What Would Conan Do?

It would be most satisfactory if we could have based our account of the oldesr form of Mesopotamian religion solely on evidence from its founding. However, that is not possible. It is not only that contemporary evidence is scanty - some temple plans, a few representations of deities and rites on seals and on reliefs - or that it is spotty, coming from a few sites only and telling little about the country as a whole, it is rather that it fails in what one had most hoped for, it fails to be self-evident.

The contemporary evidense is, unfortunately, only understandable and recognisable as religious evidence, through what we know of later times. at most it can attest to the early roots of later traditional forms. For any general impression of what powers were worshipped in the country as a whole, and for any attempt to visualize the form of such worship in detail, we must turn to the more fully documented survivals and try to discern what is old and original in them.

Fortunately, we may turn with some degree of confidense to the chief deities of the oldest ancient mesopotamian cities, for they, their temples, and their cult are likely to have their roots in the very founding of the settlements, as in Eridu where the Enki temple can be traced through rebuilding after rebuilding to the earliest beginnings.

The various city gods in whom the early settlers trusted appear to be in the basic economies characteristic of the region in which the cities were situted. Thus in the south we find a group of city gods closely related to marsh life and its primary economies, fishing and hunting: Enki, god of the fresh water and of vegetable and animal marsh life in Eridu in the west, and, in the east, Nanshe, goddess of fish; Dumuzi-abzu, the power to new life in the watery deep; and others in Nina and Kinirsha. Along the lower Euphrates deities of orchardsmen alternate with deities of cowherders. There lie the cities of Ningishzida, "Lord of the Good Tree"; Ninazu, "The Lord knowing the waters"; and Damu, "the child", power in the sap that rises in trees and bushes in the spring. But there are also the bull god Ningublaga, city god of Kiabrig; the bull god and moon god Nanna in Ur; and, in Kullab, Ninsuna, "lady of the wild cows," with her husband Lugalbanda. Farther north, in a half-circle around the central grassland of the Edin lie the cities of the sheepherders (Uruk, Bad-tibira, Umma, and Zabalam) with their chief deities, Dumuzi the shepherd and his bride Inanna. To the north and east lies cities of the farmers, Shurupak and Eresh, with grain goddesses like Ninlil, Ninshebargunu, and Ninurta, god of the thundershowers and of the plow. Under the local name of Ningirsu, Ninurta was worshipped also in Girsu to the southeast