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ANU
APSU
ANSHAR
BAAL-HADDAD
EA Also ENKI
EL
ENLIL
ERESHKIGAL
GILGAMESH
ISHTAR
KATHIRAT
KINGU
MARDUK
MOT
NEBO Also NABU
NINHURSAG Also MAAT
SHAMASH Also BABBAR, UTU The sun
SIN
SKILLFUL AND PERCIPIENT ONE
TAMMUZ Also DUMUZI
TIAMAT
YAMM THE SEA Also PRINCE SEA, OCEAN-CURRENT THE RULER
ANAT (Canannite)
Goddess of love and war. Female counterpart of Baal-Haddad. Anat often aids Baal-Haddad in his
battles and takes his part in defeat. ATHIRAT In the Bible, ASHERAH Mother of the gods,
female counterpart of El. Athirat persuaded El to give his blessing to a temple for
Baal-Haddad after his great victory over Sea, the god of chaos. Corresponds to Ishtar.
The god of the sky, from whence the sun shines and the rain falls. Lord of all, the
fountainhead of order in both the natural and supernatural worlds. The stars are his
warriors, the Milky Way his personal highway. Anu dwells exclusively in the celestial
heaven. Unapproachable, remote and otherwordly, he cares little about men and seldom
intervenes in their affairs.
The Abyss. The waters upon which the earth floats. When the gods were first created,
their noise disturbed Apsu, who complained to his mother, the great dragon Tiamat.
Tiamat made war on the gods and was slain by Marduk.
Father of Anu and all the other gods. His consort is his sister, Kishu. Anshar is
the male principle, Kishu the female principle. Anshar is the sky, Kishu the earth.
Anshar led the gods in the war against Tiamat.
"The Mighty," "He who mounts the clouds." Son of Dagon, the corn god. The executive
of the divine assembly. Baal-Haddad dies and rises again so that the world may live.
Baal-Haddad is the champion of divine Order against Chaos. LIghtening is his weapon,
and he can be found in storms and thunder. Defying Mot, the god of death, Baal-Haddad
was swallowed up by the god of death and taken to the underworld which Baal Haddad
laid waste after a terrible struggle. In the beginning of all things, Baal-Haddad warred
with and conquered Yamm the Sea, and so brought the unruly waters of Chaos under divine
authority and control. The term "Baal" (alternate spellings: Beel, Bel) is not a proper
name but a title. It means simply, "Lord." To know the proper name of a god was t possess
great power, and so the proper name was often kept secret from anyone who was not a
member of the priesthood. Many local and regional gods were therefore referred to simply
as "Lord" -- Baal. The Baal of the Bible is most often Baal Shamim, "Lord of the Skies."
In Carthage, a colony of the Phoenicians, the people worshipped Baal Hammon or Ammon, a
sky and fertility god whose symbol was the ram. The god of the Semitic nomad tribe of
Zebulon was the "Fly," or Beel-Zebul, Lord of Zebulon, often mistakenly called Beelzebub.
"Lord of the Sacred Eye." God of water, supreme god of magic and wisdom, patron of the
arts. An oracle. Ea is the god of fresh waters. Ea is portrayed as a goat with a fish's
tail or a human with water flowing from his shoulders. Mating with Ninhursag ("Lady
Mountain") he created the plants and gave men agriculture.
"The Bull," the Father of Men, the Kindly One, the Compassionate. Creator of all
things, greatest of all the gods, father of the divine family, head of the divine assembly.
The god of earth and wind. The master of men's fates. The god who dries up the flood
waters after the Tigris and Euphrates have overflowed their banks; who brings rain;
who fills the sails of ships and boats; who fetrilizes the palm blossoms. The god who
struggles against the suffering of the world. Enlil's power moves all; he is the active
principle which drives the earth. Enlil sent the flood which destroyed all mankind except
Utnapishtim and his family. Enlil can be found in the howling storm and the ruins and
ashes of war.
Goddess of the underworld, consort of Nergal. Some consider her a dark side or apect of
Ishtar. When Ishtar descended into the underworld to save Tammuz, Ereshkigal tricked her
into leaving some part of her clothing or insignias at each of the underworld's seven
gates as she passed through them. Standing naked at the seventh gate, Ishtar threw herself
on Ereshkigal; but like Samson shorn of his hair she was powerless. Ereshkigal confined
Ishtar in the underworld until the wily Ea contrived her release with a trick.
Like Hercules, a hero-god, two parts divine and one part human. The story of his adventures
survives in an epic poem on twelve tablets dating back to Akkadia in the middle of the
second millenium B.C. Gilgamesh fought and tamed the wild man Enkiddu. Despite the warnings
of the priests and ill omens from the sun god, Gilgamesh and Enkiddu set out upon a quest.
Enkiddu's death incited Gilgamesh to seek immortality, and after many adventures he found
at last Utnapishtim who survived the Great Flood and with his wife was granted eternal
life by the gods. Utnapishtim convinced Gilgamesh of the futility of immortality.
ISHTAR to the Sumerican, INANNA to the Egyptians, ASTARTE The greatest of all the mother
goddesses of the Mesopotamians. Goddess of fertility, goddess of sex, goddess of the moon,
goddess of war. Lady of heaven, lady of sorrow and battles. The great lover, the great
mother. The hero-god Gilgamesh spurned her, ensuring his death. Venus is her star, and
the lion is her cult animal. Ishtar's love is all consuming and even deadly. An Egyptian
sculpture portrays her nude, standing on a lion, and holding a lotus blossom (the symbol
of life) in her right hand. Ishtar's worship involved phallic symbols, sacred whores and
painted priests in women's clothing. At her shrine at Uruk the priestesses performed a
sexual rite in her honor. A priestess played the goddess; the priest who played the god
was slain. The Christians turned her into a demon, and she is mentioned as such in
Milton's PARADISE LOST.
"The Skillful Ones." Minor goddesses who preside over childbirth.
Tiamat's general in the war against the gods. Keeper of the tablets of destiny, which
hold the divine plan for all the cosmos. Ninhursag used Kingu's blood to make the first
man, and from this comes the demonic, rebellious aspect of human nature.
The great god of Babylon, King of Kings, Guardian of the Law, the Great Sorcerer,
the Great Healer, slayer of Tiamat. Marduk is Order fighting against Chaos, the
conflict from which all Creation emerges. Defeating Tiamat, Marduk brought order and
life to the world. When the tablets of destiny were seized from Kingu, Marduk fastened
to his own breast, and so brought control of the earth under the divine authority of
the gods. The stele of Hammurabi shows Marduk on his throne with a horned headdress,
giving Hammurabi his ring and sceptre. The Amorites saw Marduk as a god of spring and
sunlight, of herbs and trees.
The god of death who rules the underworld amid wreckage and blackness.
God of writing and speech, speaker for the gods. Nebo maintains records of men's deeds
and produces them for judgment after death. His symbol is the stylus. NERGAL God of the
underworld, mass destruction and plague, consort of Ereshkigal. Thrown out of heaven, he
stormed the underworld with fourteen demons until Ereshkigal consented to marry him.
"Lady Mountain." An earth mother. She mold the first man out of clay and brought him to
life with the blood of Kingu.
Son of the moon god Sin, brother and husband to Ishtar. The great god of justice. In
Summer, a god of divination. The enemy of darkness and all the evil darkness brings.
Every morning, scorpion-men throw open the gates of his great palace, and Shamash mounts
his chariot. He then crosses the sky from one horizon to the other, casting his rays
upon the earth like a net, seeing all the evils and wrongs of the world. Entering the
earth on the eastern horizon, Shamash travels through the underworld back to his palace.
Shamash requires justice of earthly kings and champions their subjects, especially the
poor.
The moon god. Wise and secretive, the enemy of all evil spirits. An old man with a long
beard who flies through the sky in his sailboat every night.
THE The divine artificer, patron of craftsmanship and magic.
The Skillful One made Baal-Haddad's weapons for the struggle against Yamm and built the temple
in which Anat and Baal-Haddad dwell.
God of the harvest. The god who dies and rises again. The love of Ishtar killed him, and
Ishtar fought Ereshkigal in the underworld to bring him back.
TIAMAT to the agnostics, LEVIATHAN Goddess of the primeval depths, the chaos from which
Marduk formed the world. She took the form of a dragon and swam in the primal waters.
Tiamat warred on the gods, spawning a brood of dragons, sphinxes, scorpion-men and
other demons and monsters for her army. Marduk slew her, defeating her with magic and
powerful winds. Splitting her in two, Marduk cast one half of Tiamat into the sky to
form the heavens and the other he cast down to form the earth.
God of primordial chaos, much like Tiamat and Coatlicue. Baal-Haddad's enemy. Before
the great combat with Baal-Haddad, Yamm terrified the divine assembly of gods and sent
emissaries to demand tribute from them. Part of the tribute he demanded was Baal-Haddad
as a slave. Infuriated, Baal-Haddad drove the emissaries from the assembly hall, lashing
their buttocks and depriving them of all dignity. So the war began.
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