The Earliest Semitic Pantheon

[us4-he2-gal2]

- Notes On -






The Earliest Semitic Pantheon




(A Study by J.J.M Roberts)

In this thread, I am presenting some information from a 1972 book, the name of which is the same as the thread title. The book was written by J.J.M. Roberts and is a follow up to his Havard dissertation written under the guidance and supervision of Thorkild Jacobsen - we can thus assume the work is quite solid (if a little dated.) The study is an attempt to elucidate what may have been the shape of the early Semitic pantheon in Mesopotamia and surrounding areas (in the era of prehistory, the Early Dynastic period and the Sargonic period in particular).. This, of course, has been and remains a difficult issue for scholarship due to the lack of any Semitic god-lists for these periods (though there are Sumerian examplars); additionally, there is abundant indication that the process of syncretism between Sumerian and Semitic religion began at an early date, which has made the task of identifying the pre-existing Semitic model very difficult.

Roberts' goal was to make inroads and to start the process of recovering a model of what may have been the earliest Semitic pantheon, the one that pre-dated, existed alongside, and merged with Sumerian models. For lack of texts which are directly informinative theologically from the periods under question, his main strategy has been the examination of theophoric elements in Old Semitic personal names.. in other words, if a Semitic name can be translated to, for example, "Shamash-is-my-lord," or something like that, than you can be fairly sure Shamash was part of the Semitic pantheon at that time. However, the nature of Robarts' material is limited in a number of respects; among them is the fact that a study of theophoric names tells us mainly about the theology of common people (or "popular piety" as Robarts put it - the people whose names are our data). This is potentially quite different than a study of the Sumerian god lists, which attests to the notions of scholars and theologians.


I have divided the below into two notes A) The Problem of Syncretism and Notes on Important Gods .. and B) Robert's list of Early Semitic Gods Worshiped in Mesopotamia.





A) The Problem of Syncretism and Notes on Important Gods/


As mentioned, the attempt to isolate the early Semitic pantheon is hindered by a process of syncretism with Sumerian gods at an early stage (the Semites identified their gods with Sumerian ones). How early does this process begin?

Roberts looks to the example of Šamaš to illustrate: "At the earliest stage, and on the popular level, lies the identification of the Akkadian god, Šamaš, with his Sumerian counterpart, Utu. This identification must be very old, for it seems certain that the Semitic Šamaš was originally feminine, very few traces of this original femininity are preserved in the Old Semitic personal names, and none at all in the Old Akkadian inscriptions. Moreover, from the Presargonic period until the end of the Sargonic empire, the Akkadians wrote the name of their sun god with the Sumerian ideogram ^dUtu, not only where it occured in inscriptions, but also, with only a couple of possible exceptions, in the personal names, which normally preserve a more popular phonetic orthography for the Semitic divine names."

This of course is very interesting to me, as I am aware that the Semitic sun god in the western areas, Ugarit and Palestine for example, continued to be female. Roberts relates that a similar process occurred with the merging of the Semitic storm god Addu and the Sumerian Iškur (Addu was written with the Sumerian logogram ^dIM by the Sargonic period) - these mergers were made by the "public piety", popular religion made the identification, and so peoples personal names were, in accordance, written with the Sumerian logogram. However, the process was not universal as the authors evidence indicates: the equation of Eštar/Ištar with Sumerian Inanna seems to have been made by Sargon, Robarts says, as a politically motivated attempt to unify the cultures; therefore the equation did not have an similar impact on the public piety and Eštar continued to be written phonetically in personal names (not with the Sumerian logogram for Inanna).


Enlil and An had no equivalent in the original Semitic pantheon, and so their occurrences in Semite theology, and even personal names, means that the gods were introduced directly from the Sumerian theology, says the author.

What Robarts' comment here indicates is that there were at least two drivers for the syncretism of Semite and Sumerian gods - popular religion on the one hand seemed to identify gods because they plainly resembled each other, perhaps this was more natural (and impactful). At other points, political leaders (particularly in the Sargonic period) made theological mergers but these seem not always to have impacted popular belief in the same way.








B) Roberts' list of Early Semitic Gods Worshiped in Mesopotamia/




The below list I have typed up from Robarts' summary of the evidence derived mostly from early Semitic personal names found in texts from the Pre-Sargonic and Sargonic periods. The author sometimes provides commentaries on these gods which I have not typed. The list is arranged alphabetically and is not meant to be theologically ordered, as some king lists are.


** I have numbered them differently edited out a few entries as is explained at the bottom.

Interestingly, I learn from Roberts' discussion that it is common in Old Akkadian orthography for god names that are written phonetically to be written *WITHOUT* a divine determinative 0_0 Most Semitic names appear to be written phonetically (the sounds of the name are spelled out by the cuneiform signs) and so since the names below are all taken from early sources, we see very few little ^d's. If there is a determitive, it likely means that the name is written by means of a Sumerian logogram, I gather, and so syncretism has occurred (see example of Shamash/Utu above). I suppose this may also explain why Tiamat's name in that Old Akkadian sources had no ^d (though why in later sources it doesn't, I'm still not sure).

1. Ab(b)a
2. Abiḫ
3. Ab/pra
4. (Adad)/Adda(?)/Ad(d)u/Anda
5. Admu
6. Ay(y)a
7. Ālum
8. Amurru
9. Ašar(?)
10. Baliḫ
11. Bītum
12. Ur-Bītum
13. D/Ṭaban
14. Dagan
15. Durul
16. (Ea)/'Ay(y)a
17. Erra
18. ^dEr-ra
19. Er-ra
20. E-ra
21. ^dEr₃^er-ra
22. ^dEr₃-ra₂
23. ^dEr_x-ra
24. Gazur
25. ḫamīš
26. harīm
27. Īda-il(um)(?)
28. Il
29. Il-aba (DINFIR.A.MAL)
30. Il-ab
31. Illa
32. Illat
33. Il-mār
34. (Ilu-mer)
35. Inin
36. Išar
37. Išḫara
38. (Ištar)/Eštar
39. Ištaran
40. Išum
41. Kar(r)um
42. Keš
43. Ki-ki
44. Kiti
45. Laba
46. Lā'im?
47. Lamassum?
48. Malik
49. Mamma
50. Ma-na
51. Meme
52. Meslam
53. Mummu
54. Nanna
55. Nāru
56. ^dNin-š[um]?
57. Nūnu
58. Padān
59. PI-li-ir
60.Rašap
61. Su'en
62. Šadu
63. Šalim
64.Šamaš
65. (Ilū)-šibi
66. Tibir
67. Tirum
68. Tišpak
69. Tutu
70. U₃
71. Ulmaš
72. Ūmum
73. Zababa
74. Zu

****Edit: Alim, Annum, Apsûm, Baba, Enlil, Nazi, Ninlil, Nisaba, Šakan are names which the author included in his list because they are attested in the personal names, but which he states shout *not* be considered for an early Semitic pantheon because they are definitely Sumerian. Therefore I have removed them from the list above.

Roberts abmits that a dozen or so of the names above are too obscure to really comment on let alone cement into the Semitic system - and yet his analysis is an interesting one and he isolates the important deities, commenting: "Among the remaining Semitic deities the most important, if we may judge from the frequency of their employment in the personal names, is undoubtedly the group of astral deities: Ay(y)a, Eštar, Su'en, Šalim, Šamaš, Ūmum, and perhaps, Ištarān, though an astral significance for him is somewhat problematic. Three of these Šamaš, Šu'en, and Eštar, which composs the triad, sun, moon, and Venus, are three of the four deities which occur most often in the Old Semitic personal names. Since each of these three deities occurs in other Semitic languages as well, the importance of this triad among the Semitic inhabitants of Mesopotamia prior to Ur III probably reflects a dominant role for the astral deities during the Proto-Semitic period. This would agree with the commonly assumed semi-nomadic background of the early Semities, for the veneration of heavenly bodies appears to be a religious response typical of semi-nomadic herdsmen or shephers, but highly untypical of settled farming communities."

[lilitudemon]

How is one defining "Semitic"? If I remember in my readings, "Semitic" is a term that encompasses a lot. "Semitic" in older scholarship may not refer to what is defined as Semitic now.

If we consider modern Israel to be included in syncretism, it has come to light that the earliest humans come from there that we have found to date. This would mean that syncretism could have happened much earlier than when Jacobsen's research indicates. Especially considering that the human remains are dated at 400,000 year old and there is no doubt humans spread through out and kept in contact. It could be that the pantheon was developed fairly early, as it's stated that it's hard with out written sources, it would be hard to figure it out. But early prototype of religious figures and archaeological remains should shed light on that. Specifically, if people have been there as long as this new indication has come out to say.

[ninurta2008]

By semitic, I think we're referring only to East Semitic, being that we're dealing with the roots which brought forth Akkadian. Right? Or the protosemitic?