Mesopotamian Religion

The world's first cities built their gods into towering temples and read destiny in the sky.

c. 3500 – 300 BCE · Sumer, Babylon, Assyria · Ancient Near East

Sumer, Babylon, and Assyria gave form to some of humanity's earliest written religion, with a pantheon of sky, storm, water, and city gods served in ziggurat temples. Its literature — the creation epic Enuma Elish, the flood narrative in Gilgamesh — and its law and divination traditions left a deep imprint on later Near Eastern cultures, including early Israelite religion.

Key figures

• Anu, Enlil, Enki
• Inanna / Ishtar
• Marduk of Babylon

Texts

• Enuma Elish
• Epic of Gilgamesh
• Temple hymns

Beliefs

• Humanity created to serve the gods
• Fate written and read in the heavens
• City-gods dwelling in temple-towers

Rituals

• Ziggurat temple offerings
• Divination from omens and livers
• New Year (Akitu) festival

Grew from

• Animism & Shamanism

Connections in the atlas

• George Smith
• The Code of Hammurabi
• Babylon: Esagila and the Etemenanki ziggurat
• Lamassu
• ? Was the "Baghdad battery" an ancient battery?
• Noah, Utnapishtim and the great flood
• Mylitta
• Exile to Babylon and return
• Faravahar
• Parallel texts: The forbidden fruit and the lost chance of immortality
• A tower to heaven
• The word Allah