Imge Credit: Detail of a Map from the Student Bible Atlas by Tim Dowley:

On the above map, Mesopotamia is the upper area that is colored dark yellow. Most scholars believe that Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden were located in the Mesopotamian area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Abraham. the Father of the Israelites was originally fom Ur, which is marked near the Persian Gulf. Abraham and his immediate family worshipped one God, the God who created the believed created the world, including the Garden of Eden, early Biblical History reflects that there was a continual stuggle against the polytheistic religions and their idols. In this post, I will tell you a bit about the polytheistic deities that were worshipped in ancient Mesopotamia.

“Deities were almost always depicted wearing horned caps,^[6][7] consisting of up to seven superimposed pairs of ox-horns.^[8] They were also sometimes depicted wearing clothes with elaborate decorative gold and silver ornaments sewn into them.^[7]he

“The ancient Mesopotamians believed that their deities lived in Heaven,^[9] but that a god’s statue was a physical embodiment of the god himself.^[9][10] As such, cult statues were given constant care and attention^[11][9] and a set of priests were assigned to tend to them.^[12] These priests would clothe the statues^[10] and place feasts before them so they could “eat”.^[11][9] A deity’s temple was believed to be that deity’s literal place of residence.^[13] The gods had boats, full-sized barges which were normally stored inside their temples^[14] and were used to transport their cult statues along waterways during various religious festivals.^[14]

“The gods also had chariots, which were used for transporting their cult statues by land.^[15] Sometimes a deity’s cult statue would be transported to the location of a battle so that the deity could watch the battle unfold.^[15] The major deities of the Mesopotamian pantheon were believed to participate in the “assembly of the gods”,^[6] through which the gods made all of their decisions.^[6] This assembly was seen as a divine counterpart to the semi-democratic legislative system that existed during the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 BC – c. 2004 BC).^{[6] …T}

The Number Seven

The number seven was extremely important in ancient Mesopotamian cosmology.^[41][42] In Sumerian religion, the most powerful and important deities in the pantheon were sometimes called the “seven gods who decree”:^[43] An, Enlil, Enki, Ninhursag, Nanna, Utu, and Inanna.^[44] Many major deities in Sumerian mythology were associated with specific celestial bodies:^[45] Inanna was believed to be the planet Venus,^[46][47] Utu was believed to be the Sun,^[48][47] and Nanna was the Moon.^[49][47] However, minor deities could be associated with planets too, for example Mars was sometimes called Simut,^[50] and Ninsianna was a Venus deity distinct from Inanna in at least some contexts.^[51]

^An

“An (in Sumerian), later known as Anu (in Akkadian),^[55] was the supreme God and “prime mover in creation”, embodied by the sky.^[52] He is the first and most distant ancestor,^[52] theologically conceived as the God of Heaven in its “transcendental obscurity”.^[56] In some theological systems all of the deities were believed to be the offspring of An and his consort Ki.^[52][57][24] However Anu was himself described as the descendant of various primordial beings in various texts (god lists, incantations, etc.), and Enlil was often equipped with his own elaborate family tree separate from Anu’s.^[58] While An was described as the utmost god,^[59][52] at least by the time of the earliest written records the main god in terms of actual cult was Enlil.^[60][61] Anu’s supremacy was therefore “always somewhat nominal” according to Wilfred G. Lambert.^[62] Luludanitu, a multicolored stone (red, white and black) was associated with him.^[63]

Enki

“Enki, later known as Ea, and also occasionally referred to as Nudimmud or Ninšiku, was the god of the subterranean freshwater ocean,^[74] who was also closely associated with wisdom, magic, incantations, arts, and crafts.^[74] He was either the son of An, or the goddess Nammu,^[74] and is the former case the twin brother of Ishkur.^[74] His wife was the goddess Damgalnuna (Ninhursag)^[74] and his children include the gods Marduk, Asarluhi, Enbilulu, the sage Adapa, and the goddess Nanshe.^[74] His sukkal, or minister, was the two-faced messenger god Isimud.^[74] Enki was the divine benefactor of humanity,^[74] who helped humans survive the Great Flood.^[74] In Enki and the World Order, he organizes “in detail every feature of the civilised world.”^[74] In Inanna and Enki, he is described as the holder of the sacred mes, the tablets concerning all aspects of human life.^[74] He was associated with jasper.^[63][73]

Marduk

“Marduk is the national god of the Babylonians.^[76] The expansion of his cult closely paralleled the historical rise of Babylon^[76][71] and, after assimilating various local deities, including a god named Asarluhi, he eventually came to parallel Enlil as the chief of the gods.^[76][71] Some late sources go as far as omitting Enlil and Anu altogether, and state that Ea received his position from Marduk.^[39] His wife was the goddess Sarpānītu.^[76]

Ashur

Ashur was the national god of the Assyrians.^[78] It has been proposed that originally he was the deification of the city of Assur,^[79] or perhaps the hill atop which it was built.^[80] He initially lacked any connections to other deities, having no parents, spouse or children.^[81] The only goddess related to him, though in an unclear way, was Šerua.^[81] Later he was syncretized with Enlil,^[82][72] and as a result Ninlil was sometimes regarded as his wife, and Ninurta and Zababa as his sons.^[81] Sargon II initiated the trend of writing his name with the same signs as that of Anshar, a primordial being regarded as Anu’s father in the theology of Enuma Elish.^[72] He may have originally been a local deity associated with the city of Assur,^[78] but, with the growth of the Assyrian Empire,^[78] his cult was introduced to southern Mesopotamia.^[83] In Assyrian texts Bel was a title of Ashur, rather than Marduk.^[84]
Nabu

“Nabu was the Mesopotamian god of scribes and writing.^[85] His wife was the goddess Tashmetu^[85] and he may have been associated with the planet Mercury,^[85] though the evidence has been described as “circumstantial” by Francesco Pomponio.^[87] He later became associated with wisdom and agriculture.^[85] In the Old Babylonian and early Kassite periods his cult was only popular in central Mesopotamia (Babylon, Sippar, Kish, Dilbat, Lagaba), had a limited extent in peripheral areas (Susa in Elam, Mari in Syria) and there is little to no evidence of it from cities such as Ur and Nippur, in sharp contrast with later evidence.^[88] In the first millennium BCE he became one of the most prominent gods of Babylonia.^[88] In Assyria his prominence grew in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE.^[86] In Kalhu and Nineveh he eventually became more common in personal names than the Assyrian head god Ashur.^[86] He also replaced Ninurta as the main god of Kalhu.^[86] In the Neo-Babylonian periods some inscriptions of kings such as Nebuchadnezzar II indicate that Nabu could take precedence even over the supreme Babylonian god Marduk.^[86] His cult also spread beyond Mesopotamia, to cities such as Palmyra, Hierapolis, Edessa or Dura Europos,^[89] and to Egypt, as far as Elephantine, where in sources from the late first millennium BCE he is the most frequently attested foreign god next to Yahweh.^[89]

Nanna – god of the Moon

“Nanna, Enzu or Zuen (“Lord of Wisdom”) in Sumerian, later altered as Suen and Sin in Akkadian,^[90] is the ancient Mesopotamian god of the Moon.^[49] He was the son of Enlil and Ninlil and one of his most prominent myths was an account of how he was conceived and how he made his way from the Underworld to Nippur.^[49] A theological system where Nanna, rather than Enlil, was the king of gods, is known from a text from the Old Babylonian period;^[91] in the preserved fragment Enlil, Anu, Enki and Ninhursag served as his advisers, alongside his children Utu and Inanna.^[35] Other references to Nanna holding such a position are known from personal names and various texts, with some going as far as stating he holds “Anuship and Enlilship,” and Wilfred G. Lambert assumes that he was regarded as the supreme god by his clergy in Ur and Harran. [Abraham was from Ur and before he moved to Canaan, he lived in Harran.]

Utu – god of the Sun

“Utu, later known as Shamash, is the ancient Mesopotamian god of the Sun,^[92] who was also revered as the god of truth, justice, and morality.^[93] He was the son of Nanna and the twin brother of Inanna. Utu was believed to see all things that happen during the day^[93] and to aid mortals in distress.^[93] Alongside Inanna, Utu was the enforcer of divine justice.^[94]

Ishtar – goddess of Love and War

“Inanna, later known as Ishtar, is “the most important female deity of ancient Mesopotamia at all periods.”^[95] She was the Sumerian goddess of love, sexuality, prostitution, and war.^[97] She was the divine personification of the planet Venus, the morning and evening star.^[46] Accounts of her parentage vary;^[95] in most myths, she is usually presented as the daughter of Nanna and Ningal,^[98] but, in other stories, she is the daughter of Enki or An along with an unknown mother.^[95] The Sumerians had more myths about her than any other deity.^[99][100] Many of the myths involving her revolve around her attempts to usurp control of the other deities’ domains.^[101] Her most famous myth is the story of her descent into the Underworld,^[102] in which she attempts to conquer the Underworld, the domain of her older sister Ereshkigal,^[102] but is instead struck dead by the seven judges of the Underworld.^{[103][104][105]} She is only revived due to Enki’s intervention^{[103][104][105]} and her husband Dumuzid is forced to take her place in the Underworld.^[106][107] Alongside her twin brother Utu, Inanna was the enforcer of divine justice.^[94]

Ninhursag

“Ninhursag (“Mistress of the mountain ranges”^[109]), also known as Damgalnuna, Ninmah, Nintur^[110] and Aruru,^[111] was the Mesopotamian mother goddess. Her primary functions were related to birth (but generally not to nursing and raising children, with the exception of sources from early Lagash) and creation.^[112] Descriptions of her as “mother” weren’t always referring to motherhood in the literal sense or to parentage of other deities, but sometimes instead represented her esteem and authority as a senior deity, similar to references to major male deities such as Enlil or Anu as “fathers.”^[113] Certain mortal rulers claimed her as their mother,^[108] a phenomenon recorded as early as during the reign of Mesilim of Kish (c. 2700 BCE).^[114] She was the wife of Enki,^[108] though in some locations (including Nippur) her husband was Šulpae instead.^[115] Initially no city had Ninhursag as its tutelary goddess.^[116] Later her main temple was the E-Mah in Adab,^[108] originally dedicated to a minor male deity, Ašgi.^[117] She was also associated with the city of Kesh,^[108] where she replaced the local goddess Nintur,^[111] and she was sometimes referred to as the “Bēlet-ilī of Kesh” or “she of Kesh”.^[108] It is possible her emblem was a symbol similar to later Greek letter omega.^[118]

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