Review article
https://doi.org/10.17234/RadoviZHP.56.15
Sumerian Cities and their Deities: The Story of the Oldest Southern Mesopotamian Cities through Archaeology and Mythology (Summary)
Jasmina Osterman
Abstract
Southern Mesopotamia is one of the areas where the oldest evidence of complex, hierarchically organized life in individual proto-urban centers is found. It took about two thousand years from these initial signs of urban life to the formation of a true urban center – a city.
According to Sumerian tradition, Eridu was the first city to emerge from the primordial waters and to which a kingdom descended from the heavens. The oldest temple of southern Mesopotamia was found there. The stratigraphy of this sanctuary consists of 19 layers, the oldest of which date back to around 5500 BC. The foundations of the first cult building were found in the lowest layer, above which the most important city sanctuary was built continuously for thousands of years. In ancient Mesopotamia, the city was primarily the home of its god, and Eridu was associated with the god Enki. He is described in most myths as the god responsible for the forces of nature, vegetation, and animal reproduction. Enki was the original guardian of the tablets of fate and the divine gifts of civilization (me), the god who fertilizes the world and numerous goddesses, and determines the order of the world. Although the temple at Eridu was a place of pilgrimage until the 6th century BC, the city had probably disappeared by the Uruk period.
About two thousand years after the construction of that first temple, another city took over the leading role, Uruk. The oldest confirmations of the complex organization of life were found there, which today, as in the past, are exclusively linked to the City. The first written documents were excavated there, on the basis of which it is possible to reconstruct the meticulously elaborated administration and management of the economic life of the city. In the area of the Eana temple complex, a stratigraphy of 18 layers has been established. Archaeological material testifies to the uninterrupted continuity of almost all characteristic forms of culture, which point to the slow development from an initially average rural center to the largest urban center of the region and beyond. Uruk, unlike Eridu, remained an important urban center within the Seleucid kingdom.
It was the home of the goddess Inanna. The Sumerian goddess Inanna and her Semitic counterparts (Ishtar, Astarte, etc.) were certainly the most revered deities of the ancient East. As the goddess of love, fertility, and war, her domain included the fertility of both the land and people. The warrior element was added later when the fertility of the land was no longer sufficient for the well-being of the community. The deity, whose domain included fertility and war, inevitably became an integral part of the royal ideology.
Inanna is mentioned alongside Enki in only a few myths, the most important of which is Inanna and Enki. It describes Inanna’s visit to Enki when, after a feast, Enki, under the influence of alcohol, gives all the me-principles to Inanna, who transfers them to her temple in Uruk. This was the mythological explanation of how the gifts of civilized, urban life, which the gods first gave to the god Enki in Eridu, were transferred to Uruk.
Numerous dynasties took turns ruling over southern Mesopotamia. After the Sumerians came the Akkadians, then the 3rd Ur dynasty, then the Amorites, Kassites, Assyrians and finally the Chaldeans. All of them took over the existing tradition and further modified it, but the memory of the oldest temple “in the world” that was the first to receive the divine gifts of civilization remained. The importance of the goddess whose city, according to today’s standards, was truly the first urban center of southern Mesopotamia was also maintained.
Keywords
Sumer, urbanization, Eridu, Uruk, Enki, Inanna
Hrčak ID:
330255
URI
Publication date:
22.12.2024.
Visits: 1.291 *