| Ancient Mesopotamian religion |
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In Sumerian mythology, Anu (also An; from Sumerian 𒀭 An or En, = "Lord " or "sky, heaven") was a sky-god, the god of heaven, lord of constellations, king of gods, spirits and demons, and dwelt in the highest heavenly regions. It was believed that he had the power to judge those who had committed crimes [Saturn?], and that he had created the stars as soldiers to destroy the wicked. His attribute was the royal tiara. His attendant and minister of state was the god Ilabrat.
He was one of the oldest gods in the Sumerian pantheon and part of a triad including Enlil (god of the air) and Enki (god of water). He was called Anu by the later Akkadians in Babylonian culture. By virtue of being the first figure in a triad consisting of Anu, Enlil, and Enki (also known as Ea), Anu came to be regarded as the father and at first, king of the gods. Anu is so prominently associated with the E-anna temple in the city of Uruk (biblical Erech) in southern Babylonia that there are good reasons for believing this place to be the original seat of the Anu cult. If this is correct, then the goddess Inanna (or Ishtar) of Uruk may at one time have been his consort.[citation needed]
En = Lord (Haven or Sky)
En (lord) + Lil (Air)
En (lord) + Ki (Sweet Water/Earth)
En (lord) + Nana (moon): Ennana or Inana= Fertility (MoonChild, Khosnu)
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[hide]Sumerian religion[edit]
Anu had several consorts, the foremost being Ki (earth), Nammu, and Uras. By Ki he was the father of, among others, the Anunnaki gods. By Uras he was the father of Nin'insinna [Cow]. According to legends, heaven and earth were once inseparable until An and Ki bore Enlil, god of the air, who cleaved heaven and earth in two. An and Ki were, in some texts, identified as brother and sister being the children of Anshar and Kishar. Ki later developed into the Akkadian goddess Antu (also known as "Keffen Anu", "Kef", and "Keffenk Anum").[citation needed]
Anu existed in Sumerian cosmogony as a dome that covered the flat earth; Outside of this dome was the primordial body of water known as Tiamat (not to be confused with the subterranean Abzu).[1]
In Sumerian, the designation "An" was used interchangeably with "the heavens" so that in some cases it is doubtful whether, under the term, the god An or the heavens is being denoted. The Akkadians inherited An as the god of heavens from the Sumerian as Anu-, and in Akkadian cuneiform, the DINGIR character may refer either to Anum or to the Akkadian word for god, ilu-, and consequently had two phonetic values an and il. Hittite cuneiform as adapted from the Old Assyrian kept the an value but abandoned il.
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Nammu was the Goddess sea (Engur or Abzu) that gave birth to An (heaven) and Ki (earth) and the first gods, representing the Apsu, the fresh water ocean that the Sumerians believed lay beneath the earth, the source of life-giving water and fertility in a country with almost no rainfall.
Nammu is not well attested in Sumerian mythology. She may have been of greater importance prehistorically, before Enki took over most of her functions. An indication of her continued relevance may be found in the theophoric name of Ur-Nammu, the founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur. According to the Neo-Sumerian mythological text Enki and Ninmah, Enki is the son of An and Nammu. Nammu is the goddess who "has given birth to the great gods". It is she who has the idea of creating mankind, and she goes to wake up Enki, who is asleep in the Apsu, so that he may set the process going.[1]
The Atrahasis-Epos has it that Enlil requested from Nammu the creation of humans. And Nammu told him that with the help of Enki (her son) she can create humans in the image of gods.
Reay Tannahill in Sex in History (1980) singled out Nammu as the "only female prime mover" in the cosmogonic myths of antiquity.
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In Sumerian mythology, Nin-hur-sag (𒊩𒌆𒉺𒂅 Ninḫursag) or Ninkharsag[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] was a mother goddess of the mountains [breast, moon)[?] and one of the seven great deities of Sumer. She is principally a fertility goddess. Temple hymn sources identify her as the 'true and great lady of heaven' (possibly in relation to her standing on the mountain) and kings of Sumer were 'nourished by Ninhursag's milk'. Her hair is sometimes depicted in an omega shape, and she at times wears a horned head-dress and tiered skirt, often with bow cases at her shoulders, and not infrequently carries a mace or baton surmounted by an omega motif or a derivation, sometimes accompanied by a lion cub on a leash. She is the tutelary deity to several Sumerian leaders
Her symbol, resembling the Greek letter omega Ω, has been depicted in art from around 3000 BC, though more generally from the early second millennium. It appears on some boundary stones — on the upper tier, indicating her importance. The omega symbol is associated with the Egyptian cow goddess Hathor, and may represent a stylized womb.(Cresent ?? Moon??)
An
A
Alep
Apis [BULL]
Alpha
omega Ω
Hathor
Cresent
Moon
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An
Anu, (Akkadian), Sumerian An, Mesopotamian sky god and a member of the triad of deities completed by En+lil and Ea (En+ki). Like most sky gods, Anu, although theoretically the highest god, played only a small role in the mythology, hymns, and cults of Mesopotamia. He was the father not only of all the gods but also of evil spirits and demons, most prominently the demoness Lamashtu, who preyed on infants. Anu was also the god of kings and of the yearly calendar. He was typically depicted in a headdress with horns, a sign of strength.
His Sumerian counterpart, An, dates from the oldest Sumerian period, at least 3000 bc. Originally he seems to have been envisaged as a great bull, a form later disassociated from the god as a separate mythological entity, the Bull of Heaven, which was owned by An. His holy city was Ur + k (Er + ech), in the southern herding region, and the bovine imagery suggests that he belonged originally to the herders’ pantheon. In Akkadian myth Anu was assigned a consort, Antum (Antu), but she seems often to have been confused with Ishtar(In - nanna), the celebrated goddess of love
4 Primal [An, Ea, Lil ++(Nammu )]
Pair of 4 = 8 + Atum is Ennead ( Nummu or Jusas Tree) =10
Atum/Mu/
KhonSu
K (Earth) + Su (Air) =
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Wosret[pronunciation?], Wasret, or Wosyet meaning the powerful was an Egyptian goddess with a cult centre at Thebes. She was initially a localised guardian deity, whose cult rose widely to prominence during the stable twelfth dynasty when three pharaohs were named as her sons, for example, Senwosret (also spelled as Senusret) - the man (son) of Wosret.
She was rarely depicted, and no temples to her have been identified. One example of a depiction of Wosret is on the stela shown to the right where she is the figure farthest to the right.
When she was depicted, it was wearing a tall crown with the Was sceptre, which was related to her name, upon her head and carrying other weapons such as spears as well as a bow and arrows.
Wosret was later superseded by Mut and became an aspect of Hathor. She was also identified with the protection of the deity Horus, Isis' son, when he was young.
She was Amun's first wife (John Ray calls her "the theological equivalent of the girl next door"), and was replaced by Mut, although it is possible that Mut is simply a later name for Wosret.[1] On the stela above Amun is depicted to the left.
==Sar -wo-seti River?
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Iusaset (/juːˈsæsɛt/; "the great one who comes forth") or Iusaas /aɪˈjuːsəs/ is the name of a primal goddess in Ancient Egyptian religion. She also is described as "the grandmother of all of the deities". This allusion is without any reference to a grandfather, so there might have been a very early, but now lost, myth with parthenogenesis as the means of the birth of the deities from the region where her cult arose near the delta of the Nile. Many alternative spellings of her name include Iusaaset, Juesaes, Ausaas, and Jusas, as well as in GreekSaosis /ˌseɪˈoʊsɨs/.
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The creation account of Heliopolis relates that from the primeval waters represented by Nun, a mound appeared (Shiva Linga) on which the self-begotten deity Atum sat. Bored and alone, Atum spat or, according to other stories, masturbated, producing Shu, representing the air and Tef -nut, representing moisture. Some versions however have Atum—identified with Ra—father Shu and Tefnut with Iusaaset, who is accordingly sometimes described as a "shadow" in this pesedjet.
In turn, Shu and Tefnut mated and brought forth Geb, representing the earth, and Nut, representing the nighttime sky. Because of their initial closeness, Geb and Nut engaged in continuous copulation until Shu separated them, lifting Nut into her place in the sky. The children of Geb and Nut were the sons Osiris and Set and the daughters Isis and Nephthys, which in turn formed couples.---
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Shu
Shu (Shash = Inspired Air) - Va (Vayuu=Air) = Shiva
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Ea, (Akkadian), Sumerian En+ki, Mesopotamian god of water and a member of the triad of deities completed by Anu (Sumerian: An) and Enlil. From a local deity worshiped in the city of Eridu, Ea evolved into a major god, Lord of Apsu (also spelled Abzu), the fresh waters beneath the earth (although En+ki means literally “lord of the earth”). In the Sumerian myth “Enki and the World Order,” Enki is said to have fixed national boundaries and assigned gods their roles. According to another Sumerian myth Enki is the creator, having devised men as slaves to the gods. In his original form, as Enki, he was associated with semen and amniotic fluid, and therefore with fertility. He was commonly represented as a half-goat, half-fish creature, from which the modern astrological figure for Capricorn is derived.
Solid (ki) , Earth + An, Heaven, ((Air or Gas) = Liquid Water, Semen = Male Water
Ea, the Akkadian counterpart of Enki, was the god of ritual purification: ritual cleansing waters were called “Ea’s water.”= [Baptism] Ea governed the arts of sorcery and incantation. In some stories he was also the form-giving god, and thus the patron of craftsmen and artists; he was known as the bearer of culture. In his role as adviser to the king, Ea was a wise god although not a forceful one. In Akkadian myth, as Ea’s character evolves, he appears frequently as a clever mediator who could be devious and cunning. He is also significant in Akkadian mythology as the father of Marduk, the national god of Babylonia.
Ennead = Anum =Mound = Shiva Linga =Male Princicple out of Water = Baptism =Born
Nammu >> (Ninhursag-Ki (Earth)+ An(sky, soul))
Before Inanna/Ishtar, the Goddess of Love and War, and Enheduanna´s writings, the most powerful image of the Divine Feminine in Mesopotamia was Ninhursag-Ki. She is the daughter of Nammu, the Goddess of the Primeval Sea, in whose womb She was conceived together with An, the Skyfather. She and Anu awoke to life in each other´s arms within the embrace Nammu the Sea (Creation Myth, South or Eridu Model). Samuel Noah Kramer (History Begins at Sumer, 1981) believes Her name was originally Ki, or Earth (land),
Ki is therefore first the sister-beloved of Anu, the Sky, and both within this context, or the Eridu Creation Model, the most ancient in Mesopotamia, are the parents of all the Great Gods, the Igigi and the Anunnaki.
She is known by many names, such as Ninmah (the exalted Lady), Aruru (in the Epic of Gilgamesh). Nintur, Belet-ili, Mami, Fashioner of All, Mother of the Gods, Mother of all Children, etc.
As the Earth in bloom, Ki takes up the name of Ninhursag, who also presides over the stony hills and this is the reason why many scholars combine the two names as one, a choice I also have made my own. An explanation for the name Ninhursag is given in the myth Lugal-E, or the Exploits of Ninurta, when the young Farmer God turned into Warrior calls the Great Creatrix so for Lady of the Foothills or Lady of the Stony Ground.
NINHURSAG-KI AS THE FIRST BELOVED OF THE GREAT GODS
We meet Ninhursag-Ki as the beloved of Anu first, when the first Divine Couple joined to conceive all the Great Gods, the Igigi and the Anunnaki. Then, when Earth (Ki) was separated from the Skies (Anu), we meet Her again in the introduction to the Dispute of Summer and Winter, where we are told that Enlil joined with the foothills (hursag) to engender Summer (Emesh) and Winter (Enten). As the consort of Enlil, She is the mother of Ninurta or Ningirsu. Ninurta, by the way, can be considered the favorite amongst Her children in myth, and the young god addresses Her with terms of endearment such as Ninmah, or August Lady. We need to point out that parallel to the tradition that places Ninhursag as the spouse of Enlil runs another more common one according to which She was his sister and Ninlil Enlil´s consort. I tend to prefer the latter.
Ninhursag´s most constant and creative partner, or better still, savy contender in myth is Enki/Ea, the God of the Fertilizing Waters of the Deep, Magick and all Crafts. Their relationship is passionate with lots of reciprocal happy banter, and somehow Enki almost always graciously defer to Ninhursag. Together, they form one of the most passionate, rich and interesting couples in Mesopotamian myth and religion, and their relationship clearly tells us of a time where gender and Sex balance was much more than scholarship allow us to see.
To better understand how Ninhursag and Enki relate to each other, it is important to take into account that our Soul Ancestors also saw Enki as the primeval conception of Form very much along the lines of the concept of archetypes, which can be described as the Idea or Mental Conception of all forms that may exist. Thus, Enki contains the Ideas of all There is, and as such He is the Magician and Transformer of all things and beings in Nature.
Ninhursag-ki, on the other hand, is the Earth Mother, in whose womb all precious things grow: from the Great Gods and Goddesses, metals, and beasts to all that blossoms. We can therefore understand Enki´s relationship to Ninhursag in the light of the oldest conception of alchemy, where the Goddess is the Living Earth or Prima Materia and that grows and transforms in combinations of all sorts, whereas Enki is Her Beloved Artisan, the Shaman, Magician and Priest.
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Uraš or Urash, in Sumerian mythology is a goddess of earth, and one of the consorts of the sky god Anu. She is the mother of the goddess Ninsun and a grandmother of the hero Gilgamesh.
However, Uras may only have been another name for Antum, Anu's wife.[1] The name Uras even became applied to Anu himself, and acquired the meaning "heaven".[1]Ninurta also was apparently called Uras in later times.[2]
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In Sumerian mythology, Ninsun or Ninsuna ("lady wild cow") is a goddess, best known as the mother of the legendary hero Gilgamesh, and as the tutelary goddess ofGudea of Lagash. Her parents are the deities Anu and Uras.
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Lahmu, meaning "hairy", is the name of a protective and beneficent deity, the first-born son of Abzu and Tiamat. He and his sister Laḫamu are the parents of Anshar and Kishar, the sky father and earth mother, who birthed the gods of the Mesopotamian Pantheon. Laḫmu is depicted as a bearded man with a red sash-usually with three strands- and four to six curls on his head. He is often associated with the Kusarikku or "Bull-Man." In Sumerian times Laḫmu may have meant "the muddy one". Lahmu guarded the gates of the Abzu temple of Enki at Eridu. He and his sister Laḫamu are primordial deities in the Babylonian Epic of Creation Enuma Elis and Lahmu may be related to or identical with "Lahamu", one of Tiamat's creatures in that epic.
Some scholars, such as William F. Albright,[citation needed] have speculated that the name of Bethlehem ("house of lehem") originally referred to a Canaanite fertility deity cognate with Laḫmu and Laḫamu, rather than to the Canaanite word lehem, "bread".[1] See Bethlehem.
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Assyro-Babylonian religion[edit]
The doctrine once established remained an inherent part of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion and led to the more or less complete disassociation of the three gods constituting the triad from their original local limitations. An intermediate step between Anu viewed as the local deity of Uruk, Enlil as the god of Nippur, and Ea as the god of Eridu is represented by the prominence which each one of the centres associated with the three deities in question must have acquired, and which led to each one absorbing the qualities of other gods so as to give them a controlling position in an organized pantheon. For Nippur we have the direct evidence that its chief deity, En-lil, was once regarded as the head of the Sumerian pantheon. The sanctity and, therefore, the importance of Eridu remained a fixed tradition in the minds of the people to the latest days, and analogy therefore justifies the conclusion that Anu was likewise worshipped in a centre which had acquired great prominence.
The summing-up of divine powers manifested in the universe in a threefold division represents an outcome of speculation in the schools attached to the temples of Babylonia, but the selection of Anu, Enlil (and later Marduk), and Ea for the three representatives of the three spheres recognized, is due to the importance which, for one reason or the other, the centres in which Anu, Enlil, and Ea were worshipped had acquired in the popular mind. Each of the three must have been regarded in his centre as the most important member in a larger or smaller group, so that their union in a triad marks also the combination of the three distinctive pantheons into a harmonious whole.
In the astral theology of Babylonia and Assyria, Anu, Enlil, and Ea became the three zones of the ecliptic, the northern, middle and southern zone respectively. The purely theoretical character of Anu is thus still further emphasized, and in the annals and votive inscriptions as well as in the incantations and hymns, he is rarely introduced as an active force to whom a personal appeal can be made. His name becomes little more than a synonym for the heavens in general and even his title as king or father of the gods has little of the personal element in it. A consort Antum (or as some scholars prefer to read, Anatum) is assigned to him, on the theory that every deity must have a female associate. But Anu spent so much time on the ground protecting the Sumerians he left her in Heaven and then met Innin, whom he renamed Innan, or, "Queen of Heaven". She was later known as Ishtar. Anu resided in her temple the most, and rarely went back up to Heaven. He is also included in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and is a major character in the clay tablets.
The Abzu (Cuneiform: 𒍪 𒀊, ZU.AB; Sumerian: abzu; Akkadian: apsû) also called engur, (Cuneiform:𒇉, LAGAB×HAL; Sumerian: engur; Akkadian: engurru) literally,ab='water' (or 'semen') zu='to know' or 'deep' was the name for fresh water from underground aquifers that was given a religious fertilizing quality in Sumerian and Akkadian mythology. Lakes, springs, rivers, wells, and other sources of fresh water were thought to draw their water from the abzu.
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In Sumerian culture[edit]
In the city of Eridu, Enki's temple was known as E2-abzu (house of the cosmic waters) and was located at the edge of a swamp, an abzu.[1] Certain tanks of holy water in Babylonian and Assyrian temple courtyards were also called abzu (apsû).[2] Typical in religious washing, these tanks were similar to the washing pools of Islamicmosques, or the baptismal font in Christian churches.
In Sumerian cosmology[edit]
The Sumerian god Enki (Ea in the Akkadian language) was believed to have lived in the abzu since before human beings were created. His wife Damgalnuna, his mother Nammu, his advisor Isimud and a variety of subservient creatures, such as the gatekeeper Lahmu, also lived in the abzu.
As a deity[edit]
Abzu (apsû) is depicted as a deity only in the Babylonian creation epic, the Enûma Elish, taken from the library of Assurbanipal (c 630 BCE) but which is about 500 years older. In this story, he was a primal being made of fresh water and a lover to another primal deity, Tiamat, who was a creature of salt water. The Enuma Elish begins:
See also[edit]
See also[edit]
 | Wikisource has the text of the1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Anu. |