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Cara2000
New Student/Teachers Apprentice
Posts: 20
(6/2/04 7:15 am)
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My favorite pantheon
Hi everyone
Born in Lebanon, I grew up on legends, and slept with tales of epics and stories of Gods and Goddesses, kings and queens, roaming lands of beauty, evergreens, terrifying deserts and of wars. I always mixed up my Mesopotamian pantheons, never really being able to separate them, Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian, and Acadian… I never could choose among them as they are altogether my favorites. Mesopotamia is the land that extended from Iraq to the Kurdish borders of Iran, the Persian Gulf, to turkey. It is what was Babylon, Assyria, Sumer, and extended at times to engulf the land of Canaan and Phoenicia. Mesopotamians believed in eternal return, a concept similar to reincarnation and they saw the relationship between heaven and earth as a never ending cycle.
The reason why the Gods and Goddesses in those pantheons are so similar is that they shared the same lands, the same people, in very similar cultures.
Around 1763 BC, Hammurabi governs Babylonia and the Sumerian south, conquers Ashur and ends the first Assyrian empire and took Babylon as his capital, destroys mari city on the euphrates; the new Babylonian kingdom, under nabuchadonozor, the chaldean invades Assyria and unifies Babylon around 689 BC. By 612 BC,
Babylonia conquers Assyria and Judah becomes a province of Babylonia by 587 BC; Jews are exiled to Babylonia as Babylonians also conquer Phoenicia.
Cyrus the Great of Persia conquers Babylonia absorbing it into the Persian Empire around 539 BC.
Most striking Goddess to me in the Sumerian/ Mesopotamian pantheon is Innana, lover and beloved. Goddess of love, fertility, and war, one tradition has her to be the daughter of the sky God Anu but a more persistent one makes her the child of Nanna the moon God. She is also called Ninnanna, queen of the sky, and Ninsianna, personifying the planet Venus. She travels to the realm of the dead and claims its ruling. However, her older sister Ereshkigal who rules the underworld sentences her to death. With Inanna's death, nature dies. She could be reborn only if another took her place. She chose her beloved Dumuzi. She is the primary female deity and the center of the pantheon. She rules the natural world and is both morning and evening star. She represents motherhood and the family, but she is also the harlot and temple prostitute. She governs lightning and also the dousing of fire. Her spirit is one of praise and gladness, but also dismay and sorrow. Her imagery usually portrays her as a winged female with weapons and armor, wearing an open robe, nude underneath. Her symbol is the eight-pointed star. The Acadians/babylonians called her Ishtar who ruled over love, sexuality, fertility, and healing as well as war and weaponry. In most of the myths concerning her, Ishtar is described as an evil, heartless, women who destroyed her mates and lovers. Her greatest lover, the farm god Tammuz, similar to Adonis dies so she went into the underworld to retrieve him. Her efforts were vain and she returned to the living world alone. She is one of Aphrodite's counterparts. Phoenicians called her Ashtaroth. She is also Astarte, Asherah, Ashnan… and Aruru, supreme image of the mother goddess, goddess of creation in Babylonian mythology who creates Enkidu from clay in the image of Anu, the sky God, God of the firmament and of the 'great above', son of the first pair of gods, Ansar and Kisar, descendant of Apsu and Tiamat, referred to as "the Father" and "King of the Gods",
Innana’s older sister, the Goddess Ereshkigal, is the Sumerian/Acadian Queen of the Underworld, dark and violent. Together with her consort Nergal she rules the no return land. Nergal was sent to her from heaven with an offering and they fell in love. When he leaves, she threatens in tears to revive the dead and send them to earth to outnumber the living, unless Nergal was returned to her forever. At last Nergal came storming down the stairs, broke down the seven gates and burst into her palace to wipe her tears.
Dumuzi, The Sumerian form of Tammuz, god of vegetation and fertility, and of the underworld is a Shepherd. He stands eternally at the gate of heaven. In Sumerian mythology, he is originally a mortal ruler whose marriage to Inanna ensured the fertility of the land and the fecundity of the womb. This marriage, however, according to one of the myths ends in tragedy when Innana is offended by her husband's unfeeling behavior and decrees that he be carried off to the underworld for six months of each year, hence the barren, sterile months of the hot summer. At the autumnal equinox, which marked the beginning of the Sumerian New Year, Dumuzi returns to the earth. His reunion with his wife causes all animal and plant life to be revitalized and fertile again. In another form of the myth, he is taken by minions of Nergal to the depths when Innana visits the Final Land of the underworld and seeks to leave. Eventually, he returns to the upper land for 6 months of the year, while his place is taken then by His sister Gestinanna. The word Tammuz is still used in Arabic, language used in modern Mesopotamia, for the month of July.
Marduk is one of my favorite Gods. I first met him while I was reading the necronomicon. Leader of the gods, He was a fertility god, but originally a god of thunderstorms. Marduk defeated Tiamat, dragon of chaos, and gained supreme power. He is acknowledged as creator of the universe and humankind, the god of light and life, and the ruler of destinies; he claims 50 titles. Eventually, he was called simply Bel, meaning "Lord."
Tiamat personifies the saltwater ocean, water of Chaos. She is also the primordial mother of all that exists, including the gods. Her consort Apsu personifies the freshwater abyss that lies beneath the Earth. From their union, the first pair of gods was born, Lachmu and Lachamu, grandparents of Anu and Ea. In the creation, their descendants started to irritate Tiamat and Apsu so they decided to kill their offspring. Ea discovered their plans and he managed to kill Apsu. Tiamat wanting to avenge her husband creates an army of monstrous creatures, led by her new consort Kingu, who is also her son. Tiamat is defeated by the young god Marduk, born in the deep freshwater sea. Marduk cuts her body in half. From the upper half he created the sky and from the lower half he made the earth. From her water came forth the clouds and her tears became the source of the Tigris and the Euphrates, rivers of Mesopotamia that still hold the same names. From the blood of Kingu, Marduk created the first humans.
Pazuzu, one of the old Mesopotamian demons, very much feared, has a deformed head, wings of an eagle, sharp claws of a lion, and a tail of a scorpion. Mesopotamians believed that Pazuzu lived in the desert. He personifies the south-east storm wind which brings diseases. In Babylonia he is ambiguously malevolent; He was feared for his greed and strength, but was also recognized as a legitimate protection against pestilence. He reemerged recently as the central evil force in the novel and movie "The Exorcist".
What strike me as well are the common biblical parallels. From the New Testament that draws a similarity between Jesus and Tammuz, shepherd king resurrected from the dead to Tammuz, Dumuzi in the Acadian pantheon, is mentioned in Ezekiel 8:14.
Genesis Eden is very close in description to the Sumerian Dilmun, pure, bright, and holy land, now often identified with Bahrain.
The code of Hammurabi written in 1758 BC in Mesopotamia, oldest law found carved on tablets of stone in archeological excavations, is mentioned much later as the tablets of the Ten Commandments, given to Moses in the Old Testament.
Maybe the reason why I chose different facets of local pantheons is the familiarity I feel towards them as a whole, geographical comprehension and knowledge of the land they ruled, traditions still practiced, and the admiration, reverence and respect of a child to the heroes of their bedtime stories.
Anyone interested in sharing their favorite pantheon and what draws you to it?
Cara
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Gaia Angel 
Cranky Hedge Witch
Posts: 1443
(6/2/04 9:09 am)
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Re: My favorite pantheon
Wow what an awesome topic!
I am going to go all weird...while my patron Goddess is Gaia, who can most recently be traced to the earliest greek parthanons, I feel strongly connected to the Celtic Parthenon. I am of Cymry (welsh gaelic) decent, but finding information has proved tedious and slow going, though I find alot of the God/desses carry over from one Gaelic parthenon to the next.
In worship though, i feel strongly connected to one Goddess, and thats Gaia. If you look at the earliest ice age depictions of the mother goddess and small statuettes kept in every household of gaia or the great mother, the reseembalance is so remarkable. She is quite literally the eldest living divinity, the perpetual mother (which has a lot of pull in the heart of this mom of many), she has perserveared, and refused to disappear when her children were hunted and exterminated. As the spirit of the earth she continues to feed us though we deserve to be sent to our rooms with nothing. I think I can identify with her, therefore I feel a stronger connection to her then say a warrior God. 
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Cara2000
Given a Place at the table
Posts: 24
(6/4/04 9:57 am)
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Re: My favorite pantheon
Gaia Angel, You are right
Me too I feel that Gaia is all the Goddesses together
Love and Light
Cara
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