Ideas and Quotes from Riveting Reads :

A HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS : FROM THE STONE AGE TO THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES - BY MIRCEA ELIADE

III. The Mesopotamian Religions

The Sumerian texts, the earliest written documents going back to third millennium, are a rich source of religious beliefs. The people who spoke Sumerian ( a non-Semitic language)  settled in Lower Mesopotamia and toward the middle of  the third millennium, nomads from Syrian desert speaking the semitic language Akkadian, overrun Sumerian cities. Though the dominant Akkadians absorbed much of the defeated culture, the Sumerian and Akkadian religious identities are different.

From Sumerian texts we learn of their triad of the great gods : An (Meaning sky, a uranian god), En-lil ( "Great Mount", the god of atmosphere, and En-ki ( "Lord of the Earth"). The goddess Nammu, represented by the primordian sea, gave birth to the Sky and Earth (the masculine and feminine principles) and brought forth all the gods. 

There are four main Sumerian myths regarding the origin of man. According to two of them, man partakes of the divine substance. This is reinterpreted in the Babylonian cosmogenic poem, Enuma elish.

" The cosmic order is continually troubled, first of all by the Great Serpent, which threatens to reduce the world to chaos, and then by men's crimes, faults, and errors, which must be expiated and purged by the help of various rites. "

In the flood myth of Sumerians and Akkadians, a single pious man is saved named Zisudra and Utnapishtim, respectively. Divinized and granted immortality, Zisudra is transported to the land of Dilmun and Utnapishtim to the "mouth of the rivers". "In a large number of variants, the flood is the result of the sins (or ritual faults) of human beings : sometimes it simply results from the wish of a divine being to put an end to mankind … we find that the chief causes lie at once in the sins of men and the decrepitude of the world. By the mere fact that it exists -- that is, that it lives and produces -- the cosmos gradually deteriorates and ends by falling into decay."

The triad of Sumerian planetary gods consisted of Nnna-Suen (the Moon), Utu (The Sun), and Inanna, goddess of the planet Venus and love. Inanna was "homologized with the Akkadian Ishtar and later with Ashtarte. In her heydey, she was worshipped as goddess of love and war, i.e., of life and death. She marries the shepherd Dumuzi (Akkadian : Tammuz) and brings him misfortune. In her desire to replace Ereshkigal, her elder sister ruling over the underworld, Inanna descends into the netherworld and is killed by Ereshkigal's glance of death. All reproduction ends on earth that En-lil decided to bring back Inanna. Inanna revives with the food and water of life but is required to bring back a replacement if she wants to leave the underworld for good. The demons who accompany her are prevented from from dragging away her faithful servants. When Inanna comes across her consort on the throne, richly clad and without lamenting for her, she asks him to be taken away in her place. Later, it is decided that he has to spend only six months underworld, as her sister will take his place during the other six months.

" The myth relates the defeat of the goddess of love and fertility in her attempt to conquer the kingdom of Ereshkigal, that is, to abolish death. In consequence, men, as well as certain gods, have to accept the alternation of life/death."

The semitic influence in Sumerian cities is seen in the rise of universal divinities like Marduk of Babylon and the Assyrian Assur as well as in the importance of personal prayers and penitential psalms (the personal element in religious experience).

"O goddess whom i do not know, great are my sins ..... Man knows nothing ; whether he is committing sin or doing good, he does not even know..."

The important creations of Akkadian religion include Enuma elish (exalting Marduk over Tiamat, Apsu, and Kingu ) and the Epic of Gilgamesh. 

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