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To the Mesopotamians, these ancient deities gave birth to the universe and maintained both the physical and spiritual world around them. The Mesopotamian gods supported the social structure of the first civilizations and cared for the people in their day-to-day lives.
Ishkur, later known as Adad or Hadad (from the root *hdd, "to thunder" [ 166 ]), was the Mesopotamian god of storms and rain. [ 161 ] In northern Mesopotamia, where agriculture relied heavily on rainfall, he was among the most prominent deities, and even in the south he ranked among the "great gods." [ 167 ]
All in all, the gods and goddesses of ancient Mesopotamia were among the most central aspects of Mesopotamian religious beliefs. They held sway over politics, socioeconomics, laws, education, and one’s public and private lives.
Mesopotamian religion, beliefs and practices of the Sumerians and Akkadians, and their successors, the Babylonians and Assyrians, who inhabited ancient Mesopotamia (now in Iraq) in the millennia before the Christian era. These religious beliefs and practices form a single stream of tradition.
Learn the fascinating origin story, meaning and symbols of 12 famous gods and goddess from ancient Mesopotamia.
Mesopotamian religion - Gods, Demons, Beliefs: The gods were, as mentioned previously, organized in a polity of a primitive democratic cast. They constituted, as it were, a landed nobility, each god owning and working an estate—his temple and its lands—and controlling the city in which it was located.
The gods of Mesopotamia are first evidenced during the Ubaid Period (c. 5000-4100 BCE) when temples were raised to them, but their worship developed during the Uruk Period (4100-2900 BCE) and their names appear in writing beginning in the Early Dynastic Period (2900-2334 BCE) in Sumer alongside the development of the ziggurat.
Among the most important of the many Mesopotamian gods were Anu, the god of heaven; Enki, the god of water; and Enlil, the “Lord of the Air,” or the wind god. Deities were often associated with particular cities.
The people of Mesopotamia relied on their gods for every aspect of their lives, from calling on Kulla, the god of bricks, to help in the laying of the foundation of a house, to petitioning the goddess Lama for protection, and so developed many tales concerning these deities.
From Nammu and An to Nanna and Utu, the Sumerians, who lived in ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) around 4,000 to 2,000 BCE, had a rich pantheon of gods and goddesses that played important roles in their religious beliefs and daily life.