of Orion, facing Taurus as if in combat, while others identify him with the sun whose rising on the equinox vanquishes the constellation.
The Bull was identified with the constellation Taurus and the myth of its slaying may have held astronomical significance to the ancient Mesopotamians. Aspects of the story have been compared to later tales from the ancient Near East, including legends from Ugarit, the tale of Joseph in the Book of Genesis, and parts of the ancient Greek epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey.
In Babylonian astronomy, the constellation was listed in the MUL.APIN as GU.AN.NA, “The Bull of Heaven”. As this constellation marked the vernal equinox, it was also the first constellation in the Babylonian zodiac and they described it as “The Bull in Front”.
Alalu
The Akkadian name for the constellation Taurus was Alu. To the early Hebrews, Taurus was the first constellation in their zodiac and consequently it was represented by the first letter in their alphabet, Aleph.
Alalu is god in Hurrian mythology. He is considered to have housed the divine family, because he was a progenitor of the gods, and possibly the father of Earth. Scholars have pointed out the similarities between the Hurrian myth and the story from Greek mythology of Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus.
Alalu was a primeval deity of the Hurrian mythology. After nine years of reign, Alalu was defeated by Anu. Alaluʻs son Kumarbi also defeated Anu, biting and swallowing his genitals, hence becoming pregnant of three gods, among which Teshub who eventually defeated him. Alalu fled to the underworld.
The name “Alalu” was borrowed from Semitic mythology and is a compound word made up of the Semitic definite article al and the Semitic deity Alû. The -u at the end of the word is an inflectional ending; thus, Alalu may also occur as Alali or Alala depending on the position of the word in the sentence. He was identified by the Greeks as Hypsistos. He was also called Alalus.
The 7-dot glyph
The 7-dot glyph, (or globes) are first known in Mittanian art, (Turkey, or ancient Anatolia), but is possibly older. The 7-dot glyph was at first six dots surrounding a central dot; later two rows of 3-dots ended with a 7th as the finial.
It appears in the iconography of cylinder seals, and later on reliefs, or other motifs. With origins on cylinder seals, its meanings may come from paleohistory back to the 4th millennium BC, or even further into the 6th to 5th millennium with the origins of Europe, or Catal Huyuk in Anatolia.