Comparative Mythology: the systematic comparison of mythic themes gathered from a wide variety of cultures and ideas

“Nammu (also read Namma) was a Mesopotamian goddess regarded as a creator deity in the local theology of Eridu.” ref

“Eridu was a Sumerian city located at Tell Abu Shahrain, an archaeological site in southern Mesopotamia. It is located in Dhi Qar Governorate, Iraq near the modern city of Basra. Eridu is traditionally believed to be the earliest city in southern Mesopotamia based on the Sumerian King List. Located 12 kilometers southwest of the ancient site of Ur, Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of Sumerian cities that grew around temples, almost in sight of one another. The city gods of Eridu were Enki and his consort Damkina. Enki, later known as Ea, was considered to have founded the city. His temple was called E-Abzu, as Enki was believed to live in Abzu, an aquifer from which all life was believed to stem. According to Sumerian temple hymns another name for the temple of Ea/Enki was called Esira (Esirra).” ref

“Eridu is one of the earliest settlements in the region, founded c. 5400 BCE during the Early Ubaid period, at that time close to the Persian Gulf near the mouth of the Euphrates River though in modern times about 90 miles inland. Excavation has shown that the city was founded on a virgin sand-dune site with no previous habitation. With possible breaks in occupation in the Early Dynastic III and Akkadian Empire periods the city was inhabited up to the Neo-Babylonian though in later times it was primarily a cultic site. According to the excavators, construction of the Ur III ziggurat and associated buildings was preceded by the destruction of preceding construction and its use as leveling fill so no remains from that time were found. At a small mound 1 kilometer north of Eridu two Early Dynastic III palaces were found, with an enclosure wall. The palaces measured 45 meters by 65 meters with 2.6 meter wide walls and were constructed in the standard Early Dynastic period method of plano-convex bricks laid in a herringbone fashion. At nearby Ur there was a temple of Ishtar of Eridu (built by Lagash ruler Ur-Baba) and a sanctuary of Inanna of Eridu (built by Ur III ruler Ur-Nammu). Ur-Nammu also recorded building a temple of Ishtar of Eridu at Ur which is assumed to have been a rebuild. One of the religious quarters of Babylon, containing the Esagil temple and the temple of Annunitum among others, was also named Eridu.” ref

“In some, but not all, versions of the Sumerian King List, Eridu is the first of five cities where kingship was received before a flood came over the land. The list mentions two rulers of Eridu from the Early Dynastic period, Alulim and Alalngar. In the flood myth tablet found in Ur, how Eridu and Alulim were chosen by gods as first city and first priest-king is described in more detail. In Sumerian mythology, Eridu was the home of the Abzu temple of the god Enki, the Sumerian counterpart of the Akkadian god Ea, god of deep waters, wisdom and magic. Like all the Sumerian and Babylonian gods, Enki/Ea began as a local god who, according to the later cosmology, came to share the rule of the cosmos with Anu and Enlil. His kingdom was the sweet waters that lay below earth (Sumerian ab=water; zu=far). The stories of Inanna, goddess of Uruk, describe how she had to go to Eridu in order to receive the gifts of civilization. At first Enki, the god of Eridu, attempted to retrieve these sources of his power but later willingly accepted that Uruk now was the centre of the land. The urban nucleus of Eridu was Enki‘s temple, called House of the Aquifer, which in later history was called House of the Waters. The name refers to Enki’s realm. His consort Ninhursag had a nearby temple at Ubaid.” ref

“It is assumed that Nammu was associated with water. She is also well attested in connection with incantations and apotropaic magic. She was regarded as the mother of Enki, and in a single inscription she appears as the wife of Anu, but it is assumed that she usually was not believed to have a spouse. From the Old Babylonian period onwards, she was considered to be the mother of An (Heaven) and Ki (Earth), as well as a representation of the primeval sea/ocean, an association that may have come from influence from the goddess Tiamat.” ref

“While Nammu is already attested in sources from the Early Dynastic period, such as the zame hymns and an inscription of Lugal-kisalsi, she was not commonly worshiped. A temple dedicated to her existed in Ur in the Old Babylonian period, she is also attested in texts from Nippur and Babylon. Theophoric names invoking her were rare, with that of king Ur-Nammu until recently being believed to be the only example. In the Old Babylonian myth Enki and Ninmah, Nammu is one of the deities involved in the creation of mankind alongside the eponymous pair and a group of seven minor goddesses. Her presence differentiates this narrative from other texts dealing with the same motif, such as Atra-Hasis.” ref

Tiamat seen in the long snake dragon-like being

“In Mesopotamian religion, Tiamat is the primordial sea, mating with Abzû (Apsu), the groundwater, to produce the gods in the Babylonian epic Enûma Elish, which translates as “When on High”. She is referred to as a woman, and has, at various points in the epic, both anthropomorphic and theriomorphic features including breasts and a tail. In the Enûma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, Tiamat bears the first generation of deities after mingling her waters with those of Apsu, her consort. The gods continue to reproduce, forming a noisy new mass of divine children. Apsu, driven to violence by the noise they make, seeks to destroy them and is killed. Enraged, she also wars upon those of her own and Apsu’s children who killed her consort, bringing forth a series of monsters as weapons.” ref

“She also takes a new consort, Qingu, and bestows on him the Tablet of Destinies, which represents legitimate divine rulership. She is ultimately defeated and slain by Enki‘s son, the storm-god Marduk, but not before she brings forth monsters whose bodies she fills with “poison instead of blood”. Marduk dismembers her and then constructs and structures elements of the cosmos from her body. Some sources have identified her (without real proof) with images of a sea serpent or dragon.” ref

“Thorkild Jacobsen and Walter Burkert both argue for a connection with the Akkadian word for sea, tâmtu, following an early form, ti’amtum. Burkert continues by making a linguistic connection to Tethys. The later form Θαλάττη, thaláttē, which appears in the Hellenistic Babylonian writer Berossus‘ first volume of universal history, is clearly related to Greek Θάλαττα, thálatta, an Eastern variant of Θάλασσα, thalassa, ‘sea’. It is thought that the proper name ti’amat, which is the vocative or construct form, was dropped in secondary translations of the original texts because some Akkadian copyists of Enuma Elish substituted the ordinary word tāmtu (‘sea’) for Tiamat, the two names having become essentially the same due to association. Tiamat also has been claimed to be cognate with the Northwest Semitic word tehom (תְּהוֹם; ‘the deeps, abyss’), in the Book of Genesis 1:2.” ref

“The Babylonian epic Enuma Elish is named for its incipit: “When on high [or: When above]” the heavens did not yet exist nor the earth below, Abzu the subterranean ocean was there, “the first, the begetter”, and Tiamat, the overground sea, “she who bore them all”; they were “mixing their waters”. It is thought that female deities are older than male ones in Mesopotamia and Tiamat may have begun as part of the cult of Nammu, a female principle of a watery creative force, with equally strong connections to the underworld, which predates the appearance of Ea-Enki.” ref

“Harriet Crawford finds this “mixing of the waters” to be a natural feature of the middle Persian Gulf, where fresh waters from the Arabian aquifer mix and mingle with the salt waters of the sea. This characteristic is especially true of the region of Bahrain, whose name in Arabic means “two seas”, and which is thought to be the site of Dilmun, the original site of the Sumerian creation beliefs. The difference in density of salt and fresh water drives a perceptible separation. In the Enuma Elish her physical description includes a tail, a thigh, “lower parts” (which shake together), a belly, an udder, ribs, a neck, a head, a skull, eyes, nostrils, a mouth, and lips. She has insides (possibly “entrails”), a heart, arteries, and blood.” ref

“Tiamat was once regarded as a sea serpent or dragon, although Assyriologist Alexander Heidel already recognized that “dragon form can not be imputed to Tiamat with certainty”. She is still often referred to as a monster, though this identification has been credibly challenged. In Enuma Elish, she is clearly portrayed as a mother of monsters but, before this, she is just as clearly portrayed as a mother to all the gods. Abzu (or Apsû) fathered with Tiamat the elder deities Lahmu and Lahamu (masc. the ‘hairy’), a title given to the gatekeepers at Enki’s Abzu/E’engurra-temple in Eridu. Lahmu and Lahamu, in turn, were the parents of the ‘ends’ of the heavens (Anshar, from an-šar, ‘heaven-totality/end’) and the earth (Kishar); Anshar and Kishar were considered to meet at the horizon, becoming, thereby, the parents of Anu (Heaven) and Ki (Earth). Tiamat was the “shining” personification of the sea who roared and smote in the chaos of original creation. She and Abzu filled the cosmic abyss with the primeval waters. She is “Ummu-Hubur who formed all things.” ref

“In the myth recorded on cuneiform tablets, the deity Enki (later Ea) believed correctly that Abzu was planning to murder the younger deities, upset with the noisy tumult they created, and so captured him and held him prisoner beneath his temple, the E-Abzu (‘temple of Abzu’). This angered Kingu, their son, who reported the event to Tiamat, whereupon she fashioned eleven monsters to battle the deities in order to avenge Abzu’s death. These were her own offspring: Bašmu (‘Venomous Snake’), Ušumgallu (‘Great Dragon’), Mušmaḫḫū (‘Exalted Serpent’), Mušḫuššu (‘Furious Snake’), Laḫmu (the ‘Hairy One’), Ugallu (the ‘Big Weather-Beast’), Uridimmu (‘Mad Lion’), Girtablullû (‘Scorpion-Man’), Umū dabrūtu (‘Violent Storms’), Kulullû (‘Fish-Man’), and Kusarikku (‘Bull-Man’).” ref

“Tiamat possessed the Tablet of Destinies and in the primordial battle she gave them to Kingu, the deity she had chosen as her lover and the leader of her host, and who was also one of her children. The terrified deities were rescued by Anu, who secured their promise to revere him as “king of the gods“. He fought Tiamat with the arrows of the winds, a net, a club, and an invincible spear. Anu was later replaced by Enlil and, in the late version that has survived after the First Dynasty of Babylon, by Marduk, the son of Ea. “And the lord stood upon Tiamat’s hinder parts, And with his merciless club he smashed her skull. He cut through the channels of her blood, And he made the North wind bear it away into secret places.” ref

“Slicing Tiamat in half, he made from her ribs the vault of heaven and earth. Her weeping eyes became the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates, her tail became the Milky Way. With the approval of the elder deities, he took the Tablet of Destinies from Kingu, installing himself as the head of the Babylonian pantheon. Kingu was captured and later was slain: his red blood mixed with the red clay of the Earth would make the body of humankind, created to act as the servant of the younger Igigi deities.” ref

“The principal theme of the epic is the rightful elevation of Marduk to command over all the deities. “It has long been realized that the Marduk epic, for all its local coloring and probable elaboration by the Babylonian theologians, reflects in substance older Sumerian material”, American Assyriologist E. A. Speiser remarked in 1942, adding “The exact Sumerian prototype, however, has not turned up so far.” This surmise that the Babylonian version of the story is based upon a modified version of an older epic, in which Enlil, not Marduk, was the god who slew Tiamat, is more recently dismissed as “distinctly improbable”. It was once thought that the Tiamat myth was one of the earliest recorded versions of the Chaoskampf, the battle between a culture hero and a chthonic or aquatic monster, serpent or dragon. Chaoskampf motifs in other mythologies perhaps linked to the Tiamat myth include the Hittite Illuyanka myth, and in Greek tradition Apollo‘s killing of the Python as a necessary action to take over the Delphic Oracle, and to Genesis in the Hebrew Bible.” ref

“A number of writers have put forth ideas about Tiamat: Robert Graves, for example, considered Tiamat’s death by Marduk as evidence for his hypothesis of an ancient shift in power from a matriarchal society to a patriarchy. The theory suggested that Tiamat and other ancient monster figures were depictions of former supreme deities of peaceful, woman-centered religions. Their defeat at the hands of a male hero corresponded to the overthrow of these matristic religions and societies by male-dominated ones. One example of an icon was more so a motif of Tiamat which was within the Temple of Bêl which is located in Palmyra. The motif describes Nabu and Marduk defeating Tiamat. Tiamat in this picture is shown as a woman’s body with legs which are made of snakes.” ref

“Primordial Sea, Cosmic ocean, Primordial Waters, or Celestial River is a mythological motif that represents the world or cosmos enveloped by a vast primordial ocean. Found in many cultures and civilizations, the cosmic ocean exists before the creation of the Earth. From the primordial waters the Earth and the entire cosmos arose. The cosmic ocean represents or embodies chaos. The concept of a watery chaos also underlies the widespread motif of the worldwide flood that took place in early times. The emergence of earth from water and the curbing of the global flood or underground waters are usually presented as a factor in cosmic ordering. In creation myths, it is common for the primordial ocean to be separated into upper and lower bounds of water (i.e. cosmic bodies of water located above the sky or below the earth) by the creation of a solid structure known as a firmament. Some cosmologies depict the world plain as being surrounded by a circular ocean-river, such as Oceanus in Greek cosmology or Raŋhā in Zoroastrian cosmology. The cosmic ocean is also present in the mythology of Ancient Egyptians, Ancient Greeks, Jews, Ancient Indians, Ancient Persians, Sumerians, and Zoroastrians. It plays a prominent role in ancient near eastern, biblical, and other cosmologies.” ref

“In creation myths, the primordial waters are often represented as having filled the entire universe and are the first source of the gods. The act of creation is the establishment of an inhabitable space separate from the enveloping waters. The cosmic ocean is the shape of the universe before creation. The ocean is boundless, unordered, unorganized, amorphous, formless, dangerous, and terrible. In some myths, its cacophony is opposed to the ordered rhythm of the sea. Chaos can be personified as water or by the unorganized interaction of water and fire. The transformation of chaos into order is also the transition from water to land. In many ancient cosmogonic myths, the ocean and chaos are equivalent and inseparable. The ocean remains outside space even after the emergence of the land. At the same time, the ability of the ocean to generate is realized in the appearance of the Earth from it and in the presence of a mythological creature in the ocean that promotes generation or, on the contrary, zealously defends the “old order” and prevents the beginning of the chain of births from the ocean.” ref

Common Primordial Waters’ Themes

“Yu. E. Berezkin and E. N. Duvakin generalize the motif of primary waters as follows: “Waters are primary. The Earth is launched into the water, appears above the water, grows from a piece of solid substance placed on the surface of the water or liquid mud, from an island in the ocean, is exposed when the waters subsided, etc.” The idea of the primacy of the ocean as an element, from the bowels of which the Earth arises or is created, is universally prevalent. This representation is present in many mythologies of the world.” ref

“In North Asia and North America, the Earth diver myth is found. In this myth, a creator god dives into the cosmic ocean to bring up and form the Earth. A diving bird, catching a lump of earth from the primordial ocean, often appears in mythologies of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and Samoyedic peoples. In totemic myths, bird people are often presented as phratrial ancestors. World eggs are a common theme in creation myths. A waterfowl extracts silt from the waters, from which land is gradually created. In Polynesian mythology, Maui fishes islands out of the ocean. In Scandinavian mythology, the gods raise the earth, and Thor catches the “serpent of middle earth“, which lives at the bottom of the ocean. In ancient Egyptian mythology, the Earth itself comes to the surface in the form of a mound. In the Brahmana it was said that Prajapati took the Earth out of the water, taking the form of a boar.” ref

“In the mythologies of many Asian countries, in which there is an image of an endless and eternal primordial ocean or sea, there is a motif of the creation of the Earth by a celestial being descending from the sky and interfering with the water of the ocean with an iron club, spear or other object. This results in condensation which gives rise to the Earth. In Japanese mythology, the islands of Japan arose from foam raised by mixing the waters of the ocean with the spear of the gods (Izanagi and Izanami). In the mythologies of the Mongolic peoples, the role of the compactor of the ocean waters is played by the wind, which creates a milky substance out of them, which then becomes the Earth’s firmament. According to the Kalmyks, plants, animals, people and gods were born from this milky liquid. Indian mythology has a similar myth about the churning of the Ocean of Milk.” ref

“Myths about the world’s oceans are universally accompanied by myths about its containment when the earth was already created, and myths about the attempts of the ocean to regain its undivided dominance. In Chinese mythology, there is the idea of a giant depression or pit that determines the direction of the ocean waters and takes away excess water. In many mythologies there are numerous narratives regarding the flood. The opposition of two types of myths is known (for example, in Oceania) – about the earth sinking in the ocean, and about the retreat of the ocean or sea. An example of the first type is the legend about the origin of Easter Island, recorded on this island. In the creation myth of the Nganasan people, at first, the Earth was completely covered with water, then the water subsided and exposed the top of the Shaitan ridge Koika-mou. The first two people fall to this peak – a man and a woman. In the myth of creation of the Tuamotus, the creator Tāne, “Spilling Water”, created the world in the waters of the lord of the waters, Pune, and invoked the light that initiated the creation of the Earth.” ref

“The motif of the cosmogonic struggle with the dragon or serpent is widespread in terms of suppressing water and chaos. The serpent in most mythologies is associated with water, often as its abductor. He threatens either with a flood or a drought, that is, a violation of the measure, the water “balance”. Since the cosmos is identified with order and measure, chaos is associated with the violation of measure.

• Ra-Atum fights the serpent Apep in ancient Egyptian religion
• Indra with Vritra the serpent in the historical Vedic religion
• Enlil or Marduk defeats the progenitor Tiamat, the wife of Apsû, the personification of the dark waters of chaos, who has taken the form of a dragon
• Enki, Ninurta, or Inanna contest the owner of the underworld, Kur in Mesopotamian religion
• Tishtrya (Sirius) with the antigod Apaosha in ancient Iranian religion
• The Bible describes the struggle of Yahweh with dragons and sea monsters that represent chaos (Rahab, Tehom, Leviathan)
• Yu the Great‘s heroic struggle with the cosmic flood ends with the murder of the insidious owner of the water Gungun and his “close associate”, –the nine-headed Xiangliu, in Chinese mythology.” ref

“The Genesis creation narrative has a much-reduced description of Yahweh and Tehom. The transition from the formless water element to land is the most important act necessary for the transformation of chaos into space. The next step in the same direction is the separation of the sky from the earth, which, perhaps, essentially coincides with the first act, given the initial identification of the sky with the oceans. But it was precisely the repetition of the act – first down, and then up – that led to the allocation of three spheres – earthly, heavenly and underground, which represents the transition from binary division to trinity. The middle sphere, the earth, opposes the watery world below and the heavenly world above. A trichotomous scheme of the cosmos arises, including the necessary space between earth and sky.” ref

“This space is often represented as a cosmic tree. Earth and sky are almost universally represented as feminine and masculine, a married couple standing at the beginning of a theogonic or theocosmogonic process. At the same time, the feminine principle is sometimes associated with the element of water and with chaos; usually it is conceived on the side of “nature” rather than “culture. Mythical creatures personifying chaos, defeated, shackled, and overthrown, often continue to exist on the outskirts of space, along the shores of the oceans, in the underground “lower” world, in some special parts of the sky. In Scandinavian mythology, the jǫtnar, primordial giants, precede time and are located on the outskirts of the earth’s circle in cold places near the oceans.” ref

Primordial Waters’ and Sumerian mythology

“In Sumerian mythology, there was an image of the original sea abyss – Abzu, on the site of which the most active of the gods Enki, representing the earth, fresh water and agriculture on irrigated lands, made his home. In the beginning, the entire space of the world was filled with an ocean that had neither beginning nor end. It was probably believed that he was eternal. In its bowels lurked the foremother Nammu. In her womb arose a cosmic mountain in the form of a hemisphere, which later became the earth. An arc of shiny tin, encircling the hemisphere vertically, later became the sky. In the Babylonian version, in the endless primordial Ocean there was nothing but two monsters – the forefather Apsu and foremother Tiamat.” ref

Primordial Waters’ and Ancient Egyptian mythology

“In Ancient Egyptian mythology, in the beginning, the universe only consisted of a great, chaotic cosmic ocean, and the ocean itself was referred to as Nu. In some versions of this myth, at the beginning of time Mehet-Weret, portrayed as a cow with a sun disk between her horns, gives birth to the sun, said to have risen from the waters of creation and to have given birth to the sun god Ra in some myths. The universe was enrapt by a vast mass of primordial waters, and the Benben, a pyramid mound, emerged amid this primal chaos. There was a lotus flower with Benben, and this when it blossomed emerged Ra. There were many versions of the sun’s emergence, and it was said to have emerged directly from the mound or from a lotus flower that grew from the mound, in the form of a heron, falcon, scarab beetle, or human child. In Heliopolis, the creation was attributed to Atum, a deity closely associated with Ra, who was said to have existed in the waters of Nu as an inert potential being.” ref

“Some strands of Egyptian cosmology appear to have also had the idea of a river-ocean encircling the earth, as one of the words used for sea, shen-wer, means “great encircler”. The concept of chaos is etymologically associated with darkness (kek), but primarily, chaos in the form of the primary ocean (Nu) or, in the Germanic version, five divine pairs representing its different aspects. The primary hill is identified with the sun god Ra. Water chaos is opposed by the first earthly mound protruding from it, with which Atum is associated in Heliopolis (as Ra-Atum), and in Memphis, Ptah. Initially, the existing ocean is personified in the image of the “father of the gods” Nu. In the historical era, the ocean, which was placed underground, gave rise to the river Nile. In the Heracleopolis version of the myth, an internal connection between the ocean and chaos is noted. ” ref

Primordial Waters’ and Ancient Greek mythology

“The ideas of early Greek cosmology about the ocean demonstrate a typologically more advanced stage, when the image of Oceanus becomes the object of “pre-scientific” research and natural philosophy. Oceanus is presented first of all as the greatest world river (Hom. Il. XIV 245), surrounding the earth and the sea, giving rise to rivers, springs, sea currents (XXI 196), shelter of the sun, moon and stars, which they rise from the ocean and enter it (VII 422; VIII 485). The Ocean River touches the sea, but does not mix with it. In the extreme west, the ocean washes the boundaries between the world of life and death.” ref

“In Homer, Oceanus is without beginning. In Theogony 282, Hesiod presents a folk etymology of the name Pegasus as derived from πηγή pēgē ‘spring, well’, referring to “the pegai of Okeanos, where he was born”. In Homer and Hesiod, the Ocean is a living being, the progenitor of all gods and titans (Hom. Il. XIV 201, 246), but Oceanus also had parents. According to Hesiod, Oceanus is the son of the oldest of the titans Uranus and Gaia (Theogony 133). Oceanus is the brother and husband of Tethys, from whom he gave birth to all the rivers and sources – three thousand daughters – oceanids (Theogony 346–364) and the same number of sons – river flows (Theogony 367–370).” ref

“The gods revere Oceanus as an aged parent, take care of him, although he lives in solitude. Oceanus did not participate in the battle of the titans against Zeus and retained its power and the trust of the Olympians. Oceanus is the father of Metis, the wise wife of Zeus (Apollod. I 2, 1). Known for his peacefulness and kindness (Euripides tried unsuccessfully to reconcile Prometheus with Zeus; Prometheus Bound 284–396). Herodotus contains criticism of the mythological concept of Oceanus as a poetic invention (Herodot. II, 23, cf. also IV 8, 36, etc.). Euripides called the ocean the sea (Orestes 1376). Since that time, a tendency has been established to distinguish between a large outer sea – ocean – and inland seas. Later, Euripides begins to divide the ocean into parts: the Ethiopian Ocean, Eritrean ocean, Gallic ocean, Germanic Ocean, Hyperborean Ocean, etc.” ref

Primordial Waters’ and Ancient Indian mythology

“In Indian cosmology, there is an idea of darkness and the abyss, but also of the primary waters generated by night or chaos. Ancient Indian myths about the oceans contain both typical and original motifs. In Mandala 10 of the Rigveda, the original state of the universe is presented as the absence of existing and non-existent, airspace and sky above it, death and immortality, day and night, but the presence of water and disorderly movement. In the waters of the eternal ocean, there was a life-giving principle generated by the power of heat and giving birth to everything else. Another mandala of the Rigveda contains a different version: “Law and truths were born from the kindled heat…”, hence the surging ocean. Out of the tumultuous ocean a year was born, distributing days and nights.” ref

“The Rigveda repeatedly mentions the generative power of the ocean (“multiple,” it roars at its first spread, giving rise to creations, the bearer of wealth), its thousands of streams flowing from the depths, it is said that the ocean is the spouse of rivers. The cosmic ocean forms the frame of the cosmos, separating it from chaos. The ocean is personified by the Varuna, who is associated both with the destructive and uncontrolled power of the waters of the oceans and with fruitful waters that bring wealth to people.” ref

“The churning of the ocean of milk myth contains the motif of the confrontation between the elements of water and fire. As a result of the rapid rotation, a whorl lights up – Mount Mandara, but trees and grasses emit their juices into the drying ocean. This motif echoes the Tungus myths about the creation of the earth by a celestial being, which, with the help of fire, dries up part of the primordial ocean, thus reclaiming a place for the earth. The motif of the struggle of water and fire in connection with the theme of the world ocean is also present in other traditions. Indian mythology is characterized by the image of the creator god (Brahma or Vishnu), floating on the primary waters in a lotus flower, on the nāga Shesha. Kurma, also known as “Tortoise”, is an avatar of Vishnu who is depicted as churning the cosmic ocean. Vishnu adopts the form of a tortoise to help hold the stick used to churn the cosmic ocean.” ref

Primordial Waters’ and Ancient Iranian mythology

“Vourukasha is the name of a heavenly sea in Zoroastrian mythology. It was created by Ahura Mazda and in its middle stood the Harvisptokhm or the “tree of all seeds”. Another cosmic ocean from Persian mythology is Fraxkard (Middle Persian: plʾhwklt, Avestan: Vourukaša; also called Warkaš in Middle Persian). According to the Vendidad, Ahura Mazda sent the clean waters of Vourukasha down to the earth in order to cleanse the world and sent the water back to the heavenly sea Puitika. This phenomenon was later interpreted as the coming and going of the tide. At the centre of Vourukasha was located the Harvisptokhm or “tree of all seeds”, which contains the seeds of all plants in the world. There is a bird Sinamru on the tree which causes the bough to break and seeds to sprinkle all around when it alights. At the center of the Vourukasha also grows the Gaokerena or “White Haoma“, considered to be the “king of healing plants”. It is surrounded by ten thousand other healing plants. In later times, Vourukasha was connected with the Persian Sea and the Puitika with the Gulf of Oman.” ref

Primordial Waters’ and Ancient Biblical mythology

“In the first creation story in the Bible the world is created as a space inside of the water or Tehom, and is hence surrounded by it. “God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water.” God made the expanse, and it separated the water which was below the expanse from the water which was above the expanse. And it was so.” (Genesis 1:6). It is not clear as to if this upper water refers to the clouds or a “sky ocean” beyond the stars. There are hints though that indicate the cosmic ocean was enveloped in thick clouds. In the Book of Exodus, the cosmic ocean is the Yam Suph and is mentioned in Exodus 15:4, the Song of the Sea. The army of Pharaoh was thrown into the “Sea of Extinction.” Yahweh rises Egypt up from this sea. Sargon II, ruler of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, is said to have washed his weapons in the cosmic ocean. The cosmic ocean is mentioned again in Joshua 1:4 and signified as a boundary of the universe. In the myth of Noah’s Ark, after forty days and nights of rain, the cosmic ocean floods the earth.” ref

Cosmic Egg

“The Sumerians believed that mankind was created by fertilizing a human egg cell with divine sperm. The male human baby (Adapa or Adam) was conceived in the womb of a god. Humans, therefore, contained both an earthly and a divine component. The earthly component is characterized by the Body/Flesh when living, or the Spirit (eṭemmu) when dead.” ref

“The cosmic egg, world egg, or mundane egg is a mythological motif found in the cosmogonies of many cultures and civilizations, including in Proto-Indo-European mythology. Typically, there is an egg which, upon “hatching”, either gives rise to the universe itself or gives rise to a primordial being who, in turn, creates the universe. The egg is sometimes lain on the primordial waters of the Earth. Typically, the upper half of the egg, or its outer shell, becomes the heaven (firmament), and the lower half, or the inner yolk, becomes the Earth. The motif likely stems from simple elements of an egg, including its ability to offer nourishment and give rise to new life, as is reflected by the Latin proverb omne vivum ex ovo (‘all life comes from an egg’). The term “cosmic egg” is also used in the modern study of cosmology in the context of emergent Universe scenarios.” ref

“The ancient Egyptians accepted multiple creation myths as valid, including those of the Hermopolitan, Heliopolitan, and Memphite theologies. The cosmic egg myth can be found from Hermopolitus. Although the site, located in Middle Egypt, currently sports a name deriving from the name of the god Hermes, the ancient Egyptians called it Khemnu, or “Eight-Town.” The number eight, in turn, refers to the Ogdoad, a group of eight gods who are the main characters in the Hermopolitan creation myth. Four of these gods are male, and have the heads of frogs, and the other four are female with the heads of serpents. These eight existed in the primordial, chaotic water that pre-existed the rest of creation. At some point these eight gods, in one way or another, bring about the formation of a cosmic egg, although variants of the myth describe the origins of the egg in different ways. In any case, the egg in turn gives rise to the deity who forms the rest of the world as well as the first land to arise out of the primordial waters, called the primeval mound. When the omund appeared, a lotus blossom bloomed to signal the birth of the sun god, after which the formation of the rest of creation could finally proceed.” ref

“In one Vedic myth recorded in the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa, the earliest phase of the cosmos involves a primordial ocean out of which an egg arose. Once the egg split, it began the process of forming heaven (out of the upper part) and earth (out of the lower part) over the course of one hundred divine years. Another text, the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, also has the sequence of a primordial ocean and then an egg, but this time, the god Prajapati emerges from the egg after one year. He creates the cosmos and then the gods and antigods from his speech and breath. The Rigveda speaks of a golden embryo (called the hiraṇyagarbha) which is located on a “high waters” out of which all else develops. Finally, a version of the story appears in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad.” ref

“Akkadian Cosmic Egg: Creation Myths: The Cosmic Egg represents the primordial state from which the universe emerges. In Akkadian mythology, it serves as a powerful symbol of creation, embodying the potential for life and order from chaos. At the heart of the Akkadian creation myth lies the concept of primordial chaos, often represented as the turbulent waters of Tiamat. In this chaotic environment, the Cosmic Egg emerges, symbolizing the potential for creation. The relationships between Akkadian deities and the Cosmic Egg illustrate the dynamic interplay between chaos and order, as well as the struggles for supremacy among the gods.” ref

“In Akkadian creation narratives, several key deities play pivotal roles. Among them are:

1. Marduk: The chief deity of Babylon, Marduk is often depicted as a hero who rises to establish order from chaos.
2. Tiamat: A primordial goddess representing the saltwater ocean, Tiamat embodies chaos and is often seen as the antagonist in creation stories.
3. Ea (Enki): The god of wisdom and water, Ea is crucial for his role in shaping the world and humanity.” ref

“The narrative unfolds in several stages:

• The emergence of the Cosmic Egg from the waters of chaos.
• The struggles between Marduk and Tiamat, culminating in Marduk’s victory.
• The establishment of order, leading to the formation of the universe.” ref

“Conflict and resolution are central themes in this creation process, showcasing the tension between chaos and the establishment of a structured cosmos. The duality of light and darkness is significant in Akkadian thought, reflecting the ongoing struggle between order and chaos. The Cosmic Egg plays a vital role in the birth of the gods and the creation of the world. As the Egg hatches, various deities emerge, each responsible for different aspects of the world. The narrative includes:

• The formation of the earth and sky, separating the waters above from the waters below.
• The creation of celestial bodies such as the sun and moon.
• The establishment of light and darkness, critical elements in the balance of the universe.” ref

“The Cosmic Egg’s relevance endures, inspiring modern interpretations and adaptations in literature, art, and philosophy. The concept of the Cosmic Egg is not unique to Akkadian mythology; it resonates across various cultures:

• Similarities: Many cultures share a creation narrative involving an egg or a similar object, symbolizing the universe’s origin.
• Differences: While the Cosmic Egg signifies creation in Akkadian mythology, other cultures may emphasize different aspects, such as the role of specific deities or the materials from which the world is formed.
• Cultural Exchange: Trade and interactions among ancient civilizations likely influenced these myths, leading to shared motifs and themes.” ref

“Various versions of the cosmic egg myth are related to the creator, Pangu. Heaven and earth are said to have originally existed in a formless state, like the egg of a chicken. The egg opens and unfolds after 18,000 years: the light part rose to become heaven, and the heavy part sank to become the earth. A version of this myth deriving from the Zhejiang Province holds that Pangu, experiencing discomfort in being contained in a dark and stuffy egg, shatters it into pieces, after which heaven and earth form by the same process (with the addition that parts of the shell then form the sun, moon, and stars).” ref

“Ideas similar to the cosmic egg myth are mentioned in two different sources from Greek and Roman mythology. One is in the Roman author Marcus Terentius Varro, living in the 1st century BC. According to Varro, heaven and earth can respectively be likened to an egg shell and its yolk. The air, in turn, is represented by the moisture functioning as a form of humidity between the shell and yolk. The second mention is found in the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 10:17, although from an oppositional standpoint, insofar as Clement is presented as summarizing a ridiculous cosmological belief found among pagans: according to the description given, there is a primordial chaos which, over time, solidified into an egg.” ref

“As is with an egg, a creature began to grow inside, until at some point it broke open to produce a human that was both male and female (i.e. androgynous) named Phanetas. When Phanetas appeared, a light shone forth that resulted in “subsance, prudence, motion, and coition,” and these in turn resulted in the creation of the heavens and the earth. The Recognitions 10:30 presents, then, a second summary of the idea, this time attributed to the cosmogony of Orpheus as described by a “good pagan” named Niceta. This summary, in contrast to the first one, is presented in a serious manner. This myth appears to have had occasional influence, insofar as a manuscript of it is associated with the reappearance of the idea at a library of Saint Gall in a 9th-century commentary on Boethius. Another three appearances occur again in the twelfth century.” ref

Sumerian Religion

“Sumerian religion was the religion practiced by the people of Sumer, the first literate civilization found in recorded history and based in ancient Mesopotamia, and what is modern-day Iraq. The Sumerians widely regarded their divinities as responsible for all matters pertaining to the natural and social orders of their society. Before the beginning of kingship in Sumer, the city-states were effectively ruled by theocratic priests and religious officials. Later, this role was supplanted by kings, but priests continued to exert great influence on Sumerian society. In early times, Sumerian temples were simple, one-room structures, sometimes built on elevated platforms. Towards the end of Sumerian civilization, these temples developed into ziggurats—tall, pyramidal structures with sanctuaries at the tops.” ref

“The main source of information about Sumerian creation mythology is the prologue to the epic poem Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld, which briefly describes the process of creation: originally, there was only Nammu, the primeval sea. Then, Nammu without a father gave birth to Utu, then went on to create An the sky, and Ki, the earth. An and Ki mated with each other, causing Ki to give birth to Enlil, the god of wind, rain, and storm. Enlil separated An from Ki and carried off the earth as his domain, while An carried off the sky.” ref 

“The Sumerians envisioned the universe as a closed dome surrounded by a primordial saltwater sea. Underneath the terrestrial earth, which formed the base of the dome, existed an underworld and a freshwater ocean called the Abzu. The deity of the dome-shaped firmament was named An; that of the earth was named Ki. First, the underground world was believed to be an extension of the goddess Ki, but later developed into the concept of Kur. The primordial saltwater sea was named Nammu, who became known as Tiamat during and after the Ur III period. Some ancient Sumerians believed that salt and other minerals were alive, and could even think independent thoughts.” ref

“The Sumerians believed that the universe had come into being through a series of cosmic births such as gods. First, Nammu, the primeval waters, gave birth to Ki (the earth) and An (the sky), who mated together and produced a son named Enlil. Enlil separated heaven from earth and claimed the earth as his domain. Humans were believed to have been created by AnKi or Enki, the son of the An and Ki. Heaven was reserved exclusively for deities, and, upon their deaths, all mortals’ spirits, regardless of their behavior while alive, were believed to go to Kur, a cold, dark cavern deep beneath the earth, which was ruled by the goddess Ereshkigal and where the only food available was dry dust. In later times, Ereshkigal was believed to rule alongside her husband Nergal, the god of death.” ref

“The major deities in the Sumerian pantheon included An, the god of the heavens, Enlil, the god of wind and storm, AnKi Enki, the god of water and human culture, Ninhursag, the goddess of fertility and the earth, Utu, the god of the sun and justice, and his father Nanna, the god of the moon. During the Akkadian Empire, Inanna, the goddess of sex, beauty, and warfare, was widely venerated across Sumer and appeared in many myths, including the famous story of her descent into the Underworld. Sumerian religion heavily influenced the religious beliefs of later Mesopotamian peoples; elements of it are retained in the mythologies and religions of the Hurrians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and other Middle Eastern culture groups. Scholars of comparative mythology have noticed parallels between the stories of the ancient Sumerians and those recorded later in the early parts of the Hebrew Bible.” ref 

“In the Sumerian city-states, temple complexes originally were small, elevated one-room structures. In the early dynastic period, temples developed raised terraces and multiple rooms. Toward the end of the Sumerian civilization, ziggurats became the preferred temple structure for Mesopotamian religious centers. Temples served as cultural, religious, and political headquarters until approximately 2500 BC, with the rise of military kings known as Lu-gals (“man” + “big”), after which time the political and military leadership was often housed in separate “palace” complexes. Some cities in Sumer had periods where their kings were worshipped as gods, and occasionally, these times spread to all cities in the region.” ref

“Until the advent of the Lugal (“King”), Sumerian city-states were under a virtually theocratic government controlled by various En or Ensí, who served as the high priests of the cults of the city gods. (Their female equivalents were known as Nin.) Priests were responsible for continuing the cultural and religious traditions of their city-state, and were viewed as mediators between humans and the cosmic and terrestrial forces. The priesthood resided full-time in temple complexes, and administered matters of state including the large irrigation processes necessary for the civilization’s survival. During the Third Dynasty of Ur, the Sumerian city-state of Lagash was said to have had sixty-two “lamentation priests” who were accompanied by 180 vocalists and instrumentalists.” ref

“The ancient Mesopotamians regarded the sky as a series of domes (usually three, but sometimes seven) covering the flat earth and a place where holy stars resided. Each dome was made of a different kind of precious stone. The lowest dome of heaven was made of jasper and was the home of the stars. The middle dome of heaven was made of saggilmut stone and was the abode of the Igigi. The highest and outermost dome of heaven was made of luludānītu stone and was personified as An, the god of the sky. The celestial bodies were equated with specific deities as well. The planet Venus was believed to be Inanna, the goddess of love, sex, and war. The sun was her brother Utu, the god of justice, and the moon was their father Nanna. Ordinary mortals could not go to heaven because it was the abode of the gods alone. Instead, after a person died, his or her soul went to Kur (later known as Irkalla), a dark shadowy underworld, located deep below the surface of the earth.” ref

“The Sumerian afterlife was a dark, dreary cavern located deep below the ground, where inhabitants were believed to continue “a shadowy version of life on earth.” This bleak domain was known as Kur, and was believed to be ruled by the goddess Ereshkigal. All souls went to the same afterlife, and a person’s actions during life had no effect on how the person would be treated in the world to come. The souls in Kur were believed to eat nothing but dry dust and family members of the deceased would ritually pour libations into the dead person’s grave through a clay pipe, thereby allowing the dead to drink.” ref 

“Nonetheless, there are assumptions according to which treasures in wealthy graves had been intended as offerings for Utu and the Anunnaki, so that the deceased would receive special favors in the underworld. During the Third Dynasty of Ur, it was believed that a person’s treatment in the afterlife depended on how he or she was buried; those that had been given sumptuous burials would be treated well, but those who had been given poor burials would fare poorly, and were believed to haunt the living. The entrance to Kur was believed to be located in the Zagros Mountains in the far east. It had seven gates, through which a soul needed to pass. The god Neti was the gatekeeper. Ereshkigal’s sukkal, or messenger, was the god Namtar.

“Galla were a class of demons that were believed to reside in the underworld; their primary purpose appears to have been to drag unfortunate mortals back to Kur. They are frequently referenced in magical texts, and some texts describe them as being seven in number. Several extant poems describe the galla dragging the god Dumuzid into the underworld. The later Mesopotamians knew this underworld by its East Semitic name: Irkalla. During the Akkadian Period, Ereshkigal’s role as the ruler of the underworld was assigned to Nergal, the god of death. The Akkadians attempted to harmonize this dual rulership of the underworld by making Nergal Ereshkigal’s husband.” ref

“It is generally agreed that Sumerian civilization began at some point between c. 4500 and 4000 BCE, but the earliest historical records only date to around 2900 BCE. The Sumerians originally practiced a polytheistic religion, with anthropomorphic deities representing cosmic and terrestrial forces in their world. The earliest Sumerian literature of the third millennium BCE identifies four primary deities: An, Enlil, Ninhursag, and Enki. These early deities were believed to occasionally behave mischievously towards each other, but were generally viewed as being involved in cooperative creative ordering.” ref

“During the middle of the third millennium BCE, Sumerian society became more urbanized. As a result of this, Sumerian deities began to lose their original associations with nature and became the patrons of various cities. Each Sumerian city-state had its own specific patron deity, who was believed to protect the city and defend its interests. Lists of large numbers of Sumerian deities have been found. Their order of importance and the relationships between the deities has been examined during the study of cuneiform tablets.” ref

“During the late 2000s BCE, the Sumerians were conquered by the Akkadians. The Akkadians syncretized their own gods with the Sumerian ones, causing the Sumerian religion to take on a Semitic coloration. Male deities became dominant, and the gods completely lost their original associations with natural phenomena. People began to view the gods as living in a feudal society with class structure. Powerful deities such as Enki and Inanna became seen as receiving their power from the chief god Enlil. Nammu was a goddess representing the primeval waters (Engur), who gave birth to An (heaven) and Ki (earth) and the first deities; while she is rarely attested as an object of cult, she likely played a central role in the early cosmogony of Eridu, and in later periods continued to appear in texts related to exorcisms. An was the ancient Sumerian god of the heavens. He was the ancestor of all the other major deities and the original patron deity of Uruk. Most major gods had a so-called sukkal, a minor deity serving as their vizier, messenger, or doorkeeper.” ref

“Not infrequently, the God of Heaven (Sky Father) and the Goddess of Earth (Earth Mother) are fused into a hermaphroditic higher deity. According to legends, the heavens and earth were once inseparable until Enlil was born; Enlil cleaved them in two. Customs and myths highlight dualistic dichotomies—for example, of heaven and earth, day and night, or man and woman—that need to be surmounted by a kind of bisexual spiritual force.” ref, ref, ref, ref

• Achamán, Guanche creator and sky god

• Amun, Ancient Egyptian god of creation and the wind
• Anhur, Ancient Egyptian originally a foreign war god
• Hathor, Ancient Egyptian originally a sky goddess
• Horus, Ancient Egyptian god of the sun, sky, kings, and war
• Khonsu, Ancient Egyptian moon god
• Mehet-Weret, Ancient Egyptian goddess of the sky
• Nut, Ancient Egyptian goddess of the sky
• Ra, Ancient Egyptian god of the sun that ruled the sky, earth and underworld
• Shu, Ancient Egyptian god of the air
• Thoth, Ancient Egyptian original moon god

• Dyeus, the chief sky father of the Proto-Indo-European religion
• Hausos, dawn goddess and daughter of Dyeus
• Menot, moon deity
• Seul, sun deity

• Asherah, sky goddess and consort of El; after the rise of Yahweh, she may have become Yahweh’s consort before she was demonized and the Israelite religion became monotheistic
• Baalshamin, “Lord of the Heavens” (c.f. Armenian Barsamin)
• El (god), original sky god and sky father of the Semitic speakers (replaced by Yahweh among Israelites)
• Yahweh, Levantine sky god of the Midianites, Israelites and other ethnic groups in the region

• Asmān, god of sky
• Māh, god of the moon
• Ohrmazd, sky father, the Great God
• Tīštar, god of Sirius star and Rainfall.
• Xwarxšēd, god of the sun
• Uša, goddess of dawn

“In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept in polytheistic religions of a sky god who is addressed as a “father,” often the father of a pantheon and is often either a reigning or former King of the Gods. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics, such as Ra. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother. “Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity’s name, *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, there are exceptions (e.g. In Egyptian mythology, Nut is the sky mother and Geb is the earth father).” ref

“The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky. The daytime sky deities are typically distinct from the nighttime ones. Stith Thompson‘s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature reflects this by separating the category of “Sky-god” (A210) from that of “Star-god” (A250). In mythology, nighttime gods are usually known as night deities and gods of stars simply as star gods. Both of these categories are included here since they relate to the sky. Luminary deities are included as well since the sun and moon are located in the sky. Some religions may also have a deity or personification of the day, distinct from the god of the day lit sky, to complement the deity or personification of the night. Daytime gods and nighttime gods are frequently deities of an “upper world” or “celestial world” as opposed to the earth and a “netherworld” (gods of the underworld are sometimes called “chthonic” deities).” ref

“Within Greek mythology, Uranus was the primordial sky god, who was ultimately succeeded by Zeus, who ruled the celestial realm atop Mount Olympus. In contrast to the celestial Olympians was the chthonic deity Hades, who ruled the underworld, and Poseidon, who ruled the sea. Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorized as “sky father” deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a “sky father” god with an “earth mother” goddess (pairings of a sky mother with an earth father are less frequent).” ref

“A main sky goddess is often the queen of the gods and may be an air/sky goddess in her own right, though she usually has other functions as well with “sky” not being her main. In antiquity, several sky goddesses in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East were called Queen of Heaven. Gods may rule the sky as a pair (for example, ancient Semitic supreme god El and the fertility goddess Asherah whom he was most likely paired with). The following is a list of sky deities in various polytheistic traditions arranged mostly by language family, which is typically a better indicator of relatedness than geography.” ref

“An Earth god or Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth associated with a figure with chthonic or terrestrial attributes. There are many different Earth goddesses and gods in many different cultures mythology. However, Earth is usually portrayed as a goddess. Earth goddesses are often associated with the chthonic deities of the underworld. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra, Indic Prithvi, etc. traced to an “Earth Mother” complementary to the “Sky Father” in Proto-Indo-European religion. Egyptian mythology have the sky goddesses, Nut and Hathor, with the earth gods, Osiris and Geb. Ki and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses.” ref

“A mother goddess is a major goddess characterized as a mother or progenitor, either as an embodiment of motherhood and fertility or fulfilling the cosmological role of a creator- and/or destroyer-figure, typically associated the Earth, sky, and/or the life-giving bounties thereof in a maternal relation with humanity or other gods. When equated in this lattermost function with the earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as the Mother Earth or Earth Mother, deity in various animistic or pantheistic religions. The earth goddess is archetypally the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky Father or Father Heaven, particularly in theologies derived from the Proto-Indo-European sphere (i.e. from Dheghom and Dyeus). In some polytheistic cultures, such as the Ancient Egyptian religion which narrates the cosmic egg myth, the sky is instead seen as the Heavenly Mother or Sky Mother as in Nut and Hathor, and the earth god is regarded as the male, paternal, and terrestrial partner, as in Osiris or Geb who hatched out of the maternal cosmic egg.” ref

“In Egyptian mythology, sky goddess Nut is sometimes called “Mother” because she bore stars and Sun god. Nut was thought to draw the dead into her star-filled sky, and refresh them with food and wine. In Kongo religion, the Sky Mother, Nzambici, was the female counterpart of the Sky Father and Solar god, Nzambi Mpungu. Originally, they were seen as one spirit with one half male and the other half female. After the introduction of Christianity to Central Africa, the description of Nzambi changed to Creator God and Nzambici to his wife, “God the essence, the god on earth, the great princess, the mother of all the animals, and the mystery of the Earth.” ref

“Mother Nature (sometimes known as Mother Earth or the Earth Mother) is a personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it, in the form of a mother or mother goddess. Algonquian legend says that “beneath the clouds lives the Earth-Mother from whom is derived the Water of Life, who at her bosom feeds plants, animals and human” (Larousse 428). She is otherwise known as Nokomis, the Grandmother. In Inca mythology, Mama Pacha or Pachamama was a fertility goddess who presided over planting and harvesting. Pachamama is usually translated as “Mother Earth” but a more literal translation would be “Mother Universe” (in Aymara and Quechua mama = mother / pacha = world, space-time, or the universe). It was believed that Pachamama and her husband, Inti, were the most benevolent deities and were worshiped in parts of the Andean mountain ranges (stretching from present day Ecuador to Chile and Argentina). In her book Coateteleco, pueblo indígena de pescadores (“Coatetelco, indigenous fishing town”, Cuernavaca, Morelos: Vettoretti, 2015), Teódula Alemán Cleto states, En nuestra cultura prehispánica el respeto y la fe a nuestra madre naturaleza fueron primordiales para vivir en plena armonía como seres humanos. (“In our [Mexican] prehispanic culture, respect and faith in our Mother Nature [emphasis added] were paramount to living in full harmony as human beings.”)” ref

Shamash / Utu “Sun” / “Sun God” 

“The dawn goddess Aya (Sherida) was Shamash’s wife, and multiple texts describe their daily reunions taking place on a mountain where the sun was believed to set. Shamash (Akkadian: šamaš), also known as Utu (Sumerian: ^dutu 𒀭𒌓 “Sun“) was the ancient Mesopotamian sun god. He was believed to see everything that happened in the world every day, and was therefore responsible for justice and protection of travelers. As a divine judge, he could be associated with the underworld. Additionally, he could serve as the god of divination, typically alongside the weather god Adad. While he was universally regarded as one of the primary gods, he was particularly venerated in Sippar and Larsa. The moon god Nanna (Sin) and his wife Ningal were regarded as his parents, while his twin sister was Inanna (Ishtar). Occasionally, other goddesses, such as Manzat and Pinikir, could be regarded as his sisters, too.” ref

“Among their children were Kittum, the personification of truth, dream deities such as Mamu, as well as the god Ishum. Utu’s name could be used to write the names of many foreign solar deities logographically. The connection between him and the Hurrian solar god Shimige is particularly well-attested, and the latter could be associated with Aya as well. While no myths focusing on Utu are known, he often appears as an ally of other figures in both Sumerian and Akkadian compositions. According to narratives about Dumuzi‘s death, he helped protect him when the galla demons tried to drag him to the underworld. In various versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh and in earlier Gilgamesh myths, he helps this hero defeat the monstrous Humbaba. In the myth Inanna and An, he helps his sister acquire the temple Eanna. In How Grain Came to Sumer, he is invoked to advise Ninazu and Ninmada.” ref

“The name Shamash is a cognate of Akkadian terms šamšu (“sun”) and šamšatu (“solar disc“), as well as the words referring to sun in other Semitic languages, such as Arabic šams and Hebrew šemeš. The linguistic connection between the name of the god and the corresponding celestial body has been compared to that between Adad (and Syrian Hadad) and the word addu, “storm.” The Amorite form of the name is Samsu, as attested, for example, in the theophoric name Samsu-iluna (“Samsu is our god”). The ancient Aramaic form of the name was most likely Śameš, though many variant syllabic spellings are attested. Additionally, the name for the sun in Mandaean cosmology, Shamish (Mandaic language:ࡔࡀࡌࡉࡔ), is derived from Akkadian Shamash.” ref

“Utu was understood as a masculine deity. According to Manfred Krebernik, this most likely also resulted in his Akkadian counterpart being viewed as such, even though in the majority of Semitic languages, both the word referring to the sun itself and the names of solar deities are grammatically feminine. Julia M. Asher-Greve considers this the oldest attested example of a Mesopotamian deity’s gender being impacted by syncretism. However, not all researchers agree with the assumption that the name Shamash was ever understood as referring to a female deity in Akkadian-speaking areas. Christopher Woods argues that the only available evidence are early ambiguous theophoric names, which according to him, do not necessarily point at the existence of female Shamash, and might omit prepositions necessary to identify the gender of the deity invoked in them.” ref 

“Manfred Krebernik notes that a well-known example of a female deity in what he deems the “cuneiform cultural sphere” is Shapash. At the same time, both the Amorites and the Arameans viewed the solar deity as male, like Sumerians and Akkadians. According to Manfred Krebernik, the name Amna, attested as a synonym of Utu in the god list An = Anum and used to refer to the sun god in an inscription of Nabonidus, might be either connected to the toponym Sippar-Amnanum or to a root attested in Northwest Semitic languages, ‘-m-n, which can be translated as “to be reliable” or “to be firm.” ref

“The most common writing of the sun god’s name was the logogram ^dUTU, which could be read as Utu, Shamash, or, as attested in the god list An = Anum, as Amna. Syllabic spellings of all three of these names are also known. A further logographic spelling used the numeral 20, which was associated with him. Dozens of other variant names, epithets or possibly minor deities who came to be seen as synonymous with Utu are attested in god lists. Examples include Karkara (possibly related to Ninkar, one of the names of his wife Aya), Nimindu (possibly related to the name of the goddess Nimintabba), Si’e (“who shines forth”), Ṣalam (possibly a name referring to a winged sun symbol) and U’e (“sunrise”).” ref

Stars: Ancestors, Spirit Animals, and Deities (around 6,000 years ago, with connections to shamanism at 30,000 years ago and possibly further back to 40,000 years ago with totemism)

“The most significant myths of a given culture are usually the cosmogonic or creation myths; these sacred stories evolved and developed to explain the origin of the universe and the presence of the gods.” ref

“The major source for the Sumerian conception of the creation of the universe is the introductory passage to a Sumerian poem entitled roughly “Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Nether World.” The Sumerian poet uses two dialects in his epic and mythic compositions, the main dialect, and another known as the Emesal dialect. The latter resembles the main dialect very closely and differs only in showing several regular and characteristic phonetic variations. What is more interesting, however, is the fact that the poet uses this Emesal dialect in rendering the direct speech of a female, not male, deity; thus, the speeches of Inanna, queen of heaven, are regularly rendered in the Emesal dialect.” ref

“One of the more remarkable contributions to art made by Mesopotamia is the cylinder seal. Invented primarily for the purpose of identifying and safeguarding ownership of goods shipped or stored, it came to be used in time as a kind of signature for legal documents. The procedure consisted merely of rolling the cylinder over wet clay and thus impressing the seal’s design upon it. It is the contents of these designs engraved by the seal-cutters on the stone cylinders which are of considerable value for our study of Sumerian mythology. Especially is this true of the cylinder seals current in Sumer in the latter half of the third millennium BCE, not a few of whose designs are religious and mythological in character.” ref

“The upper design clearly attempts to portray a more or less complicated mythological story. Three of the deities can be identified with reasonable certainty. Second from the right is the water-god Enki, with the flowing streams of water and the swimming fishes. Immediately behind him is his Janus-faced messenger Isimud, who plays an important role in several of our Enki myths. Seemingly rising out of the lower regions is Utu, the sun-god, with his saw-knife and fiery rays. The female figure standing on top of the mountain, near what seems to be a rather desolate tree, may perhaps be Inanna. If the figure to the left with a bow in hand is intended to be Gilgamesh, we have in this design most of the protagonists of the tale “Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Nether World.” However, it is to be noted that Enkidu is missing, and Isimud, who is pictured in the design, plays no part in the story. And so, any close connection between the design and the epic tale is improbable.” ref

“In the central design, none of the figures can be identified with reasonable certainty. In the left half of the picture, we note a deity who seems to be rising out of the lower regions and is presenting a macelike object to a goddess. To the left is a god, perhaps Gilgamesh, who seems to be chopping down a tree whose trunk is bent to a curve. The right half of the design seems to depict a ritual scene. The lower design may illustrate graphically the meaning of such a phrase as “The nether world has seized him.” In the right half of the scene, we note a god actually within a flaming mountain (in Sumerian, the word meaning “mountain” is the word used regularly for “nether world”). To the right of the mountain is a god who may be putting it to flame with a torch. Behind this deity is a goddess with fiery rays and a ring who may perhaps be identified as Inanna. The left half of the design portrays a god holding a bull-man by the tail; both are inside a mountain.” ref

“If now we sum up the cosmogonic or creation concepts of the Sumerians, which evolved to explain the origin of the universe, they may be stated as follows:

1. First was the primeval sea. Nothing is said of its origin or birth, and it is not unlikely that the Sumerians conceived it as having existed eternally.

2. The primeval sea begot the cosmic mountain consisting of heaven and earth united.

3. Conceived as gods in human form, An (heaven) was the male, and Ki (earth) was the female. From their union was begotten the air-god Enlil.” ref

“Mountain”

“A lower design may illustrate graphically the meaning of such a phrase as, “The nether world has seized him.” In the right half of the scene, we note a god actually within a flaming mountain (in Sumerian, the word meaning “mountain” is the word used regularly for “nether world”). To the right of the mountain is a god who may be putting it to flame with a torch. Behind this deity is a goddess with fiery rays and a ring who may perhaps be identified as Inanna. The left half of the design portrays a god holding a bull-man by the tail; both are inside a mountain.” ref

“… the Zu-Bird fled with his young to the mountain… In a tablet that gives a list of the Sumerian gods, the goddess Nammu, written with the ideogram for “sea,” is described as “the mother, who gave birth to heaven and earth.” Heaven and earth were, therefore, conceived by the Sumerians as the created products of the primeval sea. The myth “Cattle and Grain” which describes the birth in heaven of the spirits of cattle and grain, who were then sent down to earth to bring prosperity to mankind, begins with the following two lines: After on the mountain of heaven and earth, An had caused the Anunnaki (his followers) to be born… It is not unreasonable to assume, therefore, that heaven and earth united were conceived as a mountain whose base was the bottom of the earth and whose peak was the top of the heaven.” ref

• “The upper design depicts the rising of Utu, the sun-god, identifiable by his fiery rays and saw-knife. He places his left foot on a mountain while attending deities throw open the gates. 
• “The deity between Utu and Enki, who is climbing a mountain, is still unidentifiable.
• “The ‘great mountain,’ father Enlil, the bright-eyed, will see thee.
• “The great mountain, Enlil, in the universe has uttered thy exalted name.
• “Enki then comes to Meluhha, the “black mountain” …
• “Thy king is the great mountain, the father Enlil, like the father of all the lands.
• “Behind him is a mountain from which sprouts a plant and on which an ibex is ascending; in front of him, a deity leads a worshipper carrying a gazelle in his arms.
• “Shrine of abundance of the land, knees opened, green like the ‘mountain,’ Hashur-forest, wide shade.
• “After on the mountain of heaven and earth, An (the heaven-god) had caused the Anunnaki (his followers) to be born.
• “Isimud, the messenger of Enki, sings the praises of the “sea-house.” Then Enki raises the city Eridu from the abyss and makes it float over the water like a lofty mountain.” ref

“Enki now turns to the pickax and the brickmold, and appoints the brick-god Kabta in charge. He then directs the building implement gugun, lays foundations and builds houses, and places them under the charge of Mushdamma, the “great builder of Enlil.” He then fills the plain with plant and animal life and places Sumugan, “king of the ‘mountain’,” in control.” ref 

“Enlil, the air-god, separated heaven from earth, and while his father An carried off heaven, Enlil himself carried off his mother Ki, the earth. The union of Enlil and his mother Ki-in historical times she is perhaps to be identified with the goddess called variously Ninmah, “great queen”; Ninhursag, “queen of the (cosmic) mountain”; Nintu, “queen who gives birth”–set the stage for the organization of the universe, the creation of man, and the establishment of civilization.” ref

“Nanna, the moon-god, and his wife Ningal are the parents of Utu, the sun-god, who rises in the “mountain of the east” and sets in the “mountain of the west.” As yet, we find no mention of any boat or chariot used by the sun-god Utu to traverse the sky. Nor is it clear just what he does at night. The not unnatural assumption that upon reaching the “mountain of the west” at the end of the day he continues his journey at night through the nether world, arriving at the “mountain of the east” at dawn…” ref

“Enlil says to the Anunnaki: “Ye great gods who are standing about, My son has built a house, the king Enki; Eridu, like a mountain, he has raised up from the earth, In a good place he has built it. Eridu, the clean place where none may enter,
The house was built of silver and adorned with lapis lazuli. The house was directed by the seven “lyre-songs,” given over to incantation, With pure songs…, The abyss, the shrine of the goodness of Enki, befitting the divine decrees, Eridu, the pure house having been built, O Enki, praise!” ref

“Mountain” (ḫur-saĝ) is the very first word on the tablet and could be the oldest written word. Near Nippur’s most important temple, Ekur (lit. “mountain house”), they unearthed a cache of clay tablets. Archaeologists estimate that these cuneiform tablets date as far back as the 3rd millennium BCE. They are humanity’s earliest extant written records.” ref 

Heaven and earth deities as partners

“The god of heaven in many areas is a partner of an earth deity. In such cases, other numina (spirits) are missing or are subject to one of the two as spirits of nature or ancestors. Myths depicting the heaven-earth partnership usually describe the foundations or origins of the partnership in terms of a separation of a primeval chaos into heaven and earth or in terms of a later separation of heaven and earth that originally lay close together, and they describe the impregnation of the earth by the seed of the god (e.g., hieros gamos, Greek for “sacred marriage”). This partnership of the god of heaven and the goddess of earth may be found in areas of Africa that have been influenced by other civilizations (especially the Sudan and northeastern Africa), in eastern Indonesia, and in some areas of America under the influence of European civilizations.” ref

“Not infrequently, the god of heaven and the goddess of earth are fused into a hermaphroditic higher deity. This accords with certain traits of ancient civilizations that try to show in customs and myths that the dichotomies—for example, of heaven and earth, day and night, or man and woman—need to be surmounted in a kind of bisexual spiritual force. Certain myths express the loss of an original bisexuality of the world and people. In a creation myth found in the Vedas, for example, it was Purusha, an androgynous primal human, who separated through a primordial self-sacrifice into man and woman and from whom the world was created with all its contrasts. Another such creation myth is the cosmic egg, which was separated into the male sky and the female earth.” ref

The god of heaven is viewed dualistically

“In several religions, the god of heaven has an antagonistic evil adversary who delights in destroying completely or partially the good, creative deeds of the god of heaven. This helps to explain the insecurity of existence and concepts of ethical dualism. In most such cases, the contrasts experienced in the relationship between heaven and earth deities have been reevaluated along ethical lines by means of exalting the heavenly elements at the expense of the earthly ones (especially in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sects in Europe, west-central and northern Asia, and certain areas of northern Africa). The figure of an antagonistic trickster or demiurge that has a somewhat ethical component may be the result of diffusion and is rather rare in such cultures as those of the Khoisan and the indigenous peoples of Australia and North America.” ref

The god of heaven viewed monotheistically

“The god of heaven, viewed in his ethical aspect, is always an active, single god—e.g., as in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic monotheism.” ref

Earth

“Although in polytheistic religions the earth is usually represented as a goddess and associated with the god of heaven as her spouse, only rarely is there an elaborate or intensive cult of earth worship. There are in many religions mother goddesses who have elaborate cults and who have assumed the function of fertility for land and human beings, but they hardly have a chthonic (earth) basis. Some mother goddesses, such as Inanna-Ishtar, instead have a heavenly, astral origin. There are, however, subordinate figures of various pantheons, such as Nerthus in Germanic religion or Demeter and Persephone (earth mother and corn girl) in Greek religion, who have played greater roles than Gaea (the world mother). Among Indo-Europeans, western Asians (despite their various fertility deities), Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese, the gods of heaven, sun, and thunderstorms have held a paramount interest.” ref

“When the common people have displayed intensive attention to “mother earth” (such as the practice of laying down newborn babies on the earth and many other rites), this partially reflects older cults that have remained relatively free from warrior and nation-building peoples with their emphasis on war (as in the western Sudan, pre-Vedic India, and the Indian agrarian area of northern Mexico). The Andean earth-mother figure, Pachamama (Pacha Mama), worshiped by the Peruvians, stands in sharp contrast to the sun religion of the Inca (the conquering lord of the Andes region). Earth deities are most actively venerated in areas in which people are closely bound to ancestors and to the cultivation of grain.” ref

Mountains

“Especially prominent mountains are favorite places for cults of high places, particularly when they are isolated as island mountains, mountains with snowcaps, or uninhabited high mountain ranges. The psychological roots of the cults of high places lie in the belief that mountains are close to the sky (as heavenly ladders), that clouds surrounding the mountaintops are givers of rain, and that mountains with volcanoes form approaches to the fiery insides of the earth. Mountains, therefore, serve as the abodes of the gods, as the centers of the dead who live underground, as burial places for rainmakers (medicine men), and as places of oracles for soothsayers. In cosmogenic (origin of the world) myths, mountains are the first land to emerge from the primeval water. They frequently become the cosmic mountain (i.e., the world conceived as a mountain) that is symbolically represented by a small hill on which a king stands at the inauguration. Pilgrimages to mountain altars or shrines are the favorite practices of cults of high places.” ref

“The larger mountain ranges and canyons between volcanic mountains—especially in Eurasia from the Pyrenees to the Alps, the Carpathian Mountains, the Caucasus Mountains, the Himalayas, the mountainous areas of northern China, Korea, and Japan, and the mountainous areas of North and South America (the Rocky Mountains, the Andes)—are most often centers of cults of high places. Elevations of the East African Rift Valley (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda), volcanic islands of the Pacific Ocean (e.g., Hawaii), and the mountains of the Indian Deccan have also served as centers of the cults of high places.” ref

“In early civilizations, the cults of high places were closely combined with those of the earth; e.g., Mount Olympus in Greece, the mountains of Enlil or of the “Mountain Mother,” Cybele, in western Asia, and the Meru mountain in India were believed to bring heaven and earth into a close relationship and were often viewed as the middle pillar of the world pillars upholding the sky. Bush and wild spirits (such as the lord of the animals) of the cultures of the hunters and gatherers were often believed to reside in inaccessible mountainous areas (e.g., the Caucasus).” ref

“In addition to other mountain deities of a more recent date (e.g., the god of the 12 mountains and the one-legged mountain god), the Japanese mountain deity yama-no-kami has been demonstrated to have been a deity of the hunt (i.e., god of the forest, lord of the animals) in ancient Japan. Through the worship of farmers, the yama-no-kami assumed the elements of a goddess of vegetation and agriculture. The mountain goddesses (earth mothers) of non-Vedic India still incorporate numerous features of hunt deities, and, because of indigenous influences, the Vedic gods and their wives (e.g., Parvati, Uma, and Durga) have their abodes on mountains. The isolated mountains of East Africa, surrounded by clouds, are believed to be the dwelling places of the heaven and rain gods, and in Zimbabwe, pilgrimages are made to mountain sanctuaries that are viewed as the seats of the gods.” ref

Pre-Islamic peoples of North Africa and the extinct inhabitants of the Canary Islands (the Guanches people) associated mountain worship with a cult of goats and sheep, which, when practiced in rituals, was believed to secure rain and thunderstorms in the often arid landscape. Similar cults are also found in the Balkans and in the valleys of the southern Alps. According to the beliefs of many peoples, earthquakes originate in mountains. In areas of Africa where the concept of mana is particularly strong, many believe that the dead in the underworld are the causes of earthquakes, though in the upper Nile basin of South Sudan and in East Africa, an earth deity is sometimes blamed.” ref

“In some areas, a bearer who holds the world up—a concept that probably came from Arabia, Persia, or India—is believed to cause an earthquake when he changes his position or when he moves his burden from one shoulder to the other. World bearers often are giants or heroes, such as Atlas, but they also may be animals: an elephant (India), a boar (Indonesia), a buffalo (Indonesia), a fish (Arabia, Georgia, and Japan), a turtle (America), or the serpent god Ndengei (Fiji). In the Arab world, on the east coast of Africa, and in North Africa, an ox generally is viewed as the bearer, sometimes standing on a fish in the water. Generators of earthquakes also may be the gods of the underworld, such as Tuil, the earthquake god of the inhabitants of the Kamchatka Peninsula, who rides on a sleigh under the earth. The earthquake is driven away by noise, loud shouting, or poking with the pestle of a mortar. Among peoples with eschatological (last times) views, earthquakes announce the end of the world (Europe, western Asia).” ref

“The view that the tides are caused by the moon can be found over almost all the earth. This regular natural phenomenon seldom gives rise to cults, but the ebb and flow of the coastal waters have stimulated mythological concepts. Not infrequently, the moon acquires the status of a water deity because of this phenomenon. The Tlingit of the northwestern United States view the moon as an old woman, the mistress of the tides. The animal hero and trickster Yetl, the raven, is successful in conquering (with the aid of the mink) the seashore from the moon at low tide, and thus an extended area is gained for nourishment with small sea animals.” ref

“Generally, the sun is worshiped more in colder regions and the moon in warm regions. Also, the sun is usually considered male, and the moon is female. Exceptions to these generalizations, however, are notable: the prevalent worship of the sun in hot, arid ancient Egypt and in parts of western Asia; the conception of the moon as a man (who frequently is believed to be the cause of menstruation) among many hunting and gathering societies as well as certain pastoral and royal cultures of Africa; and the conception of the female sun ruling northern Eurasia eastward to Japan and parts of North America. In many state cults of ancient civilizations, the sun plays a special role, particularly where it has replaced an old god of heaven (e.g., Egypt, Ethiopia, South India, and the Andes) and especially where it is viewed as a marker of time.” ref

The sun as the center of a state religion

“In Africa, ancient Egypt was the main center from which solar deity concepts emanated. The solar religion, promoted by the state, was concerned with the sun god Re (Atum-Re, Amon-Re, Chnum-Re), the sun falcon Horus, the scarab Chepre, and a divine kingdom that was determined by the sun (e.g., pharaoh Akhenaton’s solar monotheism c. 1350 BCE). The sun religion reached—by way of Meroe, a sun sanctuary until the 6th century CE, and the upper Nile—as far as western Ethiopia (e.g., the Hego cult in Kefa and the sun kings in Limmu) and Nigeria (e.g., Jukun). In Asia, the sun cult culminated in the religion of Mithra of Persia. Mithra was transported by Roman legionnaires to Western Europe and became the “Unconquerable Sun” of the Roman military emperors.” ref

“In Japan, the imperial deity in state Shintō is Amaterasu, the sun goddess from whom Jimmu Tennō, the first human emperor, descended. In Indonesia, where the descent of the princes from the sun is also a feature, the sun often replaces the deity of heaven as a partner of the earth. In Peru the ruling Inca was believed to be the sun incarnate (Inti) and his wife the moon. A sun temple in Cuzco contains a representation of Inti as the oldest son of the creator god. The Natchez Indians of the southeastern United States, who are culturally connected with Central America, called their king “Great Sun” and the noblemen “the Suns.” ref

The sun as a subordinate deity

“The sun, within a polytheistic pantheon, often is revered as a special deity who is subordinate to the highest deity, usually the god of heaven. This may be observed in the great civilizations of ancient Europe and Asia: Helios (Greece); Sol (Rome); Mithra (Persia); Surya, Savitr, and Mithra (India); Utu (Sumer); and Shamash (Babylonian and other Semitic areas). The sun not infrequently is considered female—Shams of some Arabs, Shaph of ancient Ugarit in Palestine, Sun of Arinna of the Hittites, as well as the female Sun of the Germanic peoples. Siberian people such as the Taymyr Samoyed (whose women pray in spring to the sun goddess in order to receive fertility or a rich calving of the reindeer) or the Tungus worship sun goddesses. They make sacrifices to the sun goddess, and her symbols are embroidered on women’s clothes.” ref

The Sun and Moon as a divine pair

“A sun god is often related to a moon goddess as one member of a divine pair (in the place of heaven and earth as “world parents”). A sun-moon god exists among the Munda in India (Singbonga); a sun-moon (earth) pair, partially seen as bisexual, exists in eastern Indonesia; and Nyambe (the sun) among the Lozi in Zambia is represented as united with the moon goddess as the ruling pair.” ref

The Sun as an attribute of the highest being

“The sun sometimes is viewed as a coordinate or subordinate attribute, or hypostasis, of the highest being. This may possibly occur because of a partially weakened influence of a stronger solarism in areas of older indigenous peoples, such as those of Sudan, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, northern East Africa, and Australia.” ref

The Sun as a mythical being

“The sun in some religions is conceived as a purely mythical being, cultically recognized in sun dances such as those of prairie-dwelling Native Americans and in various celebrations of the solstice. These rites may be either survivals of an earlier local cult of a sun deity or influences of such a cult.” ref

The Moon

“The moon is often personified in different ways and worshiped with ritual customs; nevertheless, in contrast to the sun, the moon is less frequently viewed as a powerful deity. It appears to be of great importance as the basis of a lunar calendar, but not in more advanced agrarian civilizations. The moon, infrequently associated with the highest god, is usually placed below heaven and the sun. When the moon with the sun together (instead of “heaven and earth”) constitute an important pair of gods (world parents), it frequently assumes the features of an earth deity. In tropical South America, the sun and moon are usually purely mythical figures.” ref

“Between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer, the moon is predominantly female. Only some remainders of ancient hunting peoples view the moon as a male being. In the few significant male moon gods, such as both Khons and Thoth in Egypt, Sin-Nanna in Babylonia, and Chandra in India—in contrast with the female Selene and Luna in the Greek and Roman culture—a more ancient substratum may be present. Where the moon is considered as male, he often determines the sexual life of the woman, especially among the indigenous people of Australia.” ref

“The phenomenon of the moon that attracts all people is the sequence of its phases. The waxing and waning of the moon crescent is often interpreted as gaining or losing weight (eating, dieting). Thus, the Taulipang in Brazil believe that the moon is first nourished well and then inadequately by his two wives, Venus and Jupiter. Where the moon is viewed as female, the phases represent pregnancy and delivery. Elsewhere, people see childhood, maturity, and dying as the phases of the moon: the first crescent is thus the rebirth or the replacement of the old by a new moon.” ref

“The appearance of the crescent or the full moon is sometimes celebrated by a rest from work, and some attempt to participate in the waxing and waning of the moon by analogous magical rites. Girls with small breasts stand in the full moonlight (in the Salzburg, Austria, area); persons who desire the shrinking of a tumor point to the waning moon; and newborn children often are exposed to the waning moonlight, or they (and anything else needing health or permanence) are symbolically dyed white (as if washed by moonlight). Nearly everywhere, connections between the moon phases and the rhythms of nature (the tides) and humans (menstruation) are recognized.” ref

“The three dark days of the “death” of the moon are believed by many to be dangerous. During this period the moon is believed to be defeated in a battle with monsters who eat and later regurgitate the moon; or the moon is viewed as having been killed by other heavenly beings and later revived. The period is a time in which people, if possible, do not engage in a new enterprise.” ref

“The halo of the moon is also viewed as a bad omen among many peoples. Moon spots are regarded as testimonies of a battle with heavenly opponents. In addition to “the man in the moon,” the moon’s appearance has suggested “the woman with the basket on her back,” “the spinning woman,” or “the weaving woman” (in Polynesia, “the woman who pounds tapa”). The most popular animal figure recognized in the features of the moon, the rabbit (from Europe to America), presumably earned this role because of its fertility.” ref

Eclipses of the sun and moon

“An eclipse of the sun or moon—usually interpreted as a battle between the two heavenly bodies or as the dying or the devouring of one of the two—in many religions is met with anxiety, shouting, drum beating, shooting, and other noises. Many Native Americans, the Khoisan in Africa, the Ainu in Japan, and the Minangkabau in Sumatra interpret the eclipse as the fainting, sickness, or death of the darkened heavenly body. In Arctic North America, Eskimos, Aleuts, and Tlingit believe that the sun and moon have moved from their places in order to see that things are going right on earth. The explanation that heavenly monsters and beasts pursue the stars and attempt to injure and to kill them, however, is a view found over a larger area.” ref

“Noise and shooting are believed to deter the monsters from their pursuit or to force them to return the celestial bodies if they have already been captured. In parts of China and in Thailand, the monster is the heavenly dragon; in other Chinese regions and among the Germanic tribes and northern American Indians, the culprits are dogs and wolves (coyotes); in Africa and Indonesia, they are snakes; in India, they are the star monsters Rahu and Ketu; and in South America, the beast is the jaguar. The belief in the darkening of one star by the other in a battle—e.g., between the sun god Lisa and the moon goddess Gleti in Benin—is about as widespread. An eclipse may also be interpreted (as in Tahiti) as the lovemaking of the sun and moon, who thus beget the stars and obscure each other in the process.” ref

Stars and constellations

“Worship of the stars and constellations in the modern world survives only in a very corrupt or hidden manner. True star worship existed only among some ancient civilizations of and associated with Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia, where both astronomy and astrology reached a high degree of refinement—especially after a Hellenizing renaissance of astronomy—was the origin of astral religions and myths that affected religions all over the world. Though the view is controversial, Mesopotamian astral worship and influence may have reached as far as Central and Andean America (by way of China or Polynesia). Sumerian, Elamite, and Hurrian contemplation of the stars influenced not only Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Egypt, Iran, and India but also other areas. Knowledge of the zodiac and the planets and observation of precession extended from the West to South Asia—e.g., the Pythagoreans and Orphics (mystical philosophers) in the Mediterranean area and astrological mystics in India, Indonesia, China, and Polynesia.” ref

“The western Sudan, for example, was deeply influenced by the spirit of ancient Mediterranean and Oriental knowledge of the stars. Apart from areas in the Sudan, northeast Africa, and what is now Zimbabwe (Mwene Matapa), not much of Africa has had any considerable knowledge of the stars. Unless old hunting cultures have survived, knowledge of the stars is relatively limited among forest peoples, explained by an Ekoi man in southeast Nigeria as follows: “Ekoi people do not trouble themselves about the stars, because the trees always hide them.” The hunters of the Ituri Forest likewise have never achieved the significant knowledge of the stars that is possessed by the African steppe dwellers.” ref

“Knowledge of the stars rarely leads to a worship of the stars. True star gods are rare, for example, in large parts of Africa. In Polynesia, where significant knowledge of the stars by the seafaring people and fishermen was learned in regular schools of astronomy, there seldom occurred what can be called true religious worship of the stars. Knowledge of the stars is still relatively significant among the hunting peoples in the Southern Hemisphere. Economic considerations connected with the rising and setting of the stars, however, surpass their mythological significance by far. The stars are usually considered to be living beings, particularly animals that have been transferred to the sky. They evidently are taken seriously primarily because they indicate by their rising and setting the appearance of game to be hunted or fruits to be collected.” ref

“The widespread African interpretation of the constellation sometimes known by the name of Orion as a hunter, as game, or as a dog (from East Africa to the lower Congo and in the area of the Niger) is most likely a vestige from an earlier hunting period that has survived in agricultural civilizations. In a different form, Orion is still known in Europe as a hunter, in northern Asia as a hunter of reindeer and elk, and in North America as a hunter of bears. In South America—outside the Andean empires—a whole series of astral beliefs of the ancient hunting culture has been preserved: the concepts of stars and constellations as lords of the animals, as helpers of the hunter, or as animals themselves.” ref

“The planet Venus has probably experienced its most significant personification in the figure of the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna-Ishtar. She was viewed sometimes as female and at other times as having aspects of both genders. Through her identification with the Greek Aphrodite and the Roman Venus, Inanna-Ishtar, the queen of heaven, still survives in Roman Catholic iconography—e.g., as the Virgin Mary with the moon under her feet. African cultures also have been significantly impressed by this planet, not only in the rare figure of a Zulu heavenly goddess who determines the agricultural work of the women but even more as the evening star and the morning star, who are the wives of the moon.” ref

“In the royal culture of Mwene Matapa (Zimbabwe) and its influences in Buganda (Uganda) and southern Congo, the king is related to the moon, and his wedding with the Venus women is a type of hieros gamos (Greek: “sacred marriage”). In large areas of Africa the concept of “Venus wives of the moon” is preserved, although the moon is usually considered as the wife (or sister) of the sun. This concept was most likely prevalent at a time when the moon-king ideology was widespread in the eastern half of Africa from the Nile to South Africa, perhaps indicating South Arabian influences.” ref

“The cluster of stars sometimes, known as the Pleiades, six or seven adjacent stars in the constellation of Taurus, is viewed in many parts of the world as maidens pursued by men. The Pleiades are also interpreted as a mother hen with her chicks, especially in Eurasia, where the star Aldebaran, which is located close to the Pleiades, is often included as a part of the constellation. In Africa, the appearance of the Pleiades designates the beginning of the agricultural year. Therefore, in many Bantu languages the verb kulima (“to hoe”) furnishes the basis for their designation kilimia, the Pleiades. In addition to eastern and southern Africa, there is still a smaller area in the western Sudan that retains this belief.” ref

“Polaris (the North Star) enjoys a central significance among the Finno-Ugric and Turkish Tatars as “nail of the world” or “pillar of heaven.” Among Altai Tatars, Polaris is viewed as the negotiator of the god of heaven Ülgan; in Japan, Polaris is a god of heaven above the ninth layer of clouds. The Milky Way Galaxy, depending on a group’s economy and lifestyle, was often simply named after hunting or domestic animals: way of the tapir, the donkey, or the camel. It also is called the seam of the heavenly tent or a water stream. As the footsteps of God or the way of God, as the way of the dead, or as a deserted way of the gods, the Milky Way reveals older mythical conceptions, among which is that of the world (cosmic) tree.” ref

“The luminous phenomenon called aurora borealis, the “northern lights” of the north polar regions, is frequently interpreted by Arctic and subarctic peoples (e.g., Eskimo, Athabascan, Tlingit) as the reflection of the dancing fire of the ghosts or of the peoples farther north, as the “cooking of meat” or the ball game of these peoples. Northern Germanic tribes saw in it the splendor of the shields of Valkyrie (warrior women).” ref

Elements and forces of nature

“The natural forces of fire and water, which evidently exclude each other, are brought together in a unity of opposites in the worldviews of early archaic civilizations. Both forces are purifying as well as protective and are viewed by many as being connected with the cosmic powers of the sun and moon. Where they are truly combined, often genetically, fire (as the sun) is usually male, and water (as the moon) female. Where the fire is included more into the chthonic (earthly) sphere, it may also receive a feminine character (e.g., fire in the earth, preserved in the womb); where rain is viewed as the semen of heaven, which is usually personified as male, it takes on a male character.” ref

Water

“Many of the qualities of water make it appear to be animated; on this basis, it is psychologically understandable that water (e.g., rain, sea, lakes, and rivers) might become a natural phenomenon worthy of worship. Water is always in motion, changes color in the light of the stars, reflects the world, “speaks” with murmuring and roaring, brings new life to dry vegetation, refreshes living creatures, including the tired and the ill, and heals. Because it dissolves dirt, water is also most suitable for purifying the soul (e.g., after the violation of a taboo or the commission of a sin of any kind). Under certain circumstances, even icons have to be washed. Water also demonstrates destructive forces (seaquakes, floods, and storms). The most important mythical-religious facts symbolized by water are the following: the primal matter, the instrument of purification and expiation, a vivifying force, a fructifying force, and a revealing and judging instrument.” ref

Water as primal matter

“The conception of a primal body of water from which everything is derived is especially prevalent among peoples living close to coasts or in river areas—e.g., the Egyptian Nu (the primordial ocean) and the Mesopotamian Apsu (the primeval watery abyss) and Tiamat (the primeval chaos dragon). The earth may be fished out or emerges from the primeval water; heavenly beings (e.g., Ataentsik, ancestress of the Iroquois) appear on the emerged earth; and birds lay an egg that is later divided into two halves (heaven and earth) on the chaotic sea. Thus, water is viewed as the foundation of all things. A survival of the original primeval sea in such myths is the water that flows around the earth’s disk (e.g., Oceanus).” ref

Water as an instrument of purification and expiation

“Water is viewed as an instrument of purification and expiation, especially in arid areas. Cultic acts in such areas generally take place only after lustrations—sprinkling with water or immersion in it. The same view holds true for entry into new communities or into life (e.g., baptism). Water lustration is especially necessary after touching the dead and as a purificatory washing for priests and kings. Pictures of the gods also are sometimes anointed with water.” ref

Water as a vivifying force

“Water is viewed as vivifying, like the heavenly rainwater that moistens the earth. Water also is equated with the flowing life forces of the body (e.g., blood, sweat, and semen). In order to replace the lost liquids, water was added to the mummified dead in Egypt. The African Asante designate their patrilinear groups as ntoro, which means “water,” “river,” and “semen,” and the Wogeo of Papua New Guinea call their patrilinear clans dan—i.e., both water and semen.” ref

Water as fructifying

“Wherever early archaic culture spread the myth of heaven and earth as the world parents, there also was a belief that heaven fructifies the earth with heaven’s seed. The springs, pools, and rivers on the earth, therefore, may bring not only healing and expiation but also fertility. The Scamander River (now Turkey’s Küçükmenderes Çayı) in ancient Greece evidently was so personified; according to Aeschines, a 4th-century-bce Greek orator, girls bathed in it before marrying and said: “Scamander, accept my virginity.” Magical rites in which water serves as a substitute for semen or the fertility of men are numerous.” ref

“In Cameroon, the Bamessing corn festival (Nsiä), which is celebrated in the dry season, opens with the mourning of the dead vegetation. Reminiscent of the Egyptian Osiris and the Mesopotamian Tammuz festivals, Nsiä emphasizes that the god who gave the nourishment has died and is being mourned like a chieftain. The chief, dying symbolically with the god, has to be strengthened with a miraculous “chieftain water,” which has to be fetched by virgins of the chieftain’s clan. For two weeks, the chieftain drinks from the gourds of all the maidens after the women of the tribe have drunk from the holy water place.” ref

“Battles of gods and heroes with mythical beings, beasts, and monsters that hold back the fructifying water are widespread in mythology. The liberation of water during the mythical battle is equivalent to the end of the dry season or a drought, to the reviving of vegetation. In Indian mythology, Indra slays Urtra; in Syrian and Palestinian mythology, Baal battles with Leviathan; and in Huron mythology Joskeha, the spring hero, kills the frog that attempted to restrict the free flow of water.” ref

Water as a revealing or judging instrument

“In some cultures water serves as an instrument that reveals and judges. Reflections in the water led to a whole series of oracles originating from an alleged prophetic or divinatory power of water. A visionary look into the water’s surface was believed to reveal the future as well as past misdeeds. This ancient custom may have been preserved in the use of crystal balls by modern fortune-tellers. The custom of water divination is found in ancient Europe, North Africa, the Middle East (e.g., Babylonian fortune-telling by means of cups), eastern and northern Asia (where the use of metal mirrors by the shamans often replaces the water as a divining means), and Southeast Asia and Polynesia. Where such means of divination were severely repressed, as in sub-Saharan Africa, these methods of mirror- and water-gazing were changed into manipulated water ordeals. Water is used as a judging element in ordeals believed to demonstrate the judgment of the gods—water ordeals (e.g., immersion in water), as well as the more frequent fire ordeals. There, too, the purifying character of the water plays a role.” ref

Weather

“The worship of atmospheric powers can only with difficulty be separated from the worship of heaven. In most cases, the high god in heaven is also the god of thunderstorms and rain. Specific gods of wind and storm are found especially in countries with tornadoes and hurricanes (e.g., the Maya deity Huracan). Peoples such as the Tuareg and Arabs, who live in arid zones, dried out by the wind, speak of sand funnel spirits or of a desert god; such a creature is the “boneless Kon” of the Peruvians.” ref

“From northern Europe to the tropical forests, thunderstorm deities rule heaven and earth. The most famous group of these spiritual beings are the Indo-European thunder gods (Thor-Donar of the Germanic peoples, Taranis of the Celts, Perkunis of the Slavs, Indra of the Indians, Zeus-Jupiter of the Greeks and Romans), who throw their thunderbolts or bundles of lightning. The Finnish god Ukko and the Basque god Orko probably stem from the same root; these gods still continue in the popular beliefs of Eastern Europe or Latin America today, such as St. Elijah or Santiago. They are related to the gods Teshub and Hadad (associated with the steer and with lightning) of western Asia and also to the thunder god Shango of the Nigerian Yoruba, who is accompanied by a ram (as Thor uses a he-goat for pulling his wagon). Shango, as Yakuta, throws thunderbolts (i.e., stone axes) to the earth, as does the Mayan rain god, Chac.” ref

“The goat, the ram, or horses appear as companions of weather gods or as animals that pull the thundering sky vehicle. In other cultures thunderbirds are the companions of the thunder gods or are the lightning itself. The lightning bird Zu, or Imdugud, occurs in ancient Mesopotamia, and the Garuda (with Wadjra) in Vedic India. Thunderbirds are represented (sometimes with arrows or spears in their bills or fangs) on archaeological artifacts of the Bronze Age in Dodona in Greece, Minussinsk in Siberia, and Dong Son in Vietnam and on pots in northern Peru; they are described in myths of the Pueblo and prairie Indians of North America and among eastern and southern Africans.” ref

“Where prayers or sacrifices to gods and ancestors in the religious cult are not effective in producing rain, rain magic, which is practiced universally in similar rites, is often able to accomplish it. Trained magicians usually perform such rites, but ancestral priests or “persons holding power” also may do so. In rain magic, sprinkling, spitting, or immersion of people or things is often used to call down heavenly moisture. Smoke clouds to attract the rain accomplish the same purpose. There also must be suitable vestments (fresh greens, skins or pelts of water animals), body painting (representing clouds), or adornment with bird down. The color black in the clothing or on a killed or exposed animal is believed to be especially effective. Animals held responsible for holding the rain or water back (frogs, snakes, or mythological dragons) must be challenged. The sound of rain or thunder is produced with bull-roarers, whistling, noise pots, rattles, and chains. If excessive rain is to be stopped, the injunction to perform or refrain from certain acts (e.g., the prohibition of washing, boiling water, burning objects, making noise, and whistling) must be observed.” ref

“The rainbow often is considered a being, generally in the form of an animal, who swallows and holds back rain or water. The rainbow serpent (as a double bow, also conceived as bisexual) is a figure that is found especially in the tropics of Africa, South Asia, northern Australia (where it is called Ungud), and Brazil. Elsewhere, the rainbow is viewed as a heavenly bridge that connects the worlds of gods and men: the Bifröst bridge in the Edda, the bridge of the soul boats in Indonesia or of the creator god in Africa, and the path of the Greek goddess Iris. In Christian iconography, the rainbow is the throne of Christ; among Arabs and some Bantu of Central Africa it is the bow of god, and among the Nandi, the Masai, and the Californian Yuki, it is the robe of god.” ref

Worship of animals

“Among the numerous animals that are prominent in religion and magic, the wild animals of the forests, the sea, and the air that are most important for the hunter are the most significant. Hunting and gathering societies, rooted in the earliest human cultures, believed that they not only had to kill animals—which were economically important as nourishment and raw materials—but also that they had to avoid their revenge. The feeling of a close connection between humans and animals that was lost to the many highly industrialized societies (broadly speaking) led to an anthropomorphizing of animals to such an extent that animals were not only humanized but were held responsible for crises. See also animism; totemism.” ref

“Star-People/Worship”

“The term “star people” was taken from an existing Native American spiritual concept. Native American Star People legends, what might be termed the folklore traditions of various Indian tribes, of having been in contact with extraterrestrials, or as being their ancestors, as a study of human societies and cultures, as anthropology, so that the more incredible aspects of this topic might be afforded a conventional context. It may be perhaps the norm for native legends to reference the Sky, and ancient interactions with those who dwell in the sky, or that resulted in celestial fixtures, such as the formation of the Pleiades, due to events on earth.” ref

“The term “star worship” (Astrolatry) references the worship of stars and other heavenly bodies as deities, or the association of deities with heavenly bodies. The most common instances of this are sun gods and moon gods in polytheistic systems worldwide. Also notable is the association of the planets with deities in Babylonian, and hence in Greco-Roman religion, viz. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Babylonian astronomy from early times associates stars with deities, but the heavens as the residence of an anthropomorphic pantheon, and later of monotheistic God and his retinue of angels, is a later development, gradually replacing the notion of the pantheon residing or convening on the summit of high mountains. It has been argued that there is a parallelism of the “stellar theology” of Babylon and Egypt, both countries absorbing popular star-worship into the official pantheon of their respective state religions by identification of gods with stars or planets. Kurgan culture in the Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). The term is derived from the Russian kurgan (курган), meaning tumulus or burial mound referenced as the Kurgan hypothesis explaining the “kurganized” cultures, such as the Globular Amphora culture to the west. From these kurganized cultures came the immigration of Proto-Greeks to the Balkans and the nomadic Indo-Iranian cultures to the east around 2500 BC. Astrolatry does not appear to have been common in the Levant prior to the Iron Age (possibly around or after 3,200 – 2,550) and becomes popular under Assyrian (2,911 – 2,609) influence. Who emerged as the most powerful state in the known world at the time, coming to dominate the Ancient Near East, East Mediterranean, Asia Minor, Caucasus, and parts of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa, eclipsing and conquering rivals such as Babylonia, Elam, Persia, Urartu, Lydia, the Medes, Phrygians, Cimmerians, Israel, Judah, Phoenicia, Chaldea, Canaan, the Kushite Empire, the Arabs, and Egypt. As the people settled in the new land, they became exposed to Assyrian cultural ideas such as “royal ideologies, religious ideas, and mythologies…” and it “was incessantly propagated to all segments of the population through imperial art, emperor cult, religious festivals, and the cults of Aššur, Ištar, Nabû, Sîn and other Assyrian gods.” This was a process known as “Assyrianization.” The process of Assyrianization was a gradual process that occurred through generations of intermarriages, military participation, and daily interaction with Assyrian people (those who weren’t descended from the deportees’ generations earlier). Through the generations of cultural and linguistic exchange, there came to be a homogenous Assyrian identity. Mesopotamian religion refers to the religious beliefs and practices of the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, particularly Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, and Babylonia at least 5,500 years ago. ref, ref, ref

“Star-Worship Among the Israelites”

“This [astrolatry/astrotheology] is perhaps the oldest form of idolatry practiced by the ancients. According to Wisdom xiii. 2, the observation of the stars in the East very early led the people to regard the planets and the fixed stars as gods. The religion of the ancient Egyptians is known to have consisted preeminently of sun-worship. Moses sternly warned the Israelites against worshiping the sun, moon, stars, and all the host of heaven (Deut. iv. 19, xvii. 3); it may be said that the prohibition of making and worshiping any image of that which is in heaven above (Ex. xx. 4; Deut. v. 8) implies also the stars and the other celestial bodies.” ref 

“The Israelites fell into this kind of idolatry, and as early as the time of Amos they had the images of Siccuth and Chiun, “the stars of their god” (Amos v. 26, R. V.); the latter name is generally supposed to denote the planet Saturn. That the kingdom of Israel fell earlier than that of Judah is stated (II Kings xvii. 16) to have been due, among other causes, to its worshiping the host of heaven. But the kingdom of Judah in its later period seems to have out-done the Northern Kingdom in star-worship.” ref

“Of Manasseh it is related that he built altars to all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of Yhwh, and it seems that it was the practice of even kings before him to appoint priests who offered sacrifices to the sun, the moon, the planets, and all the host of heaven. Altars for star-worship were built on the roofs of the houses, and horses and chariots were dedicated to the worship of the sun (ib. xxi. 5; xxiii. 4-5, 11-12). Star-worship continued in Judah until the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign (621 B.C.), when the king took measures to abolish all kinds of idolatry (ib.). But although star-worship was then abolished as a public cult, it was practiced privately by individuals, who worshiped the heavenly bodies, and poured out libations to them on the roofs of their houses (Zeph. i. 5; Jer. viii. 2, xix. 13). Jeremiah (vii. 18) describes the worship of the queen of heaven to have been more particularly common among the women.” ref

“Ezekiel, who prophesied in the sixth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin (591 BCE), describes the worship of the sun as practiced in the court of the Temple (Ezek. viii. 16et seq.), and from Jer. xliv. 17 et seq. it may be seen that even after the destruction of the Temple the women insisted on continuing to worship the queen of heaven. In Job (xxxi. 26 et seq.) there is an allusion to the kissing of the hand in the adoration of the moon (see Moon, Biblical Data). According to Robertson Smith (“The Religion of the Semites,” p. 127, note 3, Edinburgh, 1889), star-worship is not of great antiquity among the Semites in general, nor among the Hebrews in particular, for the latter adopted this form of idolatry only under the influence of the Assyrians. But Fritz Hommel (“Der Gestirndienst der Alten Araber,” Munich, 1901) expresses the opposite opinion. He points to the fact that the Hebrew root which denotes the verb “to swear” is the same as that which denotes “seven,” and claims that this fact establishes a connection between swearing and the seven planets; and he furthermore declares that there are many Biblical pieces of evidence of star-worship among the ancient Hebrews.” ref

“Thus, the fact that Terah, Abraham’s father, had lived first at Ur of the Chaldees, and that later he settled at Haran (Gen. xi. 31), two cities known from Assyrian inscriptions as places of moon-worship, shows that Abraham’s parents were addicted to that form of idolatry. According to legend, Abraham himself worshiped the sun, moon, and the stars before he recognized the true God in Yhwh (see Abraham in Apocryphal and Rabbinical Literature). The golden calf, Hommel declares, was nothing more than an emblem of the moon-god, which, in the Assyrian inscription, is styled “the youthful and mighty bull” and the lord of the heavenly hosts (comp. “Yhwh Ẓeba’ot,” which term is intentionally omitted from the Pentateuch). He assigns the same character to the two calves made by Jeroboam several centuries later (I Kings xii. 28). The ancient Hebrews, being nomads, like the Arabs favored the moon, while the Babylonians, who were an agricultural nation, preferred the sun. But, as appears from Ezek. xx. 7-8, the moon-worship of the Israelites, even while they were still in Egypt, was combined with sun-worship.” ref

“The close similarity between the ancient Hebrews and the southern Arabs has led Hommel furthermore to find allusion to moon-worship in such Hebrew names as begin with “ab” (= “father”), as in “Abimelech” and “Absalom,” or with “‘am” (= “uncle”), as in “Amminadab” and “Jeroboam,” because these particles, when they appear in the names of southern Arabs, refer to the moon. The term “star-worship” (“‘abodat kokabim u-mazzalot”) in the Talmud and in post-Talmudic literature is chiefly a censor’s emendation for “‘abodah zarah.” In connection with star-worship, it is related in the Mishnah (‘Ab. Zarah iv. 7) that the Rabbis (“zeḳenim”) were asked if God dislikes idolatry why He did not destroy the idols. The Rabbis answered: “If the heathen worshiped only idols perhaps God would have destroyed the objects of their adoration, but they worship also the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the host of heaven, and God can not destroy the world on account of the heathen.” ref

Astrotheology and Shamanism

“Stellar allusions appear early in the history of religions. In Shaman: The Wounded Healer anthropologist Joan Halifax explains that the shamanic “realization of a solar identity” experienced by the tribal priest reveals to her or him the “deepest structures of the psyche.” The shamanic practices of hunter-gatherer societies rely on drugs, fasting, dance and other trance-inducing techniques to produce a state of religious ecstasy. In this state, the shaman feels as if she or he receives personally and communally meaningful information from an astral dimension. In her survey of shamanic traditions, Halifax includes examples of shamanic art that depict human forms embellished with radiant auras and interprets such images as expressions of the psyche’s core.” ref 

“If shamanism, with its emphasis on direct transcendental experience, typifies hunter-gatherer societies, then a ceremonialized expression of the stellar calling seems to be the derivative religious form in agrarian societies. When human societies organized themselves around farming, then rituals, ceremonies, and pageantries tended to supplant personal revelation as the focus of religious life. Human labor became increasingly fragmented, and other influences—lunar, atmospheric, and finally terrestrial—gave rise to pantheons, doctrines, and creeds. The religious sensibility’s solar orientation got grounded and became vitiated among these competing influences. But a handful of civilizations, rather than sprout a pantheon of nature gods, remained steadfastly solar. Mircea Eliade, in Patterns in Comparative Religion, characterizes a peculiarity of the most consistently sun-centric civilizations.” ref

“A solar deity remained the primary focus of the local religion, he observes, in those civilizations that came to exercise the greatest historical import.

“It is really only in Egypt, Asia, and in primitive Europe that what we call sun worship ever attained sufficient popularity to become at any time, as in Egypt for instance, really dominant. If you consider that, on the other side of the Atlantic, the solar religion was developed only in Peru and Mexico, only, that is, among the two ‘civilized’ peoples of America, the only two who attained any level of real political organization, then you cannot help discerning a certain connection between the predominance of sun religions and what I may call ‘historic’ destinies. It could be said that where ‘history is on the march,’ thanks to kings, heroes, or empires, the sun is supreme.” ref

Was the Bull Head a Symbol of God? Yes!

The Mountain of the Gods

“Worldwide traditions say that a cosmic mountain once rose to the center of the sky, joining heaven and earth. Now plasma science offers a confirming witness, in the behavior of high-energy plasma discharge. The ancients lived in the shadow of a colossal mountain identified as the abode of the gods. The Sumerians and the Babylonians knew it as the Khursag or the Kur, and as early as the 23^rd century BCE it was depicted on the victory stele of king Naram-Sin of Akkad, shown above. The two stars on the apex identify the rock as the residence of celestial powers to whom the mighty ruler pays homage for his victory.” ref

“This ‘cosmic mountain’ was given different names in different cultures. The Egyptians knew it as the Primordial Mound, the Israelites as Sinai and Zion, and the Greeks as Olympus and Parnassus. Further afield, the Indians called the divine peak Meru or Sumeru, the Chinese Kun-lun, Sung-shan, or Bu-zhou, the Icelanders Himinbjörg, the Aztec Colhuacan, and the Choctaw Nunne Chaha. During the 20^th century, specialists in each of these cultural areas have tended to downplay the role of the cosmic mountain, arguing that the sacred peaks and pinnacles mentioned in the ancient writings were nothing more than the mountains found locally. According to them, Naram-Sin’s ‘mountain of the sun’ simply referred to the Zagros Mountains, over which the sun appears to rise for the natives of northern Mesopotamia. However, these scholars have vastly underrated the importance of the theme.” ref

“As 19^th-century researchers have ably demonstrated, the reports given of the cosmic mountain in mythology indicate that it was a highly unusual object, rooted in a universal archetype. The mountain’s height was prodigious, reaching from the deepest underworld to the top of the sky. At the creation of the world, it rose up from the waters of chaos, pushing heaven and earth apart as it grew. It stood exactly in the center of the universe, and the forces of four cardinal directions met at its summit. It was of a luminous substance, ablaze with fire, or decked with gold and silver. Two peaks crowned its summit. A bird was seated on its top, called Anzu or Imdugud in Babylonia, Phoenix in Egypt, Garuda in India, and the thunderbird Wakinyan among the Sioux. Its interior was hollow and filled with a mysterious substance identified as the juice of life, the divine breath, a perpetual flame, lightning, or the waters of the flood. The souls of the dead traversed it on their way from the underworld to the sky or vice versa. The mythical hero or ancestor climbed it as part of his quest. And the Golden Age ended when the mountain was ripped apart, the flood gushed forth, and the bond between heaven and earth was broken.” ref

“Each of these pervading themes shows that the cosmic mountain hardly answers to any familiar phenomenon in the natural world. Clearly, it was a feature of the mythological landscape that was independently localized when different cultures identified it with different rocks in their own environment. The striking parallels cry out for an explanation nonetheless. The detailed agreement of its characteristics in cultures from far-flung corners of the world shows that there is definitely some reality behind it. And this is where plasma comes in. The remarkable synthesis between the most up-to-date findings of plasma physicists and the artifacts and traditions of ancient mankind has the potential to cast a refreshing light on the subject.” ref

“The present interdisciplinary investigation suggests that the features of the cosmic mountain—and dozens of additional motifs—can be satisfactorily accounted for if the object commemorated in these traditions included a heaven-spanning plasma discharge tube, formed during the late Palaeolithic in response to high-energy disturbances in the geomagnetic field. Extensive laboratory experiments performed under the auspices of plasma physicist Anthony Peratt have shed much light on the specifics of the morphological ‘cycle’ such a plasma column would have gone through. Down to the finest and most unusual details, this sequence matches the profile of the mythic “mountain of the gods.” Therefore, the myth of the cosmic mountain deserves rigorous cross-cultural exploration. Where cultures agree on unique details, this consensus is evidence, and it may well provide vital information about the ancient natural environment, suggesting promising lines for scientific investigation.” ref

“Mons Veneris Ancient hymns celebrating the planet Venus—as the goddess Inanna/Ishtar—describe it as residing in close proximity to the ancient sun-god. Thus, the planet-goddess is described as follows in the hymn known as “Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld”: “I am Inanna of the place where the sun makes his rising.” The phrase translated as “the place where the sun makes his rising” is ki-dutu-è. Modern scholars, quite naturally, have sought to interpret such language in terms of Venus’s familiar role as a morning star. According to this view, the phrase ki-dutu-è has reference to the eastern horizon. Upon closer examination, however, it can be shown that this phrase has reference to a specific site in heaven—the aforementioned mountain of sunrise.” ref

“Thus, Sjöberg points out that ki-dutu-è-a marks a semantic parallel to kurdutu-è-a, “the mountain where the sun rises.” The particular site in question was brimming with cosmic significance, being regarded as the birthplace of the gods and sacred residence of the ancient sun-god. Recall again the passage quoted earlier: “The valiant Utu, the bull who stands secure, who proudly displays his power, the father of the great city, the place where the sun rises.” If Sjöberg is right about an inherent connection between “the place where the sun rises” and the mountain of sunrise, one would expect to find the Venus-goddess described as a co-inhabitant of the latter mountain. That Venus/Inanna was intimately associated with a celestial mountain is well-attested. Texts from archaic Uruk invoke Inanna-kur, “Inanna of (or from) the kur,” the latter word signifying the mountain of sunrise. The epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta describes Inanna as the “great lady of heaven” who dwells on the top of the mountain.” ref

“The Exaltation of Inanna reports that the goddess “resides in the mountain.” “The lament for Unug” reports that Inanna/Venus “dominates” or “fills” the kur. Such passages suggest that the planet Venus didn’t merely have an occasional relationship to the celestial mountain—rather, it “dwelled” there. Early hymns to the planet-goddess localize her various mythical adventures on or about this mountain, alternately described as kur or kur-ßuba, “the pure shining mountain.” In the hymn Inanna and Ebih, the mountain is described as “the pure place of your [Inanna’s] birth.” In The Exaltation of Inanna, the planet-goddess is compared to a “flood descending from its mountain [kur].” ref

“Venus’s intimate association with the mountain of sunrise is also reflected in ancient art. In the cylinder seal illustrated in figure eight, the planet-goddess appears atop the mountain from which Shamash is about to emerge. The scene in question drew the following commentary from Amiet: “The wings which she wears on rare occasions and the stars which sometimes top the weapons emerging from her shoulders confirm her celestial character…The image of the new goddess corresponds exactly to what is known of the Ishtar of the Semites, personification of the planet Venus.” The wealth of testimony linking Inanna/Venus to the kur prompts the following question: How are we to understand such traditions? Why would the planet Venus be described as residing atop the mountain of sunrise, however the latter is to be understood from an astronomical standpoint?” ref

“This mystery has yet to be resolved, as Szarzynska acknowledged: “The problem of what the kur means in the above-mentioned name [Inanna-kur], remains, for the time being, unsolved. It seems that kur ‘mountain’ in connection with the goddess indicates the mythological mountain, the place of her birth and her appearance.” Confronted with the apparent anomaly whereby both the ancient sun-god and Venus cohabit atop a mythical mountain, conventional scholars have little recourse but to fall back upon the seemingly all-purpose explanation of the Sun and Venus appearing in the East over some ill-defined mountain range. Szarzynska’s opinion may be taken as typical in this regard: “This meaning of the kur is connected in all probability with the mountains in the East of the Sumer-country, upon which the sun rises and the planet Venus appears.” Most scholars would identify the mountains in question with the Zagros mountains.” ref

“It can be shown, however, that the kur has nothing whatsoever to do with the relatively diminutive Zagros mountain range, the latter of which, in any case, does not present a twin-peaked appearance. Nor, for that matter, does the kur have reference to any other terrestrial “mountains in the East of the Sumer-country.” The Mountain of Heaven and Earth Another name for the mountain of sunrise in Sumerian cosmology was !ursag, invoked in early hymns as “the mountain of heaven and earth” (!ur-sag-an-ki-bi-da). In various Sumerian texts the !ursag is interchangeable with the kur, and thus it is no surprise to find that Inanna/Venus is brought into an intimate relation with this sacred mountain as well. One text describes Inanna as seated upon the !ursag: “(Inanna) who takes a seat on the highlands of the bright mountain, who adorns the dais of the bright mountain.” ref

“In another hymn, Inanna is invoked as the lion (pirig) of the !ursag-mountain. If the placement of Venus atop the mountain of the sunrise represents something of a mystery, more puzzling still are those passages that describe the planet Mars (as Nergal) as occupying the same celestial mount! Thus, a Sumerian hymn relates that Nergal was given the !ursag-mountain as his special province. Nergal also features prominently in the sacred traditions surrounding the kur. Thus, an Ur III literary text describes the war-god as “filling” the kur. An epithet of the Sumerian war-god characterizes him as en.kur.gal, “lord of the great mountain.” Nergal is elsewhere said to “rise in the mountain where the sun rises [kur-u4-è].” Such traditions confirm that Nergal/Mars was intimately connected with the mountain of sunrise.” ref

“Yet how are we to explain this particular feature of Sumerian cosmography from the standpoint of modern astronomy? The planet Mars does not usually rise in the East with the Sun. Indeed, the Sun and Mars are never visible together in the sky during those relatively rare occasions when Mars moves in close proximity to the Sun, the red planet only coming into view after the Sun has gone down. Moreover, when Mars does appear in the East, it is always faint and typically invisible, being then on the other side of the Sun and thus hundreds of millions of miles away from terrestrial viewers. Equally baffling from an astronomical standpoint, are Sumerian epithets implying that Nergal/Mars is intimately associated with the site of the waning Sun. Witness the epithet Lugal-ki-dù-ßú-a: “King of the site of the Sun-set.” A closely related epithet is Lugaldù-ßú-a: “King who effects the Sunset.” Here, too, we are presented with a glaring anomaly: What does the planet Mars have to do with the West—the current site of the sunset?” ref

“Faced with these puzzling epithets, leading scholars have sought to question their literal meaning in order to synchronize the Sumerian testimony with astronomical reality. Yet the Sumerian testimony involving the planet Mars, like that surrounding Venus and Utu, is unequivocal in nature and cannot be explained away simply by wishing it were otherwise. The World Mountain In order to gain a proper understanding of Sumerian Cosmic Geography, it is necessary to resolve the original nature of the mountain of sunrise associated with the ancient sun-god and Venus. At the turn of the previous century, scholars such as Jensen and Jeremias were united in the opinion that the mountain in question had reference to the concept of a World Mountain. Samuel Kramer, Jan van Dijk, and Francoise Bruschweiler, among others, have defended this position in more recent years.” ref

“It is Mircea Eliade, perhaps, who has done the most to clarify the role of the World Mountain in ancient cosmology and religion. Eliade offered the following summary of this multivalent symbol: “The symbolism of the World Tree is complementary to that of the Central Mountain. Sometimes the two symbols coincide; usually they complement each other. But both are merely more developed mythical formulations of the Cosmic Axis (World Pillar, etc.).” Although it can be shown that the beliefs surrounding the World Mountain are remarkably consistent across cultures, Sumerologists have been reluctant to take the ancient testimony at face value and would seek instead to understand the literary descriptions by reference to figurative language.” ref

“The writings of Thorkild Jacobsen have been particularly influential in this regard. Jacobsen, in keeping with his marked tendency to localize sacred symbols and mythological themes, would interpret the !ursag as a range of mountains on the eastern border of Mesopotamia: “As seen on the eastern horizon, its shining peaks towering from earth up into heaven, the !ursag appears indeed to belong equally to both of these cosmic entities, and the epithet here applied to it, ‘of both heaven and earth,’ is therefore as forceful as it is apt.” In a recent summary of Sumerian cosmology, W. Lambert attempted to offer a compromise between the diametrically opposed positions of Jensen and Jacobsen.” ref

“While admitting that the World Mountain concept can be found in Sumerian lore, he nevertheless sided with Jacobsen in understanding it as primarily figurative in nature: “There are, it is true, some allusions to the concept of a cosmic mountain [in Sumerian Cosmology], but these occur in literary and poetic contexts, and it is not possible to reconstruct a precise image from them. The most explicit ones speak of a mountain in the East from which the sun-god rises every morning, and since the phenomenon was seen on the horizon, the term ‘mountain’ cannot be taken too literally.” Contrary to Lambert’s assertion, it is possible to reconstruct a fairly precise image of the mountain of sunrise from the literary allusions.” ref

“For example, it is certain that the World Mountain was twin-peaked in nature exactly as depicted on the early Akkadian cylinder seals showing Shamash and the mountain of sunrise (in figure four, for example). Thus, it is that very same form that characterized the World Mountain in Egyptian lore: There, the mountain of sunrise was known as the akhet, the hieroglyph for which depicts a twin-peaked mountain with an orb between its peaks: Z. In addition to the literary passages and artworks describing the World Mountain in terms that find precise parallels around the globe, it can be shown that the various cultures of Mesopotamia sought to recreate the kur in their sacred structures—an engineering strategy that might best be described “as above, so below.” ref

“In Mesopotamia, as in cultures around the globe, temples were frequently patterned after the World Mountain, as the names é-kur and é-!ursag attest.104 Of Ningirsu’s E-ninnu temple, the Lagashite king Gudea bragged that “the house is a great mountain reaching up to the skies.” Other early temples were named after the mountain of sunrise (ki-u4-è-a and kur-dutu-èa). Identical conceptions prevailed in ancient Egypt, where temples were believed to represent the akhet-mountain. The rich symbolism associated with the mountain of sunrise was also attached to ziggurats, the towering pyramid-like structures that formed a prominent component of Mesopotamian cities, including Babylon, Nippur, Ashur, and Borsippa. Henri Frankfort acknowledged that ziggurats were intended to form a terrestrial model or reproduction of the mountain associated with the ancient sun-god: “ziggurat, the massive temple tower, which stood for the ‘mountain,’ as a symbol of the earth, the Netherworld, or the place of sunrise.” ref

“Insofar as ziggurats were purposefully modeled upon the celestial prototype, important clues as to the visual appearance of the mountain of sunrise can be deduced from their architectural details. For example, in an apparent attempt to emulate the twin-peaks of the mountain of sunrise architects placed a set of luminous crescent horns atop ziggurats. Thus it is that Gudea could announce with respect to his temple-ziggurat that his builders made it “lift its horns as a bull” and “had it wear a tiara shaped like the new moon.” If we are to interpret the widespread traditions of a World Mountain as originally having reference to a celestial prototype, how are we to understand it from an astronomical or physical standpoint? A decisive clue is provided by a well-known passage from “The Gilgamesh Epic.” ref

‘There it is stated that the Mashu mountain presides over the “rising” and “setting” of the ancient sun-god: “The name of the mountain is Mashu…Which every day keeps watch over the rising and setting of the sun, Whose peaks reach as high as the ‘banks of heaven,’ And whose breast reaches down to the underworld.” Under the current arrangement of the solar system, needless to say, it is not possible for the Sun to rise and set over the same terrestrial mountain. As a result of the striking discordance between literary descriptions of Mt. Mashu and astronomical reality, some scholars have sought to find fault with Heidel’s literal translation of the passage in question: “That the Mashu mountain(s) does so [keeps watch over the rising and setting of the sun] ‘every day,’ as translated by Heidel, Speiser, and others, is obviously wrong. Even if we stipulate, for the sake of peace, the idea of a terrestrial mountain, the Sun is not in the habit of rising on the same spot every day, and it needs no profound astronomical knowledge to become aware of this fact.” ref

“Were this the only such report to be found in ancient literature, one could perhaps dismiss it as the product of figurative language and/or creative imagination. Yet, as we have documented elsewhere, analogous traditions can be found throughout the ancient world. The World Mountains of Egyptian and Hindu lore—also twin-peaked— likewise presided over the “rising” and “setting” of the ancient sun-god. Indeed, it is the very prevalence of this theme that should alert scholars to the possibility that the ancients were describing a radically different “sun” and solar system. The Polar Configuration Difficult as it must appear at first sight, it is possible to explain the scenario described in “The Gilgamesh Epic” from an astronomical standpoint.” ref

“The solution is that the ancient sun-god formerly occupied a polar station with respect to the Earth. As David Talbott first deduced in the seminal work The Saturn Myth, a polar “sun” would not actually move during the daily cycle associated with the Earth’s revolution about its axis; rather, it would remain motionless in the “midst of heaven” exactly as reported by the Sumerian scribes. Were there a twin-peaked mountain in the immediate vicinity of the ancient sun-god, it would naturally preside over the latter’s “rising” and “setting.” As it turns out, cultures everywhere remember a primeval period when the sun did not move. Thus, according to the Mayan Popol Vuh, the primeval “sun” stood fixed in the middle of the sky: “Like a man was the sun when it first presented itself…It showed itself when it was born and remained fixed in the sky like a mirror.” ref

“Certainly, it was not the same sun which we see, it is said in their old tales.”116 The Australian Aborigines from Adelaide tell of a previous World Age wherein the sun remained fixed in the sky: “The sun sits (or, is permanent), but rests or sleeps at night.” The Wiimbaio, similarly, claims that “at one time the sun never moved.” Similar reports are to be found in South America. Thus, the Orinoco of the Amazonian rain forest recalls a Golden Age associated with a “fixed” sun named Wanadi: “In the highest sky was Wanadi…There was no separation between the Sky and the Earth. Wanadi is like a sun that never sets.” The Modocs of the Pacific Northwest tell of a time when the ancient sun-god resided in the middle of the sky. Witness the following tradition: “When Kumush had done all that he could for mankind, he went to the place where the sun rises. He traveled on Sun’s road till he came to the middle of the sky, and there he built his house.” In this Modoc tradition, as in ancient Mesopotamia, “the place where the sun rises” is explicitly identified as the “middle” of the sky, in striking contradiction to astronomical reality.” ref

“The concept of a polar sun was particularly prominent in ancient Egypt. In the Pyramid Texts, the oldest body of religious texts in the world, the ancient sun-god is described as accompanied by the circumpolar stars and “fixed in the middle of the sky.” Far from being confined to ancient Egypt, the idea that the Sun once resided at the Pole is also well-attested in India. Thus, E.A.S. Butterworth cautions that the ancient sun-god must be distinguished from the current Sun: “[The primeval sun] is not the natural sun of heaven, for it neither rises nor sets, but is, as it seems, ever in the zenith above the navel of the world. There are signs of an ambiguity between the pole star and the sun.” ref

“In support of this conclusion, Butterworth emphasized the following passage from the “Chandogya Upanishad”: “Henceforth, after having risen in the zenith, he (the Sun) will no more rise or set. He will stand alone in the middle.” In the Rig Veda, an obscure passage describes the Sun as “a gay-hued stone set in the midst of heaven.” Ananda Coomaraswamy, a leading scholar of Hindu symbolism, emphasized the relationship between the ancient Sun and the Pole in Vedic sources. With apparent disregard for the astronomical difficulties posed by this finding, Coomaraswamy remarked: “It must not be overlooked that the polar and solar symbolisms are almost inseparably combined in the Vedic tradition.” ref

“Talbott’s theory also provides a ready answer to the mystery of the celestial referent for the mountain of sunrise. According to the reconstruction offered by Talbott, the World Mountain has reference to a spectacular apparition associated with the polar Sun— specifically, a column of luminous material extending downward from the Sun toward the Earth, as in Figure nine. (This particular image, it will be noted, could easily be paralleled by artworks from around the world.) A key to deciphering the multifaceted symbolism associated with the mountain of sunrise is the fact that a crescent once adorned the ancient sun-god.” ref

“The countless cylinder seals that depict a sun-disc set within the horns of an upturned crescent, according to Talbott’s reconstruction, accurately reflect the appearance of the polar heavens in prehistoric times. In ancient Mesopotamia, the crescent in question was identified with the god Sin. A prominent symbol of Sin, attested already on pictographic clay tablets recovered from Uruk IV (see figure ten), shows a crescent set atop a pillar-like standard. This symbol is best understood as a stylized version of the mountain of sunrise. Simply put: It was Sin’s crescent at the top of the polar column that formed the twin-peaks of the mountain of sunrise. Thus it is that the sun-disc is frequently set within the “horns” of such standards on early cylinder seals.” ref

“An investigation of the crescent’s unique role in the daily cycle of the ancient sun-god provides compelling support for Talbott’s model. Given the polar alignment of the various planetary bodies, as the Earth rotated about its axis, the crescent appeared to revolve around the sun-god. It was the revolution of Sin’s crescent that provided the visual imagery for the daily cycle during this particular historical period. The most prominent phase saw the crescent grow brilliant when reaching an upturned position beneath the Sun.” ref

“This was the “day” of the ancient Sumerians. “Night” was signaled when the crescent reached its uppermost position, as in Figure 11:4. At this time, the crescent dimmed substantially together with the rest of the polar configuration, presumably because of the brilliance of the current Sun. Talbott’s reconstruction of the daily cycle associated with the ancient sun-god was developed by analyzing the earliest Egyptian imagery of the solar cycle. At this point it is instructive to see how Talbott’s model accords with the evidence from ancient Mesopotamia. In the earliest Sumerian script the concept “day” or “sun” was determined by the pictograph depicted in figure twelve, transcribed UD.” ref

“Given the fact that most early pictographs are known to have had an objective reference in the natural world, it is usually a fairly easy matter to determine the natural object depicted. Yet, with regard to this particular sign, scholars are divided over whether it originally had reference to the rising sun or the waxing moon! Karl Jaritz, in his compendium of Sumerian pictographs, offered the following commentary: “The pictograph doubtless has reference to the sun rising—between hills (?)—hardly, however, the waxing crescent [as proposed by Deimel in SL II: 722] (because of the meanings), hence also the root meaning ‘sun, day, bright light, white.’ The semasiological way to the storm is not recognizable.” ref

“Talbott’s model allows us to resolve the controversy over the original celestial referent of the UD-sign. The seemingly contradictory interpretations offered by Jaritz and Deimel can both be viewed as essentially valid. The upturned form beneath the orb does indeed represent the twin-peaked mountain of sunrise, as per Jaritz. That said, the same form also represents the waxing “Moon,” as per Deimel, for it was the crescent of Sin that formed the mountain’s two upturned peaks! Additional support for Talbott’s model is provided by the Sumerian pictograph for “night”—transcribed sig (see figure thirteen). The pictograph in question shows an orb set within an inverted crescent, much as we would expect if the polar configuration was the original source for the image.” ref

“The intimate association between the ancient sun-god and Sin’s crescent also allows us to understand the otherwise peculiar fact that the UD-sign figures prominently in the spelling of Sin’s name: UD.SAR. A leading scholar offered the following commentary on this strange state of affairs: “Typical for the moon is its crescent form, both in iconography and in the texts. The latter can be shown by studying the various meanings of the sign combination UD.SAR, often transliterated as U4.SAR, or u4.s/akar. The meaning of these signs can be explained as ‘(day)-light’ and ‘growing’, perhaps an apt way of describing the crescent of the moon.” ref

“Leaving aside the implausible suggestion that “growing (day)-light” is an apt way of describing the lunar crescent, one must wonder why the Sumerians chose to use the same pictographic sign—UD—to designate two supposedly distinct celestial bodies, the “sun” and the “moon.” After all, one could just as easily translate Sin’s name as “growing (sun)-light” since “day” and “sun” are equally valid readings of the UD sign. The logical basis for the curious overlap in terminology, according to the theory defended here, stems from the fact that the very crescent that comprised Sin’s most fundamental attribute actually adorned the ancient sun-god, the illumination of which signaled the beginning of the Sumerian “day.” ref

“A similar pattern is recognizable in the sacred terminology attached to Sin’s temples. How else are we to explain the temple-names u4-è-zu and u4-gim-zal-le, both translatable as “shining as the bright Daylight”? The Gates of Heaven If scholars have been sorely vexed in their attempt to make sense of the mountain that presided over the sunrise and sunset, they have fared little better when it comes to understanding the “gates” of heaven. Thus, a familiar scene on Akkadian cylinder seals depicts the sun-god as appearing between celestial gates or doors (see figure fourteen). Insofar as there are no visible landmarks in the immediate vicinity of the current Sun that would provide an objective reference for “gates/doors,” scholars have been inclined to view the solar “gates” as imaginary in nature. Witness the following disclaimer offered by Ward: “No class of cylinders better illustrates the poetic imagination of a primitive people than those which give us the representation of the Sun-god Shamash emerging from the gates of the morning and rising over the Eastern mountains.” ref

A famous passage in “The Gilgamesh Epic” places the solar gates in the immediate vicinity of the twin-peaked mountain of sunrise: “The name of the mountain, Maß[u is its name]. When he (Gilgamesh) arri[ved] at Mt. Maßu, which daily observes the risi[ng sun and setting sun], whose tops, the firmament, r[eaches], whose foundations below reach the underworld. Scorpion-men guard its gate, whose awesomeness is magnificent, whose gaze is death. Their fearsome sheen covers the mountain-range. At sunrise and sunset they observe the Sun.” A. Leo Oppenheim, in his commentary on this passage, emphasized the incongruity occasioned by the gate’s association with both sunrise and sunset: “The most elaborate description of the sun’s gate comes from the ninth tablet (ii 1-8) of the Gilgameß Epic. There, the sun is said to enter and leave heaven every day through a mountain called Maßu that reaches up to ßupuk ßame and down to the netherworld…The use of the same gate for the rising and setting of the sun is difficult to understand, especially because the gate is said to be at the head of a long tunnel.” ref

“The Saturn theory provides a ready answer to this age-old mystery: The two “gates/doors” of the sun-god are simply the two peaks of the mountain of sunrise, understood here as the crescent of Sin. Thus, as the ancient sun-god customarily appeared between the two peaks of the mountain of sunrise, so, too, was it wont to appear between two gates. The cylinder seal depicted in Figure fourteen captures this situation exactly: It shows the gates of the sun-god resting atop the two peaks of the mountain, as if the gates were merely extensions of the latter. Indeed, it is safe to say that from whichever vantage point one approaches the symbolism attached to the solar gates, the present solar system proves to be a very poor guide. Consider the following hymn in which the opening of the heavenly doors is related to the illumination of Sin: “Sin, as you become visible, you open the doors of heaven.” ref

“Now, here is a passage that will never find a rational explanation in the familiar solar system. That said, the passage in question offers a perfectly coherent description of the crescent’s functional role in the polar configuration: As Sin’s crescent descended to a recumbent position beneath the ancient sun, it grew brilliant, thereby signaling the opening of the doors/gates of heaven and the onset of “day.” The fact that Sin’s crescentine “gate” is elsewhere likened to a mountain is also relevant here. Witness the following proverb: “The gate of Suen is a mountain great.”136 While this proverb has no obvious logical rationale given the Moon’s current appearance or behavior, it is perfectly descriptive of the structural and functional relationship that formerly prevailed between Sin’s crescent, the twin-peaked mountain of sunrise, and the gate(s) of the ancient sun-god.” ref

On Bulls and Crescents

“In The Saturn Myth, Talbott presented evidence that the spectacular apparition presented by the crescent set upon the World Pillar provided the celestial prototype for the “Bull of Heaven.” The archaic Mesopotamian traditions offer a wealth of data from which to test this particular claim. The placement of Sin’s crescent atop a pillar-like standard is archaic in nature, being attested already on pictographic clay tablets recovered from Uruk IV strata (see figure ten). And Sin himself was invoked as the “bull of heaven” very early on as was documented earlier. Sin was not the only celestial body to be represented as a bull. The ancient sun-god was also assigned a bovine form.” ref

“Recall the passage quoted earlier: “The valiant Utu, the bull who stands secure, who proudly displays his power, the father of the great city, the place where the sun rises.” Another Sumerian text describes the sun-god as a “bright bull” in conjunction with his daily appearance from the base of heaven: “Bright bull, emerging from heaven’s base, bull, you…over the Ôasur (trees).”141 According to the reconstruction offered here, the sun-god was described as a “bright bull” precisely because it displayed luminous “horns” as it flared up each day.” ref

“The fact that the sun-god’s horns are expressly linked to the daily cycle offers additional support for the model defended here. Thus, one text makes reference to the “splendid horns like the sun coming forth from his sleeping chamber.” Now, here is a remarkable statement. The first anomaly to be noted is the obvious fact that the current sun does not typically display “horns” during its daily epiphany. The second anomaly is the explicit comparison drawn between the sun’s “horns” and the onset of “day.” Although this statement is meaningless with regard to the current Sun, it is perfectly descriptive of the daily cycle during the period dominated by the polar configuration. When Sin’s crescent descended to a position below the ancient sun-god it provided the visual basis for Utu’s “horns,” the illumination of which signaled the onset of “day.” ref

“Equally telling is the fact that the horns of a bull (or bulls) occasionally substituted for the twin-peaked mountain as the site of the sun-god’s epiphany, much as would be expected given Talbott’s polar model (see figure fifteen). Of such scenes in Mesopotamian art, Van Buren writes: “The Sun-god with rays stands as in the earlier representations, pressing down with a hand on each side, but here it is not upon mountains but on the heads of two recumbent bulls whose bodies merge into the other, for they are supposed to be lying back to back to support the rising Sun-god…Here, the bulls were substituted for the mountains, for they were themselves the embodiment of the mountains.” ref

“Why on earth bulls would form the “embodiment of the mountains” is left unanswered by van Buren. Yet, while this juxtaposition of imagery is absurd in the natural world, it makes perfect sense given the visual appearance of the polar configuration, wherein the crescent horns of the mountain of sunrise are synonymous with the luminous horns of the “Bull of Heaven.” It is for this reason that the “Bull of Heaven” is intimately linked to the mountain (or place) of sunrise, as witnessed by the following hymn: “The Bull of Heaven would have no food, at the horizon is its food! O maiden Inanna, it grazes where the sun rises.” The conceptualization of Sin’s crescent as a pair of bovine horns will explain much that is obscure about ancient symbolism.” ref

“Hence, we would understand why so-called “bullmen” support the sun disc in ancient Mesopotamian art, a role elsewhere associated with Sin’s standard. Sin’s singular appearance within the polar configuration will also explain why crescent horns were attached to ancient ziggurats, the latter representing terrestrial models of the World Mountain. A bailable to Sin captures the essence of the mythological imagery: “Shining calf…rampant wild bull, the ornament of the Ekur.” On Cosmic Geography and Confusion In order to understand the Sumerian literary references to the appearance and behavior of the most prominent celestial bodies, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of the basic structure of the Sumerian cosmos.” ref

“There is a wealth of evidence that the Sumerian cosmos was conceptualized as circular in nature. Thus, the extent cosmos was commonly denoted as kippat ßamê, “circle of heaven.” The Akkadian term kippat signifies “totality, circumference of heaven/earth,” and derives from kippatu, “hoop.” Piotr Steinkeller likewise emphasized the spherical nature of the Sumerian cosmos: “Babylonian ideas about cosmic geography were by no means monolithic, being subject to change and inconsistency even during specific phases of Mesopotamian history. However, a basic understanding of how the cosmos is organized appears to have survived unchanged throughout the entire span of the cuneiform civilization.” ref

“Most importantly, the universe was thought to be spherical.”150 An illustration might help the reader to visualize the various components of the Sumerian cosmos. Figure 16 depicts two complementary maps of the Sumerian cosmos. The first circle represents the totality of “heaven,” known as An. The lower part of heaven was known as an.úr (Akk. ißid ßamê), while the upper part was known as an.pa (Akk. elât ßamê). The middle or “heart” of heaven, as we have seen, was an.ßà (Akk. qereb ßamê). As Horowitz notes, the limits of the Sumerian cosmos are strictly defined by reference to this circle of An: “In many contexts, an.pa= elât ßamê is paired with an.ur= ißid ßamê, indicating that these two parts of the sky together comprise the visible heavens.” The second circle in Figure sixteen shows the exact same cosmic area, although here the upper region is called an, “heaven” (alternately an-gal) and the lower region ki, “earth” (or ki-gal). Together, these two regions comprise the Sumerian cosmos.” ref

“Now that we have before us a set of workable definitions—those generally agreed upon by the leading scholars in the field—it is possible to elucidate certain peculiar features of Sumerian cosmography that have hitherto proved intractable. We have already documented the fact that Sumerian descriptions of the ancient sun-god’s daily epiphany do not accord with astronomical reality insofar as they make the god come forth and set in the “midst” of heaven. But the fact is that virtually everything the Sumerian scribes said about the sun’s daily cycle contradicts the Sun’s current behavior. Witness the following passage from the Sumerian hymn “Inanna and Íukaletuda”: “He raised his eyes to the lower land. He sees the high gods of the land where the sun rises. He raised his eyes to the upper land. He sees the high gods of the land where the sun sets.”153 It will be noted that this passage poses profound problems for the conventional position, for in what sense can the familiar Sun be said to “set” in the uppermost portion of heaven?” ref

“The Saturn theory offers a ready solution to this problem: During the prehistoric period dominated by the polar configuration the “upper heaven” was the very region associated with the setting or “dimming” of the sun. Thus, as outlined earlier, the “setting” of the sun or “night” was signaled by the crescent reaching the uppermost position (an.pa) on its circumambulation around the ancient sun god. Properly understood, this peculiar report from “Inanna and Íukaletuda” constitutes decisive prima facie evidence in favor of a polar configuration as reconstructed by Talbott and myself. Should it be corroborated by testimony from some other distant culture, it has the chance to transform forever the conventional understanding of the solar system’s recent history. In fact, analogous reports will be found around the globe.” ref

“Thus, among the Indigenous cultures of South America, one meets with the following tradition: “The Surinamian Caribs or Kaliña conceived the sky as divided into two parts: an upper and a lower part, under, and retîrî. Kapu is the sky. The concept ‘east’ is rendered as kapu undi (lower or eastern side of the sky), ‘west’ as kapu retîrî (upper or western side of the sky).” It will be noticed that this is the very same situation presented by Sumerian cosmic geography: the phrase translated as “east” literally means “lower sky” while the phrase translated as “west” means “upper sky.” Much as the vestigial hind limbs of the whale provide compelling evidence of former structures and a long-lost world so, too, do the respective traditions of the Sumerians and Caribs testify to a “lost” solar system, one in which the ancient sun-god came to brilliance in the lower sky and faded in the uppermost portion of the sky.” ref

‘East and West Sumerian hymns, as we have seen, often describe the ancient sun-god as “rising” from the an.úr or “base of heaven.” Modern scholars, in their attempt to assimilate the Sumerian language to current astronomical reality, routinely translate an.úr as “East” and an.pa as “West,” thereby distorting their original meaning and astronomical context. In this, they are simply following the practice of the ancient scribes: “The Sumerian words corresponding, respectively, to elât and ißid ßamê are used in certain Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions to refer to East and West: ‘from sunrise [AN.ÚR] to sunset [AN.PA] wherever the sun shines.”155 But there is a glaring contradiction here, overlooked entirely by Oppenheim and other commentators on Sumerian cosmography—namely, the fact that it is quite impossible for an.úr and an.pa to have originally signified the eastern or western horizons. Remember Oppenheim’s definitions, quoted above: the former phrase (an.úr) has reference to the lower portion or “base” of heaven, while the latter phrase has reference to the heaven’s uppermost portion. In the modern solar system, needless to say, the sun does not “set” or dim in the uppermost portion of heaven.” ref

‘So, in what sense could an.pa possibly have reference to the West or place of “sunset?” Here, as elsewhere, the ancient Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian scribes were presumably struggling to assimilate the archaic Sumerian terminology relating to the sun-god’s daily cycle to their own experience, completely oblivious to the fact that the celestial landscape and sun had changed radically in the meantime. Heaven and Earth A recurring epithet of the Sumerian sun-god describes him as “King of heaven and earth.” Indeed, in an early temple hymn Utu is said to “fill” heaven and earth. Analogous conceptions are common to Akkadian astral lore as well.” ref

“In addition to his role as “King of heaven and earth,” Shamash is also invoked as “Overseer of the Above and Below.” The following hymn is typical in this regard: “Íamaß, King of Heaven and Earth, Director (muß-te-ßir) of Above and Below.” Here, as elsewhere, it is obvious that the two phrases serve as complementary couplets, heaven and earth being placed in apposition to above and below (ellati and ßaplati respectively). But what does it mean that Shamash inhabits or rules heaven and earth? The answer to this question is surprisingly simple: The ancient sun-god shone forth from the “midst” of heaven, as defined in figure sixteen. Yet the radiant splendor of the sun-god extended to the very limits of the Sumerian cosmos, including both the “heaven” above (an) and the “earth” below (ki). The following hymn describes this situation exactly:” ref

“Utu, great lord, wild bull…great king of heaven (above) and earth below…(who) illumine [sic] with splendor heaven and earth, Utu, beacon showing forth out of the inner land (var. in the heart of).” If Utu is the “King of heaven and earth,” Venus is invoked as the “great Queen of heaven and earth” (un-gal-an-ki-a). Like the ancient sun-god, Venus is also described as illuminating heaven and earth. Recall again the passage from Iddin-Dagan’s marriage hymn, quoted earlier: “I shall greet the holy torch who fills the heavens, the light, Inana, her who shines like the daylight…the respected one who fills heaven and earth with her huge brilliance.” Iddin-Dagan’s hymn is not describing Inanna/Venus in a figurative fashion, as if the bright planet merely shines “like” the daylight.” ref

“Rather, the point of reference is a spectacular apparition in the sky wherein the radiance of Venus actually filled heaven—understood here quite literally as the cosmic region spanning from heaven (an) to earth (ki). The outstanding size of Venus is a point of emphasis throughout the Sumerian literary hymns, although you would never know it from the translations offered by leading Sumerologists. As a case in point, consider the following passage from “An adab for Inana”: “Grandiloquent Inana, you have no rival in heaven or on earth…Inana, lady of heaven and of the broad earth, powerful…, who radiates…, who is diffused wide over heaven and earth.” In this passage, the adjective ma!, signifying “large, great,” is translated by the baroque and utterly misleading “grandiloquent.” ref

The phrase translated as “diffused wide over heaven and earth” is Sumerian idim-ta e3-a an uraß-a dagal bur2, wherein dagal attests to the vast extent of Venus’s radiance. The verb bur2, meaning “to loosen, to spread out,” underscores the fact that Venus’s “radiance” or form is outspread across heaven and earth. That said, what does it mean that Venus is “diffused wide over heaven and earth”? A similar passage can be found in a prayer to Inanna/Venus from the Old Babylonian period. Thus, Hammurabi invokes the planet-goddess in the following terms: “nam-ma!- zu an-ki-se3 dalla e3-a, “(Inanna), your greatness shines forth to heaven and earth.” ref

“According to Hermann Behrens, the phrase nam-ma! has reference to the high rank of Inanna/Venus within the Babylonian pantheon: “nam-ma!, ‘Erhabenheit’ ist der hohe Rang Inannas angesprochen.” Yet Inanna’s high rank has little to do with such terminology. Rather, as is evident from the passage quoted from the adab to Inanna above, the original point of reference is Venus’s massive size and spectacularly expansive brilliance, radiating from heaven to earth; i.e., throughout the entire cosmos as commonly understood by the ancient Sumerians. In this sense the translation of J. Black et al is equally misleading: “Your greatness shines forth to heaven and earth.” Most telling, perhaps, is a passage from the hymn “Inanna and Ebih” that describes Venus as rivaling heaven and earth: “My lady, on your acquiring the stature of heaven, maiden Inana, on your becoming as magnificent as the earth, on your coming forth like Utu the king and stretching your arms wide, on your walking in heaven and wearing fearsome terror, on your wearing daylight and brilliance on earth…” ref

“The passage translated “My lady, on your acquiring the status of heaven” is “nin-gu10 angin7 bulug3-ga2-za,” wherein bulug3 is a verb signifying “to grow; to flourish; to grow big; to make grow.” The original sense of this passage is that Inanna/Venus “grows” as big as heaven (An). This reading is confirmed by the following line, wherein Inanna/Venus is invoked in a similar fashion: “On your becoming as magnificent as the earth,” wherein ma!, literally large, is translated as “magnificent.” Properly understood, such language has nothing to do with figures of speech, as per the translations of Black et al and the vast majority of Sumerologists.” ref

“Rather, such language should be viewed as essentially realistic and concrete in nature: Venus’s massive size was being compared to heaven and earth itself (i.e., the circle of An as depicted in figure sixteen). “The Exaltation of Inanna” invokes the planet-goddess as follows: “Be it known that you are as lofty as the heavens! Be it known that you are broad as the earth.” Is this mere hyperbole, or a realistic description of a towering planet whose awe-inspiring splendor spanned the full range of the Sumerian cosmos, as depicted in figure seventeen? An old Babylonian hymn from the time of King Lipit places the following words in Inanna’s mouth: “Heaven has he [Enlil] set on my head as a crown, Earth has he placed on my feet as sandals.” ref

‘Such imagery makes perfect sense by reference to the cosmos depicted in figure seventeen, wherein Venus occupies the “heart” of heaven with an (heaven) overhead and ki (earth) below. The key to understanding such language is the conjunction of planets involved in the polar configuration. In addition to shining from the same sector of the sky as the “sun”— the “midst” of heaven—Venus shared much the same “light” as Utu. As the ancient sun-god flared up during the daily cycle so, too, did Venus. Hence we would explain Venus’s intimate but otherwise inexplicable association with “day” and “daylight” attested in various Sumerian hymns. Indeed, on more than one occasion, Venus’s light is described by the epithet U4, the very sign elsewhere transcribed as UD and signifying “sun” or “day.” ref

“This is the case in “A Hymn to Inana as Ninegala,” for example, wherein the expression U4-gal is translated “great light” by Jeremy Black. Iddin-Dagan’s marriage hymn employs the same epithet to describe the planet-goddess as she “fills” the sky: “In the sky at dusk the brilliant star, great brightness which fills the transparent sky.” Properly understood, such language has nothing whatsoever to do with metaphor or poetic license. On the contrary, it accurately describes the star-like Venus, a planet the likes of which has not been seen for millennia and is almost impossible to imagine nowadays. As a primary component in the polar configuration, the planet Venus played a fundamental role in the spectacular fireworks associated with the ancient “day.” As the recumbent crescent adorning the disc of Utu flared up so, too, did the heaven-spanning rays of the star-planet Venus.” ref

Venus and the Four Corners

“A prominent concept in Sumerian cosmic geography was that of the four quarters of heaven. Indeed, the phrase came to denote the Sumerian cosmos itself and thus parallels the phrase an-ki. The planet Venus is mentioned in connection with the four corners of heaven on more than one occasion. Witness the following Sumerian hymn: “Queen whose grandeur dominates the kur, who bears herself like An, is decked with splendor like Enlil, who, like her father, adorns the day and the night. Like Utu she leads in front with her glorious nature, who is unique because of her majesty in the four corners of the universe.” The phrase translated as four corners is ub-an-na.” ref

“The reference is clearly to some specific region of heaven, one intimately associated with the planet Venus. Thus, in the hymn in-nin ßà-gur4-ra Inanna’s torch is said to shine from the ub-an-na: “Your divinity shines in the pure heavens like Nanna and Utu. Your torch lights up the corners of heaven, turning darkness into light…” The planet Venus is also associated with the “corner” of heaven in “The Duties and Powers of the Gods.” There, the planet is described as follows: “to make her (Venus) burn from ‘Heaven’s Corner’ through the entire atmosphere (?).” How, then, are we to understand the phrase “four corners” of the universe from an astronomical standpoint? What does it mean that Inanna’s “torch” illuminates the four quarters” ref

“In the modern skies, the phrase has no obvious reference, and thus, it must be explained away as yet another example of the Mesopotamians’ preference for figurative language. From the vantage point of the polar configuration, however, the phrase receives an obvious and perfectly logical explanation. Consider the image in figure eighteen: Here, the disc of Utu/Shamash is seemingly divided into four sections by radiating streamers emanating from a central orb. The central orb, according to the reconstruction offered here, is to be identified with the planet Venus. It is our opinion that this cylinder seal accurately depicts a particular phase in the polar configuration’s history” ref

‘Terrestrial skywatchers interpreted the four radiating forms emanating from Venus as the “four corners” of heaven, four directions, or four winds, among other things. Statements to the effect that Venus’s torch “flamed heaven’s four quarters” thus testify to that planet’s intimate association with the “midst” of heaven, for it was from there that the four streamers radiated outward, illuminating and quartering the Sumerian cosmos (to be understood literally as the region spanning from An to Ki).” ref

“In the present monograph, we have documented the fact that Sumerian literary descriptions of the most prominent celestial bodies often fail to accord with modern astronomical knowledge. It has also been established that leading scholars readily confess their inability to explain the astronomical imagery involved. There is a simple reason for the confusion that currently distinguishes the study of Sumerian cosmic geography: The sky was radically different in order and appearance in relatively recent times, and therefore it follows that all attempts to interpret the ancient literary imagery by reference to the familiar celestial landscape are bound to fail. The theory developed here offers a perfectly logical and straightforward interpretation of the Sumerian literary descriptions of Utu, Sin, and Inanna/Venus.” ref

“This “literalist” position stands in dramatic contrast to that of mainstream scholarship, which must resort to “metaphor” and other literary devices in an attempt to explain Sumerian hymns. In reality, most modern “translations” of the Sumerian hymns describing the astral gods represent a strained attempt to explain away the unequivocal testimony of the ancient skywatchers. In their attempt to force-fit the ancient language to the familiar sky, modern scholars have made a mishmash of the Sumerian texts with the result that the true order of the solar system at the dawn of history has been distorted and thus largely obscured. Our hypothetical reconstruction of the Sumerian cosmos has the additional advantage that it is supplemented and complemented at virtually every step by the testimony of ancient art. Thus, we have seen that literary references to Venus standing within Sin or standing together with Sin and Utu find exact parallels in scenes depicted on ancient cylinder seals—this despite the fact that Venus can never attain such positions in the current skies. This striking correspondence between Mesopotamian literature and art cannot be a mere coincidence. Properly understood, the evidence of Mesopotamian literature and art testifies to a radical reordering of the solar system in relatively recent times.” ref

“A hymn to Ninkasi states that while this goddess was raised by Ninhursag, her parents were Ninti and Enki. Ninti and Ninkasi occur near each other in a document from the Fara period. The relation between Ninti and Enki is also attested in the god list An = Anum, where she is equated with his spouse Damkina. The masculine equivalent of her name, Enti, is also given as an alternate name of Enki, though in other contexts ^dEN.TI was instead a logographic representation of the name of Ebiḫ, a mountain god presumed to represent Hamrin Mountains.” ref

“Ebiḫ (Ebih) was a Mesopotamian god presumed to represent the Hamrin Mountains. It has been suggested that while such an approach was not the norm in Mesopotamian religion, no difference existed between the deity and the associated location in his case. It is possible that he was depicted either in a non-anthropomorphic or only partially anthropomorphic form. He appears in theophoric names from the Diyala area, Nuzi and Mari from between the Early Dynastic and Old Babylonian periods, and in later Middle Assyrian ones from Assyria. He was also actively venerated in Assur in the Neo-Assyrian period, and appears in a number of royal Tākultu rituals both as a mountain and as a personified deity.”

“The defeat of Ebiḫ at the hands of the goddess Inanna is described in the myth Inanna and Ebiḫ. Various interpretations of the narrative have been advanced, with individual authors seeing it as royal propaganda of the Akkadian empire, as a critique of its conquests, or as a narrative focused on typical literary motifs, lacking political undertones. Possible references to Ebiḫ’s defeat have been identified in other literary compositions, in god lists, and on cylinder seals.” Known from the god list An = Anum (tablet IV, line 23) and its Old Babylonian forerunner, might have been related to the Ebiḫ myth due to its similarity to a presumed variant name of the mountain god, Enti.” ref

Dogs in Religion

“Dogs have played a role in the religion, myths, tales, and legends of many cultures. In mythology, dogs often serve as pets or as watchdogs. Stories of dogs guarding the gates of the underworld recur throughout Indo-European mythologies and may originate from Proto-Indo-European religion. Historian Julien d’Huy has suggested three narrative lines related to dogs in mythology. One echoes the gatekeeping noted above in Indo-European mythologies—a linkage with the afterlife; a second “related to the union of humans and dogs”; a third relates to the association of dogs with the star Sirius. Evidence presented by d’Huy suggests a correlation between the mythological record from cultures and the genetic and fossil record related to dog domestication.” ref

“The Ancient Egyptians are often more associated with cats in the form of Bastet, yet here too, dogs are found to have a sacred role and figure as an important symbol in religious iconography. Dogs were associated with Anubis, the jackal headed god of the underworld. At times throughout its period of being in use the Anubieion catacombs at Saqqara saw the burial of dogs. Anput was the female counterpart of her husband, Anubis, she was often depicted as a pregnant or nursing jackal, or as a jackal wielding knives. Other dogs can be found in Egyptian mythology. Am-heh was a minor god from the underworld.” ref

“He was depicted as a man with the head of a hunting dog who lived in a lake of fire. Duamutef was originally represented as a man wrapped in mummy bandages. From the New Kingdom onwards, he is shown with the head of a jackal. Wepwawet was depicted as a wolf or a jackal, or as a man with the head of a wolf or a jackal. Even when considered a jackal, Wepwawet usually was shown with grey, or white fur, reflecting his lupine origins. Khenti-Amentiu was depicted as a jackal-headed deity at Abydos in Upper Egypt, who stood guard over the city of the dead.” ref

Hounds of the Underworld: Cerberus, Garmr, Anubis, and More

“An Underworld’s Best Friend: Dogs are typically thought of as man’s best friend and guardian of the household, where they protect children, land, and livestock. It is no wonder that they are also used as guardians of the underworld and the afterlife. They guard the entrances to the realms of the dead and accompany the psychopompic lords and ladies as they travel their own lands and the lands of the living. They are fierce, loyal, and brave, and those who stand against them must be daring, mad, or both, as they are not peaceful or polite.” ref

Cerberus

“Arguably the most famous of such hounds in the Western world is Cerberus (the Latinized version of the Greek Kerberos), the three-headed guardian of Hades, who served as the underworld’s eponymous ruler. Cerberus watched for those attempting to enter and exit the nether region and was adept at sniffing out living intruders. Having a penchant for live meat, only the dead were safe to enter Hades’ land. Born of the half-woman/half-serpent Echidna and the feared Typhon, Cerberus lived up to his monstrous parents’ image. Not only did the hound have three heads, but it was also said to have a mane of live serpents and a serpent’s tail. While this is the standard description of the animal, it has also been said to have as many as 50 or 100 heads, but never less than two. Its siblings were the famous hydra and chimera as well as the two-headed Orthrus, another hellhound that figures into Greek mythology.” ref

“In general, Cerberus was an unstoppable guard dog. However, there were ways around him. He was lulled to sleep by Orpheus, though unless you are a legendary musician, this may not be the best idea to try. It is also possible to knock the beast out with drugged food, which also shows he has a non-carnivore side, as the successful use of this trick used oatcakes. If all else fails, having the strength of a demi-god would also work. Heracles, hero and strongman of legend, overpowered Cerberus using only his body and was able to drag it back to the world above as the last of his 12 labors. Here he set the dog to guard the secret groves of Demeter. Cerberus’ utility in the afterlife continued into the Christian era. Dante writes of Cerberus being the punishment for gluttons, rending their souls for eternity, although here he is described as a great worm rather than a canine.” ref

Garmr

“Norse tradition holds that the dog Garmr (Old Norse for “rag”) guards Nilfheim, the lowest of the nine realms in Norse cosmology, where the dead who have not died in battle find themselves. Little is written about Garmr’s responsibilities for Hel, the ruler of Nilfheim; however, the hound does play a role at Ragnarök. His howl will be heard at the start of the world’s end, and he and the god Tyr will give the other his fatal blow. He is sometimes confused with the great wolf Fenrir, but the two are indeed distinct animals, with Garmr guarding Hel’s abode and Fenrir having been chained by the gods.” ref

“Garmr is mentioned in the two best sources of Norse mythology, the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda. These are collections of Old Norse poems and literature that describe the Norse Deities, as well as heroes in Germanic lore. The poem Grímnismál, which gives the best examples of things, mentions Garm (an alternate spelling) as the best of hounds. One of Garmr’s few listed duties is given in the Poetic Edda, as he howls when Odin approaches his master’s realm. It is in the Poetic Edda that we learn of his howls at Ragnarök and from the Prose Edda of his fight with Tyr, saying, “He is the greatest monster, and he shall do battle with Tyr, and each becomes the other’s slayer.” ref

Cŵn Annwn, the Hounds of Annwn

“From Welsh tales, the Cŵn Annwn are the spectral hunting hounds of Arawn, the ruler of the Welsh Otherworld Annwn. The hounds are said to be of white coloration with red ears, red being the color associated with death for the Celts and white being associated with the supernatural. They are found primarily in the First Branch of the Mabinogi. This is the first part of a collection of Welsh mythology, the Mabinogion, which also happens to be the earliest extant British prose literature. Here they are shown to be hunting a stag and help set up the initial meeting between their master and Pwyll, a Welsh prince that is the focus of the first branch. In the Fourth Branch, they are mentioned, although not by name, as also having as a master Gwyn ap Nudd. Both Arawn and Gwyn are lords of the Otherworld and of the Fair Folk.” ref

“Folklore of the Cŵn Annwn exists into modern times, where they are said to hunt the area around the mountain Cadair Idris, where their howling foretells the death of those who hear it. It is also said their howling is louder the further away they are, with the volume becoming softer and softer as they near their prey. They are also said to hunt with the hag Mallt-y-Nos, Matilda of the Night, to run with King Arthur’s cousin Culhwch, and even resemble the hounds of Da Derga from Irish legend. A Celtic relative of the Hounds are the Scottish Cù-Sìth. This hound was a harbinger of death and would take a person’s soul away to the afterlife. Its only warning was three loud and frightening bays that would be heard across the landscape.” ref

The Wild Hunt

“A fixture of Northern, Western, and Central European mythology, the Wild Hunt transcends several pantheons. Its leaders include the Anglo-Saxon god Woden, the Gaulish deity Cernunnos, Arawn, and Gwyn ap Nudd, who were written about above, Irish folk hero Fionn mac Cumhaill, and the French Hellequin, who was an emissary of the Christian devil, and many more. The Wild Hunt is a group of ghostly hunters and hounds that pursue humans, sometimes the living and sometimes the souls of the departed, to take the souls back to the Underworld. In some cases they just hunted the evil-doer, but in others they hunted anyone the Hunt found. The traditions of the Hunt vary across and within regions. While the leader is always legendary, whether a deity or a hero of renown, the other members of the hunt range from normal hounds to supernatural hounds, such as the Cŵn Annwn above, or even fairies in the guise of dogs.” ref

“You could escape the hounds by different methods. Throwing them bread would sometimes work, as would staying directly in the center of the road. Not looking directly at the pack was also a possible safety measure, but sometimes it was best to join in the Hunt and help them in their activities. These methods of safety not only depended on who the leader was and what region you are in, but they even changed within region, so there is no exact way of ensuring the Hunt would not use you as their prey. Beyond the hounds and the leader, members of the Hunt would include fairies, demons, and the souls of the departed. There are still sightings of the hunt in modern time, with folklore evolving to give the Hunt a similar purpose to the Norse Valkyries, for they would take slain British soldiers into the afterlife.” ref

Anubis

“It would be remiss not to at least mention Anubis. Obviously he is not an animal himself, but rather is a deity of the Egyptian afterlife and mummification. His sacred animal is the jackal and shares their appearance, having the head of that canine. Before the responsibility was given to Osiris, it was he who would weigh the hearts of the deceased to determine whether the soul would enter the underworld or be devoured by Ammit, a hideous monster. He is also associated with mummification, which is an embalming process used by the ancient Egyptians to prepare the body for its journey into the afterlife. Even after Osiris took over the position of weighing the heart, it was Anubis who would act as a guide for the souls in the afterlife, bringing them across the threshold from life and leading them to Osiris.” ref

Hounds in Christian and Modern Mythology

“Most of the pagan myths that involve hounds managed to stay after the advent of Christianity, with the animals coming from hell now, rather than the Otherworlds. These hellhounds typically follow the pattern of having black fur, glowing red eyes, a baleful howl, and a malodorous odor. They may haunt graveyards or desolate moors, or may roam the country side. Their typical function is to hunt humans in order to take the souls to Hell. There is the Barghest from northern England around Yorkshire, who preys on lonely travelers. The Black Shuck is another English dog, a ghostly animal from the Norfolk, Essex, and Suffolk areas whose name comes from the regional term for shaggy, and may have been the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes story “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” The yeth hound is a headless dog, said to be the spirit of an unbaptized child, and makes horrible crying noises as it roams the countryside.” ref

“In southern Mexico and Central America folklore, the Cadejo is a big black dog that haunts travelers who walk late at night on rural roads. The term is also common in American blues music, such as with Robert Johnson’s 1937 song, Hellhound on My Trail, from an American folk tale that involves selling one’s soul to the devil for musical fame, with the devil sending hellhounds to collect when the contract came up. The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse has ties to the Wild Hunt, as riders in the sky who boded no human well. Western United States folklore has the Ghost Riders, a ghastly collection of eerie cowboys who haunt the skies across the American frontier. Similar to the Ghost Riders, the Buckriders were ghosts and devils who were seen in Germany and Belgium, riding the night skies on the backs of Satan’s own goats. Whether they maintained their fierceness in modern times (and sometimes becoming even more wicked) or they have turned into tales (tails?) for the nursery, the hound is a permanent fixture in mythology and folklore, keeping its position as man’s best friend, whether that “man” is human, fae, or a god/goddess.” ref

    OLKLORE PARALLELS BETWEEN SIBERIA AND SOUTH ASIA AND THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE EURASIAN STEPPES

Myth 1 – the guard (usually a dog) cannot defend the human figures created by God from the antagonist; Myth 2 – the guard (usually a dog) successfully drives away the antagonist who tried to destroy God’s creation; Myth 3 – the antagonist is a horse or a cow (among the Oirats).

“According to the myth about the origin of man recorded among the people of Eastern Europe and Siberia, the creator set a dog to guard the half-made human fgures, but the antagonist bribed the guard and spoiled the creation, making humans vulnerable to disease. The creator told the dog to become the servant of man. Texts recorded in India (mostly among the Munda-speaking groups), the Dards of the Hindu Kush and the Abkhasians, though partly similar to the Northern Eurasian ones, do not share some important details: the antagonist is a horse, it tried to destroy man, but a dog drove it away. In the Mongolian (more precisely, the Oirat) version, a cow acts instead of a horse, but in other respects, this variant is similar to the Abkhasian ones. Negative associations related to the horse are rather widespread in Europe and Central Asia. Stories about the creation of man recorded in northern and southern Eurasia stemmed from the anthropogenic myth that was known to the Indo-Europeans of the Bronze Age. South Asia and the European–Siberian zone also shares other tales, in particular the Earth-diver myth. Their analysis opens possibilities for reconstructing the early mythology of the inhabitants of the Eurasian steppe.” ref

“Anthropogenic tale about the man, the dog, and the horse In the folklore of the people of Eastern Europe and Siberia, there are motifs that produce some association with either Christianity or Zoroastrianism, but that do not have parallels in the canonic texts of these religions. In particular, such motifs are incorporated in the story about the creation of man. The widespread variant is as follows. The creator makes the bodies of people, sets a dog to guard them, and goes away for a while. The antagonist bribes the guard with a fur coat, gets to the bodies, and spits on them, making people subject to disease and death. Coming back, the creator turns the bodies inside out so that the dirt would be concealed from sight and punishes the dog, who from then on becomes the servant of man and eats garbage. In such a form, the myth has been recorded among the Russians of the central and northern parts of Russia, the Ukrainians, Udmurt, Mari, Mordvinians, Chuvash, Mansi, Khanty, Nenets, western Evenki, different groups of the Yakuts, the Russian-speaking people of mixed ancestry living in Russkoye Ustye, the Kumandins, Tubalar,
Khakas, Tofa, and Buryats*.” ref

“The same tale was probably known to the Lithuanians, though the publication that I consulted has but a short retelling. Some variants preserve the core of the story but add different details. In particular, the Komi speak about a child who was guarded by a dog and the evil Omöl who spat on the child. The motifs of the creator who went away to get the soul for the man, and of turning human bodies inside out are absent. The latter of these motifs can be used only in those variants according to which the creator himself makes the human fgures live. If the figures are given a soul not by the creator but by the antagonist, or if the problem was not to make the figures alive but to make them strong and durable, the motif of turning the bodies inside out is not found. It is absent among the Khanty, most of the groups of the Nenets and Evenki, the Mongols, Altaians, Shor, Negidal, and Lamut.” ref

“Among the western Evenki, several different versions are recorded besides the standard one. According to one of them, certain “workers” of Khargi (the creator) let Kheveki (the antagonist) approach the human figures. In another version, the “assistant” of Kheveki is the raven who was punished by the creator the same way as the dog in more typical variants, i.e. since then it has been feeding on garbage. This story has not been reported in Kazakhstan though it has been recorded among the “Siberian Kirghiz.” The devil made the weather terribly cold, the dog had to hide itself, and the devil spat on man. Coming back, the creator did not punish the guard but recognized that the dog could do nothing having no fur coat, so the creator himself and not the antagonist gave to the dog its fur. “The acquittal” of the dog sets this version apart from the usual Siberian versions.” ref

“The farthest from the basic scheme is the Oroch version, located at the eastern periphery of the tale’s circulation and isolated territorially from the others. In the Oroch text, the dog itself proves to be the antagonist because, despite the creator’s warning, it itself fed the man and made him alive. As a result, people lost the hard covering on their skin that now is preserved only on the fingers and toes (the nails). The text of the southern Selkup leaves the impression of being distorted and partially forgotten: loz (a devil) makes the dog change its skin, which was originally as hard as the nails of humans. Nothing is told about the destiny of man himself.” ref

“Despite the obvious elements of the Christian Apocryphal tradition in some texts, the ultimate origin of corresponding motifs is far from being clear. The names of protagonists in the Siberian and Volga–Permian versions are not borrowed from the Russians but belong to local mythological personages. And what is most important, the hypothesis of the development of the tale from the “Abrahamic” mythology runs counter to the Southern Eurasian versions. The latter lack any traces of the dualistic cosmovision, the antagonist in them is a personage who is far from being equal with the creator, and the role of the antagonist is usually fulfilled by a horse. Such versions are recorded among the people who speak languages of different families.” ref

“The Wakhi speak one of the Pamir languages, which are part of the Eastern Iranian branch. The Kalashi and Kho of the Eastern Hindu Kush speak the Dardic languages, which either stand slightly closer to Indo-Aryan than to the Iranian group or are a special branch of the Indo-Aryan stock. The Oroan (or Kurux) language is Northern Dravidian, spread over the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, and the neighboring areas; the Gondi language is Central Dravidian, spread mostly over Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Orissa. The Limbu, Kachari (their language is close to Bodo), and Mizo (otherwise called Lushei) live in the Himalaya piedmont areas of Nepal, Northeast India, and in the adjacent part of Myanmar and speak the Tibeto-Burman languages. The BarelaBhilala in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh speak Bhili, an Indo-Aryan language.” ref

“The language of the Khasi of the Meghalaya state in eastern India is Austro-Asiatic. All other South Asian groups familiar with the tale in question speak Munda languages which, like the Khasi, belong to the Austro-Asiatic family but form a different branch. The Munda, including the Mundari, Korku, Santali, Birjia, Birhor, Kharia, and others, live in eastern and central areas of India. Almost all variants recorded in India and Nepal were studied, and the number of the recorded versions is the highest among the Oraons (10), Mundari (6), Santali, and Korku (3 in each case). A typical variant is as follows. God takes mud, makes figures of a man and a woman, and lets them dry. A horse or two horses, often winged, come and break the figures.” ref

“The creator makes a dog or two dogs who drive the horses away. The horse is punished, being deprived of its wings, and is obliged to serve man and be harnessed and beaten. The horse wanted to destroy man just because it was afraid that man would harness it. In one of the Korku stories, trees try to destroy the figures of man, being afraid that man would begin to cut them. The Dardic version is similar to the Indian ones. Before the creation of the man, the world was populated by horses. They tried to trample down the figure of Adam that was made of mud, but the dog did not let them to do it and till now, remains the guard of the man. The navel on the human body is the trace of the horse’s hoof.” ref

“To this main group of texts, there should be added others that lack some details, e.g. the guard is not mentioned at all or (in some Mundari versions) it is not a dog, but a tiger or spider. Among the Dards and the Munda-speaking groups, such versions with minor alterations exist along with the typical ones. Among the Wakhi and Limbu, the complete texts (with the dog as a guard) are not known. The Wakhi said that the man created by God was handsome, but the covetous horse kicked the half-ready figure, and because of this all the people have some physical imperfection. God punished the horse by making it the servant of man*. In the Limbu myth, Niwa-Buma made the first man out of gold, and he was perfect, but an envious horse monster broke the figure.” ref

“Niwa-Buma created the man anew out of ashes and chicken dung, and punished the horse. Now it has to walk on four legs and not on two as before and is a beast of burden. Among the Mizo, Kachari, and Khasi, the antagonists who try to destroy human figures are a snake, an evil spirit, or brothers of the creator. The role played by the dog in these texts is the same as in most of the others. In India, the most distant, both geographically and by its content, is the tradition of the Barela-Bhilala. A goddess makes the human figures, “the sky queen of the eagles” tries to destroy them, a male personage kills her, and the high god-creator inserts souls into the human bodies.” ref

“We should also mention “a late Zoroastrian legend”. After creating the first man Gaiomard, Ormuzd commissioned seven sages to guard him from Akhriman, but they could not fulfill the task. So Ormuzd put the dog ZarrƯngoš (“yellow ears”) as a guard and since then this dog protects from demons the souls who go to the Beyond. There is no such story in “Avesta” though it does not exclude the possibility that it could have existed in the oral tradition from early times. The cases described above demonstrate that the variants from Northern and Southern Eurasia have important differences.” ref

“In Siberia and Eastern Europe, the dog failed to fulfill its task, while in the southern versions, it successfully drove the antagonist away and defended the human figures. The northern traditions explain not only how man was created but also why he is subject to disease and death, but in the southern tradition, this last theme is absent. Nevertheless, the northern and the southern versions are similar enough to exclude the possibility of a chance coincidence. Nowhere else similar tales have been recorded. Only one text of the Plains Ojibwa in Canada is slightly reminiscent of the Eurasian ones. Weese-ke-jak makes a human figure of stone and steps back to admire it.” ref

“A bear rubs itself against the figure, it falls down and is broken. Weese-ke-jak makes a new figure of mud, and that’s why human beings are weak. The similarity with the Eurasian texts is chance because among the Ojibwa, the essential detail is not the interference of a particular antagonist but the opposition between durable and fragile materials to make man. Such an opposition is typical for stories that explain the origin of death in North America’s Northwest. There is but one historical scenario capable of explaining parallels between the South Asian and European–Siberian variants of the tale. Since both regions are separated by the steppe belt, these steppe territories could have been the area of the initial spread of the story.” ref

“The terminus ante quem for the emergence of the tale is defined by the time of contacts between the people of the steppe origin and the inhabitants of South Asia. Variants recorded among the different groups of the Munda are of special interest for us. At the present time most of the “tribal” people of India are dispersed over vast territories, some groups have changed their linguistic affiliation over the last few centuries. However, the areas where the number of speakers of the corresponding languages is now the highest are mostly the same as in the past. The principal area of the spread of the Munda languages is the Chota Nagpur plateau (state of Jharkhand with adjacent territories). The Santali, Ho, Mundari, Birhor, Asur (including Birjia), and other groups that speak languages of the northern branch of the Munda live there. To the south, mostly in the Koraput district of Orissa state, Bondo, Sora, and other languages of the southern branch of the Munda are located.” ref

“Much to the west, in Maharashtra state, the Korku language is localized, which belongs to the northern branch. The position of Kharia and Juang is not certain. Formerly, these languages were classified as belonging to the southern Munda, but according to the recent classification, they belong to the Northern division. The Juang speakers live in northern Orissa, and Kharia is spoken practically across the same area as Mundari. Initially, the Munda family broke into the southern and northern branches, then Kharia and Juang split from the northern branch, after this Bondo and Sora separated from each other, and at last, Korku lost contacts with the other languages. The lexicostatistics give only approximate assessments of age but still help to create a rough chronology and to establish the successive steps of the splitting of language branches.” ref

“The disintegration of the Munda family began in the early 2nd millennium BCE (the separation of the northern and southern branches), while the isolation of the Korku took place in the mid-1st millennium BCE. The myth about the creation of the human figures and an attempt to destroy them is recorded among the northern Munda including the Korku. It should be noted, that the Korku mythology is poorly known while the materials on the Bondo and Sora are rather rich. The fact that five versions have been found among the Korku indicates that the tale is very popular there. At the same time we can be sure that the Bondo and Sora were not familiar with it. It means that the Munda could have adopted the tale between ca 1700 (after the separation of the southern Munda) and 900 BCE (before the separation of the Korku).” ref

“The age estimations, as I have already mentioned, are approximate, but both the 3rd millennium BCE and the middle of the 1st millennium BCE are practically excluded. The tale is not recorded among the Juang, and the only Kharia version is similar to the versions of the Mundari. Because the Kharia was in contact with the Mundari, the existence of the version of the tale in their case is not significant. However, the absence of the tale among the southern Munda is significant just because these groups were not in contact with the northern Munda for a long time. The Dravidian languages of India are mostly localized to the south of the Munda languages.” ref

“The Oraon language (which is Northern Dravidian) and the Northern Munda languages are spoken in the nearby villages, and the Oraons have the largest number of recorded versions of the tale. However, the Gondi, who speak Central Dravidian languages and have few contacts with the Mundari have only one version, while no cases at all are reported from other Dravidian groups. The Oraon texts are identical to the Mundari variants and could have either been borrowed from the Mundari or from the original possessors of the tale, whose language was not Austroasiatic. The Tibeto-Burman people of South Asia live on the Himalaya piedmont.” ref

“Though both motifs, the horse as the antagonist and the dog as the guard, are found in their tales, the first motif is recorded only among the Limbu of Nepal while the second is found among the Kachari and Mizo who live in the more eastern areas, already on the Indian territory. The mythologies of Northwest India and of the Lepcha of Sikkim are quite well investigated, and there remains no doubt that the tale in question was not known to most of the Tibeto-Burman people. The same can be said about the Khasi. In the Khasi text, the dog as a guard is present, but the antagonist is not a horse but some unspecified evil spirit. The Munda and Khasi languages are both Austroasiatic but belong to different branches of this family.” ref

“The Austroasiatic people outside of India are not familiar with this tale. When it comes to the Bhili (the Barela-Bhilala are a subgroup of them), only scarce data on their mythology exists, but the tales that are recorded show links with the “tribal” people of Eastern India and not with the Indo-Aryans. What language the Bhili spoke before they adopted an Indo-Aryan language is unknown, but it could well have belonged to the Munda family. The absence of both the horse and the dog in the Barela-Bhilala myth is understandable because their traditional mythology gradually lost its elements under the influence of the dominant non-Bhili culture. Though the Munda can definitely be considered the main South Asian possessors of the story in question, they must also have borrowed it. Firstly, this tale is absent among the southern Munda and among other Austrasian people besides the Khasi.” ref

“Secondly, the horse, whose role in this story is very important, was brought to South Asia by the Indo-Europeans. Bones of the Equidae from Harappa sites do not belong to the domestic horse. The cultural change on the western periphery of the Indian subcontinent becomes visible starting ca 1400 BCE and was probably related to the coming of the Eastern Iranians. The first Indo-Aryans remain invisible archaeologically, just as the traces of most other migrations known from written sources or linguistic data. However, the linguists and archaeologists almost unanimously put the time of the Indo-Aryan arrival in India within the interval between 1900 and 1200 BCE.” ref

“There are no stories about an attempt to destroy human figures made by the deity either in Sanskrit texts or in the folklore of modern people who speak the Indo-Aryan languages, besides the Barela-Bhilala. But, as mentioned above, such stories have been recorded among the speakers of Dardic languages of the Eastern Hindu Kush. Therefore, it is probable that the tale in question was brought to India by the Dards or some group closely related to them. The traces of these people were wiped out by the Indo-Aryans who spoke a related language and came later. The time of the first Indo-European arrival in India fits well the suggested time of the borrowing of the tale in question by the native people of the sub-continent, i.e. between the disintegration of the Proto-Munda and the split of Korku.” ref

“According to the areal pattern of the spread of the story in South Asia (mainly between the Himalaya and the eastern parts of Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand), it was brought by the groups which moved along the Ganges Valley. As it was mentioned, the Wakhi are the bearers of the story in the Pamir area. They could have borrowed it from the Dards or from their Saka ancestors. It is difficult to say if the Eastern Iranians of Turkestan were familiar with the story, but it is very probable that this myth was formerly quite widespread in the Eurasian steppes. The Abkhasian and Mongolian materials bear witness to such a reconstruction.” ref

“Among the Abkhasians, the story was discovered. One text was recorded by the ethnologist M. Bartsyts from her mother, and another by the folklorist V. Kogonia*. The version recorded by Bartyts is as follows. At the time of the creation of the world, man was made of mud, but the devil sent horses to trample him because otherwise, man would torment them all the time. The man managed to take a handful of mud from his abdomen and threw it at the attackers. The lumps of mud turned into dogs and drove the horses away. According to V. Kogonia’s version, the dog also defends man by its own initiative and not upon the order of the creator. God made man of mud.” ref

“The devil warned horses, “If the man becomes alive, you are doomed, kill him!” The horses rushed at the man, but the dogs drove them away. That’s why the man and the dog are considered to be close to each other. These texts have no parallels in the Caucasus. The tale could have become known there due to the contacts between the local people and the steppe Indo-Europeans who did not leave any direct descendants in the area (the coming of the Alans–Ossetians is dated to a later time)**. The publisher of the Russian translation of the Mongolian or, more precisely the Oirat (Derbet) version, kindly let me know that the text had been recorded in Ubsunur Aimak. This tale shares some traits with the Caucasian stories. God modeled of mud two human figures. A cow came and caught one figure with a horn; it fell down and broke.” ref

“The fragments turned into a dog, and since then, the dog barks at the cow. The dog and the man have a common origin; that’s because their bones are similar. Both in the Oirat and in the Abkhasian variant, the dog was not set by the creator to guard the figure of the man but emerged at the very moment when the antagonist attacked the creation. Also, only in these variants the affinity of the dog and the man is specially emphasized. It is appropriate to recall the extremely high status of the dog in the Zoroastrian tradition. Because this tale has a narrowly localized distribution in Mongolia, the probability of it having been brought to the Caucasus with the Genghiz Khan army is small.” ref

“Both at the western and eastern peripheries of the Great Steppe, the tale must have had a single ultimate source –the steppe Indo-Europeans. They alone could have maintained ties with Caucasian natives, the South Asian Munda, and some people in Mongolia, from whom the story was eventually inherited by the Oirats. It is significant that in the Oirat version the role of the antagonist is played not by the horse but by the cow. Among the Mongolian and Turkic people of Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia, the horse has almost a sacred status while the bull or the cow can have negative associations. In some of the Kazakh, Altai, Tuvinian, Mongol (the Oirat included), Yakut as well as Nenets etiological legends the cow or bull is the embodiment of severe frost, or they are considered responsible for the existence of winter. In the Tuvinian and Yakut myths, the mean bull is directly opposed to the good horse who desired warmth.” ref

“On the contrary, among the peoples of Europe and more rarely of the Caucasus and Central Asia (Ancient Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Gagauz, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Norwegians, Danes, Lithuanians, Latvians, Veps, Finns, Komi, Ossetians, Tajik) as well as in the Middle Persian Avestan tradition, the horse is considered to be the adversary of God, and demonic cannibal horses are described in narratives. In Ancient Greece, just as among the Siberian Turks, the bull was contrasted with the horse, but the signs in this opposition were different, the bull was considered good (bees emerged from its corpse) and the horse bad (wasps or drones emerged).” ref 

“One of the Norwegian tales is directly associated with the South Asian and Caucasian myths. The devil decided to create a beast that would run across the whole earth and destroy human beings. He tried to make this monster alive by spitting on it, but in vain. God made it live, told it to become a horse and to serve man. Horny swellings on horses’ hooves are traces of the devil’s spit. The last version of the tale that should be mentioned is recorded in the far North among the Nganasans. The primeval mother gave birth to a child, a small branch of willow. Her husband planted it, but “disease came and spoiled it.” ref

“The man asked his wife to give him another child so that the latter would defend the former. The second child proved to be a reindeer without horns. He asked his father to give him horns to fight worms and evil beasts, received one horn of ivory and another of stone, and destroyed the beasts. The Nganasan myth is more similar to the southern and not to the northern variants because here the guard successfully drives away the antagonist. Nganasan origins were a complex process, where different components mixed together, including the Tungus, the Samoyed proper (whose language was adopted), and a local substratum of unknown linguistic affiliation.” ref

“No available evidence supports the idea of language contacts between the ancestral Samoyed and Indo-Europeans of the steppes*, but the archaeological materials evidence a movement of the descendants of the Pazyryk culture of the Altai far to the north. In any case, the people of the taiga and tundra zones had to borrow the variant of the myth that survived in Taimyr from the inhabitants of the steppe. Later this variant was almost completely superseded by the European–Siberian version.” ref

Dog as Goddesses and Gods 

Deities depicted as dogs or whose myths and iconography are associated with dogs.

“Goddesses: Artemis, Diana (mythology), Hecate, Mana Genita, and Sopdet.” ref

“Gods: Ares, Leshy, Lugus, Simargl, Sirius (mythology), Typhon, and Xolotl.” ref

“In a related Siberian Buriat myth the creator god ordered the water bird to dive into the waters and bring back some earth to use to build the world. The new world was corrupted by Shiktur, the devil. While the creator went off to Heaven to get souls for his newly created humans, Shiktur tricked the dog who was guarding them and then spit on the new creation, stamping it with the evil that exits alongside good to this day.” ref

“Some people of Mongolia say that in the beginning, along with the waters, there was the sky god and his two sons, Ulgen Tenger and Erleg Khan. Ulgen was given the upper world and Erleg the lower world space that would become Earth. Ulgen sent the loon into the depths to bring up mud with which to form land. After the loon failed, a duck succeeded in finding a bit of mud on which Ulgen fell asleep. Then Ulgen’s brother tried to steal the mud from his brother, but this only made it grow. Once, while Ulgen was away, his brother tricked a guardian dog—exactly as in the Buriat myth—and spat on the new humans, thus condemning them forever to the diseases and pains to which animals and humans are subject.” ref

“Siouan-speaking tribes tell earth-diver myths in which the creative agent is a figure who is better known as a trickster than a creator. Among the Crow there is the story of Coyote (Dog-like), who sent the duck into the primeval sea to find the soil with which to begin creating the world. Coyote breathed on the mud and it became Earth. He then made plants, animals and people. At some point, however, something of the Devil side of the trickster emerged in the appearance of a figure called Little Coyote, whose amoral acts lead to war, suffering, and death in the new world. The Assiniboine say that the trickster Iktome was the creator and that it was Muskrat who, like the diving hero of the Anishinabe myth, lost his life in the process of diving successfully for the creative mud. Iktome, like Coyote, possessed something of the old Devil within himself. When the frog argued with him, the trickster killed him, thus introducing death into the world, and Iktome taught the Assiniboine how to steal horses from others.” ref

“The earth-diver creation myth type can be found in many parts of the world, but is particularly important in Central Asia, India, and Native North America. It is a myth type that stresses the creation of Earth as opposed to the larger cosmos. Animals often play an important role in the creation, as do the primeval waters and often an evil force that balances the good in a dualistic tension. Several strains within the earth-diver myth type are evident. These are the Indian, the Central Asian, the Algonquian North American, the Siouan North American, and a major variant, the Iroquoian North American, which contains the motif of the woman who falls from the sky. Elements of the earth-diver form exist among many California Native Americans and among peoples as far afield as the Finns and Hungarians, the Fiji Islanders, the Ainu of Japan, and the Yoruba of Africa.” ref

“The fully developed earth-diver myth usually begins with the primeval waters and usually with a creator, or sometimes two creators, intent on creating Earth. Also present are various animals, who prove to be necessary assistants. Typically, these animals are sent on missions into the watery depths to bring up sufficient primal material—prima materia—to make the creation of Earth possible. In the Indian Vishnu Purana, Brahman, the essence of existence, in his form as the creator god Brahma, awoke and decided that there was earth below the primordial waters that were everywhere. Brahma took the form of a great boar and dove down “to find Mother Earth.” He raised up the earth to where it floats now—a “mighty vessel”—on the original waters. Eventually this world, like all others before it and after it, will be destroyed and a new one created, reflecting the presence of Shiva the Destroyer, Brahma the Creator, and Vishnu the Preserver in the eternal and ultimate reality that is Brahman. The non-Hindu Birhor people of India say that the creator arose by way of a lotus stem from the waters, that he sat on the lotus and from there sent various animals to find the mud necessary for the creation of the world. All the animals failed until the lowly leech was able to swallow some mud and spit it into the creator’s hand. This mud became the source of the new earth and its humans. For the Garo of India it was a beetle who was finally able to gather clay from under the waters. Using this clay, the creator made Earth and decorated her with sky, clouds, and plant life. Eventually he made the first Garo as well.” ref

“The people of Central Asia and their possible relatives among the Romanians of Europe follow the earth-diver pattern but add the elements of the undermining devil or second creator. The Altaic people teach that in the beginning there was nothing but the primordial waters until one day two black geese appeared. One of the geese was the creator, and the other was the devil, who would become the first human. The devil/man insisted on trying to fly higher than the creator and the creator forced him into the waters and sent him to dive down to find rocks and earth with which to build the world. When God asked the devil/man to bring him more earth, he did so, but he hid some in his mouth, thinking he would create his own world when the creator was not looking. Both the earth that he handed the god and the earth in his mouth began immediately to grow. The Devil was forced to spit out the stolen material, and it became wetlands.” ref

“The most complex earth-diver myths in North America are those of the Iroquoian speakers and people directly influenced by them. Their complexity comes primarily with the addition of the Maiden from the Sky story that typically precedes the familiar Algonquian and Siouan type earth-diver story. In addition, the Iroquoian myths introduce the twins—one good, one evil—whose struggle against each other reflects the reality of the world.” ref

The Mohawk myth tells of a place in the sky where human-like people lived in peace and tranquility until a series of events lead to the fall of a young woman named Earth to a darker world below where there existed only the primeval waters and some animals. The animals arranged for her to land on the back of Turtle. Earth then instructed the animals to dive into the waters for mud to be used in the creation of the world. After many tries by many animals, Muskrat succeeded, and out of the mud, the Woman from the Sky made the world and directed the process by which it was planted with corn, squash, and other staple plants. The Cherokee tell a very similar tale, as do the Onondaga, the Seneca, the Tuscurora, the Wyandot, and the Huron. As in the Algonquian tales, Turtle is a central figure for all of these tribes, as is, almost always, Muskrat.

“In most of the Iroquoian versions of the earth-diver tale we find the story of the twins produced by the Sky Woman or her daughter. Both continue the process of creation. The good twin creates things that will benefit humanity and the world, the bad twin does the opposite. The twins, for example, Good Mind and Bad Mind in the Tuscurora myth, here stand in the same relationship to each other as the creator and Devil-would-be-creator in the Central Asian and Siouan myths. The twins eventually fight, and although the good twin wins the fight, he cannot altogether eliminate his brother’s evil deeds and thoughts from the world.” ref

“The ur earth-diver myth, in its various incarnations, can be interpreted in several ways. It reflects cultural struggles, a religious sense of basic duality in the world and the human experience—a struggle essentially between good and evil—and a psychological departure from a state of the unconscious or subconscious life to the level of full consciousness. Above all, the earth-diver myth shares with the emergence myth the metaphor of birth.” ref

“In the Iroquoian myths, for example, we begin in the paradisiacal, deathless world of the sky. Typically a maiden in that world becomes pregnant and falls or is thrown through a hole in the heavenly ground to the formless and dark world below. As a cultural dream the myth seems to tell us that there is some sort of divine purpose behind our world and that it has to do with the creativity that is pregnancy and birth and, therefore, death—a purpose that is foreign to the paradise of the sky where the cycles of life and existence do not exist. The representative of the creative cycle of our earthly experience is contained in the woman who falls from the sky. She is the first priestess of Mother Earth—the world we live in that is dominated by the life cycles. The essential nature of Mother Earth is that she gives birth and devours her progeny in a never-ending process. The animals who see the woman falling live on or in the unformed chaotic waters—the maternal waters of potential creation—they know that they must provide a place for her landing. When she lands—typically on the Turtle’s back—she initiates the creative diving process. It is here, in the diving itself, that the earth-diver myth truly begins.” ref

“In all earth-diver myths, the animals are sent one by one to find the necessary creative material at the bottom of the waters. These divers are generally ordinary. They possess no supernatural powers; they are us. Whether we see the dive as a metaphor for a necessary descent into the unconscious world in search of consciousness, as a symbol of our purpose in the world to make creation conscious of itself, or as an essential religious truth— that it is Mother Earth who is the source of all life—the dive is as treacherous as that of so many heroes who journey into the underworld in search of something lost. In many myths, divers lose their lives in the service of the creative act. They are the expendable activating seeds of a new creation, and finally one of them succeeds in bringing up the sacred material of the mother; the clump of mud that stands in for the cosmic egg of the creation from chaos myth. The birth metaphor continues as the mud is placed on the Turtle’s back. Someone touches it, activates it, and it begins to grow, like a fetus, until it is Earth—Turtle Island—itself, the chaotic Mother power made conscious and orderly. Plants and more animals, including the human variant, are created, that is, are born of the Mother.” ref

“In the versions of the earth-diver myth that contain the twin motif, we have a meditation on the duality inherent in our experience of human life and existence itself. Things are born, they live, but then they die. The Mother gives but she also takes. One age gives way to another. Pain and conflict are an evident aspect of life. The two sides of the duality that pervade life are represented by the twins or by the conflict between the creator and his devil-trickster assistant. The twins are both offspring of Mother Earth or her representative on Turtle Island, and the devil creator is related in some close way to the good creator. These conflicts between two forces are the conflicts that rage within us all or, as Charles Long suggests, they can be expressions of the old cultural conflict between the hunter/ gatherer and agricultural ways of life (189). In the Iroquoian myths, for example, the bad twin creates powerful and dangerous animals—animals of the hunt. The good twin—favored by his mother—creates good domestic animals and edible plants. In some Iroquoian myths the woman who falls from the sky, the culture heroine who teaches the people how to live on the new earth, dies or is killed, and out of her body elements of the cosmos are made. She becomes, in that motif, an example of the world parent phenomenon and, most important, a literal expression of the feminine nature of the universe; she realizes her potential as Mother Earth.” ref

“The Japanese creation myth painted a picture of a muddy ocean which covered the world at the beginning of time. A god and goddess, Izanagi and Izanami, became curious about what was beneath the ocean. Izanagi took his staff and threw it into the ocean. As he lifted it back up some lumps of earth fell off into the water. These became the islands of Japan. No being dove beneath the waters to find mud, but the element of earth being covered by water and a being bringing the earth up is there. The creation myth of Christians and Jews does not tell of God diving into the water to bring up mud, but Genesis 1:2 says Òthe Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.Ó Therefore according to the Torah and Bible the Earth was once covered entirely by water.” ref

“Around 20,000 to 25,000 years ago, a branch of Ancient North Eurasian people mixed with Ancient East Asians, which led to the emergence of Ancestral Native American, Ancient Beringian, and Ancient Paleo-Siberian populations. It is unknown exactly where this population admixture took place, and two opposing theories have put forth different migratory scenarios that united the Ancient North Eurasians with ancient East Asian populations. Later, ANE populations migrated westward into Europe and admixed with European Western hunter-gatherer (WHG)-related groups to form the Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) group, which later admixed with Caucasus hunter-gatherers to form the Western Steppe Herder group, which became widely dispersed across Eurasia during the Bronze Age. ANE ancestry has spread throughout Eurasia and the Americas in various migrations since the Upper Paleolithic, and more than half of the world’s population today derives between 5 and 42% of their genomes from the Ancient North Eurasians.” ref

“Significant ANE ancestry can be found in Native Americans, as well as in Europe, South Asia, Central Asia, and Siberia. It has been suggested that their mythology may have featured narratives shared by both Indo-European and some Native American cultures, such as the existence of a metaphysical world tree and a fable in which a dog guards the path to the afterlife. Ancient North Eurasian associated Y-chromosome haplogroups are P-M45, and its subclades R and Q. Haplogroup P is inferred to have originated around 44,000 years ago in Southeast Asia and is downstream to Haplogroup K2b found among the Tianyuan man in Northern China. Their maternal haplogroup belonged to subclades of haplogroup U. Since the term ‘Ancient North Eurasian’ refers to a genetic bridge of connected mating networks, scholars of comparative mythology have argued that they probably shared myths and beliefs that could be reconstructed via the comparison of stories attested within cultures that were not in contact for millennia and stretched from the Pontic–Caspian steppe to the American continent.” ref

“The mytheme of the dog guarding the Otherworld possibly stems from an older Ancient North Eurasian belief, as suggested by similar motifs found in Indo-European, Native American, and Siberian mythology. In Siouan, Algonquian, Iroquoian, and in Central and South American, beli was a test. The Siberian Chukchi and Tungus believed in a guardian-of-the-afterlife dog and a spirit dog that would absorb the dead man’s soul and act as a guide in the afterlife. In Indo-European myths, the figure of the dog is embodied by Cerberus, Sarvarā, and Garmr. In Zoroastrianism, two four-eyed dogs guard the bridge to the afterlife called Chinvat Bridge. Anthony and Brown note that it might be one of the oldest mythemes recoverable through comparative mythology.” ref

“A second canid-related series of beliefs, myths, and rituals connected dogs with healing rather than death. For instance, Ancient Near Eastern and Turkic–Kipchaq myths are prone to associate dogs with healing and generally categorize dogs as impure. A similar myth-pattern is assumed for the Eneolithic site of Botai in Kazakhstan, dated to 3500 BC, which might represent the dog as absorber of illness and guardian of the household against disease and evil. In Mesopotamia, the goddess Nintinugga, associated with healing, was accompanied or symbolized by dogs. Similar absorbent-puppy healing and sacrifice rituals were practiced in Greece and Italy, among the Hittites, again possibly influenced by Near Eastern traditions.” ref

Humans and Dogs

“The Western Eurasian dog population (European) was then partially replaced by a human-mediated translocation of Asian dogs at least 6400 years ago, a process that took place gradually after the arrival of the eastern dog population.” ref

Study: At Least Five Dog Lineages Existed 11,000 Years Ago: http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/five-dog-lineages-paleolithic-09012.html

“A recent study of dozens of ancient dog genomes suggests that these lineages were all established by at least 11,000 years ago. Based on their morphology and context, additional potential dogs may be present at Pleistocene Siberian sites such as Afontova Gora, Diuktai Cave, and Verkholenskaia Gora, although their status has yet to be established. In the Americas, the earliest confirmed archaeological dog remains, based on combined morphological, genetic, isotopic, and contextual evidence, are from the Koster and Stilwell II sites, which have been dated to ∼10,000 years ago.” https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/6/e2010083118.full.pdf

“Swedish farmers and their dogs are both descended from canines of the Near East, suggesting that man and dog followed the development of agriculture together through Europe. On the other hand, German farmers 7,000 years ago came from the Near East, but their dogs didn’t.” https://bigthink.com/the-past/ancient-dogs/

Research on Dogs adds understanding to human history as well because as humans moved, there can be detected a clear link to new types of dogs highlighting a deep connection between humans then other animals and their dogs and makes since they were in mythology as gardens of the afterlife. http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/five-dog-lineages-paleolithic-09012.html

Tell-tail signs of dual dog domestication: https://www.scienceintheclassroom.org/research-papers/tell-tail-signs-dual-dog-domestication

Dog domestication and the dual dispersal of people and dogs into the Americas: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/6/e2010083118

Diet adaptation in dog reflects spread of prehistoric agriculture: https://www.nature.com/articles/hdy201648

A refined proposal for the origin of dogs: the case study of Gnirshöhle, a Magdalenian cave site: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83719-7

Dogs ‘first domesticated in China’ https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-04/27/content_24875302.htm

The Origins of Dogs, Our best friends’ earliest lineage is shrouded in mystery. New genetic research may finally reveal their roots. https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-origins-of-dogs

Rethinking dog domestication by integrating genetics, archeology, and biogeography https://www.pnas.org/content/109/23/8878

“Burial remains of a dog that lived over 7,000 years ago in Siberia suggest the male Husky-like animal probably lived and died similar to how humans did at that time and place, eating the same food, sustaining work injuries, and getting a human-like burial.” https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna41830341

“Pet dog buried 6,000 years ago is earliest evidence of its domestication in Arabia. The ancient tomb where the remains were found is one of the oldest in the region, dating back to about 4300 B.C. The tomb had been used by many generations over a period of around 600 years during the Neolithic-Chalcolithic era. It was also built above ground, which was unusual for the time because it would be easily seen by grave robbers, according to the researchers.” https://www.livescience.com/earliest-evidence-dog-domestication-arabian-peninsula.html

“At least 15,000 years ago, dogs were buried with humans. Near Lake Baikal, dogs were buried in cemeteries 7,000 years ago “lying down” or “sitting up.” One with stone tools and a round pebble placed in its mouth. Another dog wore a necklace of elk-tooth human jewelry, for the afterlife. This dog was buried about 7,000 years ago near Lake Baikal in southern Siberia with stone tools and a round pebble placed in its mouth. At least 15,000 years ago, dogs were getting buried with humans. When dogs died near Lake Baikal, the human hunter-gatherers treated them as family. The dogs buried in cemeteries 7,000 years ago near Lake Baikal in southern Siberia, one with stone tools and a round pebble placed in its mouth. The dogs were in “sleeping” or “sitting up” positions. Another dog wore a necklace of elk-tooth jewelry that humans wore obvious gifts, presumably offerings into the dog graves meant for the afterlife. Like people when they died, they’d transport the dog long distances to these cemeteries,” Losey said in a phone interview from his office at the University of Alberta. “They’d put items on its body in the grave – spoons, necklaces, arrowheads, antlers from roe deer – the same grave goods they’d leave in the graves of humans. “People had long lives with those dogs – the dogs we found were mostly older dogs, so they’d been with these people for years.” They ate the same food. Chemical tests on dog and human bones showed both were eating a lot of fish. “Given that the dogs weren’t fishing, it means they were fed.” Losey could tell from DNA and from dog skeletons that the Lake Baikal dogs were medium-sized, with yellow and white thick fur and heads shaped like modern Siberian huskies. “If you saw them walking down the street, you’d recognize them immediately as dogs and not wolves.” They worked for their living, likely hauling sleds and guarding camps full of children and grandmothers from predators and rival bands of hunters. “But there was clearly also an emotional bond,” Losey said.” https://www.kansas.com/news/local/article142279974.html

“Near Lake Baikal on the Siberian steppes, archeologists were opening 7,000-year-old graves. The bodies had been carefully interred. One was buried with a long, carved spoon. Another had been honored with a necklace of elk teeth.” When the first farmers came to Europe from what is now eastern Turkey, they didn’t adopt the dogs already living there. They brought their own.” https://lethbridgenewsnow.com/2020/10/29/they-came-with-dogs-genomes-show-canines-humans-share-long-history/

“The site at Lake Baikal points to some of the earliest evidence of dog domestication but also suggests dogs were held in the same high esteem as humans. ‘The dogs were being treated just like people when they died. An ancient cemetery where dogs were buried like humans (remains shown) between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago is shedding light on our close relationship with man’s best friend. Prized canines were buried wearing decorative collars, or with objects such as spoons, suggesting people believed they had souls in the afterlife. Some of the graves contain artifacts such as spoons and collars, suggesting people thought the dogs had souls and access to an afterlife.” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3485496/Ancient-burials-reveal-dogs-man-s-best-friend-Canines-treated-like-humans-8-000-years-ago.html

“Canids as persons: Early Neolithic dog and wolf burials, Cis-Baikal, Siberia” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S027841651100002X

“This 8,000-Year-Old Rock Art Is The Earliest Depiction of Domesticated Dogs” https://www.sciencealert.com/1000-year-old-rock-art-saudi-arabia-earliest-depiction-domestic-dogs-hunting