Did a significant portion of Sumerians have monotheism?

[rakovsky]

Some scholars, especially in the 19th century, have proposed that a version of monotheism was held by some Sumerians. What do you think of this thesis?

I. The way that a single god could be given many names/titles or equated with numerous gods

The scholar Albright considered the way that major gods like Enki were given many titles could be seen as a form of syncretization. The titles sounded like the names of gods/goddesses, like Nin-sikilla, "Lady of the Pure____", and so one could conceive that Enki could be theoretically equated with many deities, bearing those names. Albright however rejected the claim of Langdon, that this could be seen as a close approach to Monotheism.

When we turn to unilingual Sumerian religious texts from the late third millennium, chiefly from Nippur, we find that a large number of the divine names of the lists were simply liturgical appellations and that their bearers were not considered in general as distinct deities. This is very well illus- trated in the Uttu myth, published in 1915 by S. H. Langdon, but not understood until more recently. Here the relations of the god En-ki (" lord of the earth " or " lord of the under- world ") with a whole series of goddesses are described in such a way that the identity of the latter is certain. The names are fortunately all common and all transparent: Nin-sikilla is " the Lady of the Pure . . . "; Nin-tud is "the Lady who Gives Birth "; Damgal-nunna is " the Great Spouse of the Prince "; Nin-ghursag is "the Lady of the Mountain"; Nin-kurra is " the Lady of the Highland." Other illustrations are provided in great numbers by the liturgies. This phenomenon certainly points to increasing syncretism and to a monolatrous tendency, where the worshipper concentrated his adoration on a single deity, with whom he identified all other gods of the same type, but S. H. Langdon was hardly justified in considering it as a close approach to monotheism.

archive.org/stream/fromthestoneaget028007mbp/fromthestoneaget028007mbp_djvu.txt

At the same time, Albright rejects that Sumerians had a mere tribal, limited view of their gods:

the cosmic gods of Mesopotamia were naively and unquestioningly believed to rule the entire world, each in his own designated sphere or function. The following excerpt from a Sumerian text extant in a copy of about the nineteenth century B. C. well illustrates the prevailing attitude, as it is expressed or taken for granted in thousands of documents:

• 
  " Unto Enlil do foreign lands raise their eyes (in adoration) , Unto Enlil do foreign lands pay homage.
  The Four Quarters (of the earth) bloom like a garden for ..."
  

It would be hard to find more forcible statement of the universality of Enlil's dominion in a document of the empiricological age.

Albright also mentions the concept of the Logos that can be found in Christianity and how it is related to a Sumerian concept of the thunder and voice of Enlil. It brings to mind for me the Egyptians' concept of Ptah using his commands to fashion:

Jensen, Langdon, and others have insisted on the high development of an alleged system of metaphysics in early Babylonia. We have already pointed out (p. 130) that one
aspect of this " metaphysics/' the gish-ghar conception, belongs to the domain of primitive dynamistic thought, though it may be considered as a precursor of the Platonic idea. The second aspect is that of the enem, or " word," translated into Accadian as awatii) " word." This enem is nearly always represented as the voice of the god En-lil, " lord of the storm," which sweeps destructively over cities and fields, over beasts and men. However, since enem is written with the same ideogram as gu, " voice, thunder," it obviously meant primarily just that, as is established by its frequent alternation in the liturgies with ud, " storm," defined as enem Ud-gu-de, " the voice of the divine Thunderstorm." 62 There is a striking parallel (published in 1938) in slightly later Canaanite mythology, where Baal, the storm-god, creates the thunderbolt (baraqu) in order that men may hear his word or command (kawatu Accadian awatu) .

However, it is clear that the dynamistic conception of " creative word " is an essential part of the idea: thunder is the means by which the all-father makes his creative commands known to men. Sumerian enem is thus the most important ultimate source  of the New Testament conception of the logos, as has justly been pointed out by the distinguished Catholic scholar, the late L. Diirr, in a recent work (1938). 64 The significant shift of idea must have taken place before the Semites translated enem by awatu, and before the Sumerians themselves extended the concept to Enzu, the moon-god, and other gods who had nothing directly to do with the storm.
archive.org/stream/fromthestoneaget028007mbp/fromthestoneaget028007mbp_djvu.txt

But to get back to Albright's first point that I mentioned, I think that the evidence he found does in fact point to syncretization of gods, rather than just giving me titles to the major gods. For example, Albright cited Enki as being given the title Ninhursag, Lady of the Mountain. However, in fact "In Sumerian mythology, Ninhursag ... or Ninkharsag was a mother goddess of the mountains, and one of the seven great deities of Sumer." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninhursag). It seems to me that this particular Sumerian writer may in fact have been equating and syncretizing not just the titles of Enki, but actually syncretizing the goddess Ninhursag with Enki herself, so that Ninhursag the goddess was seen as actually being Enki and vice verse. In other words, there really was a syncretizing or concept of gods as being fewer in number than just there being hundreds, each corresponding to one of those many names.

II. The claim that the deity is "one"

The IVP Bible background Commentary considers that this phrase about Yahweh being "one" has analogies in other Near East religions, and that in the Bible it doesn't necessarily refer to monotheism:

The claim that a deity is one or alone in other ancient Near Eastern texts [besides the Bible] (made for instance by Enlil [Sumerian]...) generally relates to the supremacy of their rule. Another possibility is that the statement [Yahweh is one] relates to the supremacy insists on a unified view of Yahweh. Since a major god in the ancient Near East may have a number of different shrines, each shrine would come to emphasize a different perspective on the god.

books.google.com/books?id=wIA3tH9HqY4C&pg=PA177&dq=sumerian+OR+sumer+OR+sumeria+monotheist+OR+monotheism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZ0PPLrfHOAhUGqR4KHUPZC1kQ6AEI_gEwKA#v=onepage&q=sumerian%20OR%20sumer%20OR%20sumeria%20monotheist%20OR%20monotheism&f=false

This is a bit confusing, and maybe it would help to look at the context in which the phrase is used in Sumerian.

III. Putting the highest god in a higher, separate category than all other gods, making the highest god a separate variety of divine being.

The introduction to Lambert's Ancient Mesopotamian Religion says:

Lambert .... notes a contrast in the composition of the top rank [of Mesopotamian gods]: a single god in the Hurrian pantheon, but a group of three or four deities in babylonia. Lambert finds other evidence for the single god model in north Mesopotamia (Dagan) and Assyria (Assur) and, less securely, in mid-third-millenium Sumer (Enlil), and suggests that is older and more widespread than was previously thought.

books.google.com/books?id=dTLWQddp8zwC&pg=PA3&dq=sumerian+OR+sumer+OR+sumeria+monotheist+OR+monotheism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZ0PPLrfHOAhUGqR4KHUPZC1kQ6AEIygEwHg#v=onepage&q=sumerian%20OR%20sumer%20OR%20sumeria%20monotheist%20OR%20monotheism&f=false

In the book itself, Lambert writes that in Sumer or Babylon: "Hymns to deities even say that there exists no other god than the one being addressed. That is not monotheism, but harmless hyperbole."


What do you think about this topic?

[santakku]

Watch out for the twentieth century logic that runs:
- I am a good Christian
- They are bad Semites
- Christianity came from Semitic lands
- It can't be Semitic
- It is therefore Sumerian
- Sumerians were good
- The Sumerian character may be contrasted to the Semitic one

That line of logic is particularly prevalent on theological topics, as this and your other posts. Needless to say, I'm not a fan - I don't think the mindset of a Sumerian differed in any way to an Akkadian, with the exception of changes across time. In this particular case, a lot of your points would find stronger support in Semitic sources.

I. This gets progressively more complicated, and so is more Babylonian and Assyrian than Sumerian. Yes, there is the 'Logos typology' from the beginning, with phenomena personified as divine hypostases. This extends each god's power. But to assume this model to extend across everything, with all divine phenomena folding neatly back to one person, is unjustified.

II. I've never seen the phrase in Mesopotamian literature, but would be interested to hear more. I guess, however, that even if Deuteronomy 6:4 etc. is 'Mesopotamian', it would only lend greater weight to III.

III. Yes, various gods are made supreme and omnipotent at various times. This supreme god shares more with the modern concept of God than the other gods do. In Assur-centred Assyria, for example, Assur can be that of as (the one) God, with his divine lackeys. Less so, perhaps, than in Second Temple Judaism, but certainly close. As we think of Second Temple Jews as monotheists, why draw a false distinction with Assyria to avoid calling them monotheists too? The syncretism in the first millennium imperial cults of Babylonia and Assyria even casts other divine characters as aspects of the supreme god, like Logos theology. I do not think, however, that this was the case before these empires, meaning this attribution of monotheism cannot be applied to Sumerians.

Therefore, yes, Mesopotamians could be called monotheists on some definitions, but such definitions would seem to preclude the possibility of polytheism and therefore to make the label less useful. What single hypothetical question would you ask to determine whether a person is a monotheist? If it is, "do you believe in more than one god?", I think the only possible answer from an ancient Mesopotamian is "yes".

[hukkana]

Would one call this Interpretatio Christia...norum ? Am no good with Latin, see.

I still dislike people trying to say Polytheist religions like Hinduism "are actually monotheist" mostly because of an unstated belief that "Polytheism is silly" and "Impossible to keep track of".

When it is clear that humans are naturally polytheistic and will usually not be able to accept just one person as the only divine Entity. That's why there's a tradition of different types of Angels and other such beings as divine beings of lesse caliber, and then in Christianity you have Saints, which are literally patron deities, under a different name, namely being eternal beings living in Heaven with God, being able to intercede on worshipper's behalf, and being patrons of countries, cities and professions.

[creyente]

i think hukkana and santakku already killed the idea, but to give you some food of thought, theres a religious group of smerian reconstructionists that says yhwh is actually enlil... ive even heard the theory that abraham was a pilgrim looking for the different temples of enlil all over ANE, and thats why his "traveling" was so "erratic", that the "false deity" was actually marduk, and he left ur when babylon "pushed" their god over them...

truth be told, there are not a single proof of any of that, but thats what some "believers" think today... in my opinion, it doesnt matter why abraham left or if he even existed, but the theories about it seem to be fun to read, i believe it makes more sense if theres more than one god than if theres only one or there is none, but thats not too academic...

lets focus on the academic side... theres no reason to believe enki and ninhursag are the same and we have tons of reasons to believe sumerians didnt think that way... they even wrote about them interacting with eachother... imagine you had to talk about your mother making a pie... you could say "my life bringer poured the floor" and "the cook of the house brought cheese" talking about your mother... but would it make sense to say "the life bringer called the cook to get the cheese" and talk about your mom only?

[nocodeyv]

Creyente,

I'm not an academic, so what follows is just my personal approach to reading Sumerian mythology, but I thought you might benefit some from the process I engage in every time.

The first thing I do whenever I'm reading a myth is keep a running list of who is involved in it. For example, the myth you're referencing, featuring Enki and Ninḫursaŋa in Dilmun, contains a wide cast of characters. For the sake of this response I'm going to pear the list down to just the section dealing with the emergence of nature on the island of Dilmun, which includes:

• Enki (^den-ki)
• Ninsikila (^dnin-skil-la)
• Nintud (^dnin-tud)
• Damgalnuna (^ddam-gal-nun-na)
• Ninḫursaŋa (^dnin-ḫur-saŋ-ŋa₂)
• Ninnisig (^dnin-nisig)
• Isimud (^disimud₄)
• Ninkura (^dnin-kur-ra)
• Uttu (^duttu)
• Ninimma (^dnin-imma₃)

Now, right off the bat, something important to consider about polytheistic religions is the use of epithets and titles. A single deity can be known by many names, even though said deity in truth only has one "true name," if you will. So, the second step for me, when reading any myth, is to associate these names with each other wherever possible. This usually manifests in the form of a list, headed by the "true name" of a deity, and followed by his or her epithets, and an explanation of each. For me, it looks something like this:

Ninmaḫ (^dnin-maḫ): the Majestic Queen is the “true name” of the Great Mother Goddess of Mesopotamia. Based on function and region, Ninmaḫ can be known by many epithets or titles:

• Ninsikila: Lady of the Pure Land
• Damgalnuna: Great Wife of the Prince
• Ninḫursaŋa: Queen of the Mountains
• Nintud: Lady of the Birthing Hut

In this particular myth Dilmun is known as a “pure” or “virginal” land, so it makes sense that Ninamḫ would be called Ninsikila—Lady of the Pure Land—while she is in Dilmun.

The epithet Damgalnuna—Great Wife of the Prince—is used when Enki’s sexual prowess is compared to his native land: the marshes of Eridu, where his primary seat of worship is. Because the poetic language favors Enki here—and not Ninmaḫ—it is a name related to him that the author has used.

The same applies to the use of Ninḫursaŋa, which is Ninmaḫ’s name in relation to the boundary between the civilized land of Sumer and the uncivilized lands beyond the Zagros Mountains. Because Enki is performing this action in Dilmun, a land technically beyond Sumer, the appellation could be a clever way of suggesting that Ninmaḫ is in a liminal state: between lands.

Finally, Nintud—Lady of the Birthing Hut—is applied when the actions shift from the sexual exploits of Enki, to the conception of children. Ninmaḫ’s role is no longer that of a majestic queen or goddess of liminal spaces, now she is a goddess of child-birth.

What's happening here isn't a form of monotheism, but a common practice of polytheism. Depending on where your particular deity is, and what they're doing, the name by which you address them alters some. Because Ninmaḫ's function and location changes throughout the myth, so to do her titles.

In fact, you'll often find that groups of titles appear together again and again in myths and cultic songs, suggesting that the authors had some understanding of the "rules" which governed their usage. Ninḫursaŋa, for example, also shows up as a name of Ninmaḫ in the myth "Lugal-e," where it is applied to her by Ninurta when he is naming the rebellious stones that exist on the outskirts of the Sumerian civilization. Once more, the title applies to Ninmaḫ in a state of liminality: when she is present on the borderland between two realms.

There are, of course, always examples which contradict any theory. Mine isn't perfect, but it has helped give me a deeper understanding of how the titles work.

Finally, our list contains another group of figures: the offspring of Enki by various lovers:

• Ninnisig: Lady of the Vegetation
• Ninkura: Lady of the Highlands
• Ninimma: Lady of the Physiognomy
• Uttu: weaver's beam

The first two names represent a cosmogony: the emergence of vegetation and highlands on the island of Dilmun. The third name, an interjection not found in all copies, introduces the idea of females on the island, and the fourth name relates to the textile industry: a common profession of women in Mesopotamia. This portion of the myth is an explanation of the growth of Dilmun and its inhabitants: from being a land overrun by nature, to one of the world's leading textile industries at the time. None of these names, however, are applied to Ninmaḫ or Enki, which completely shoots down the idea of monotheism in my mind. Instead, they are each unique deities whose presence serves to explain how Dilmun exists, and why it is the way it is.

This method isn't perfect. There are thousands of mentions of deities across the hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets we have. For me though, it has greatly helped in expanding my knowledge of the deities of Mesopotamia and their nature. I hope it can be of help to you as well.

[hukkana]

Jul 29, 2017 18:41:21 GMT -5 nocodeyv said:

Creyente,

I'm not an academic, so what follows is just my personal approach to reading Sumerian mythology, but I thought you might benefit some from the process I engage in every time.

The first thing I do whenever I'm reading a myth is keep a running list of who is involved in it. For example, the myth you're referencing, featuring Enki and Ninḫursaŋa in Dilmun, contains a wide cast of characters. For the sake of this response I'm going to pear the list down to just the section dealing with the emergence of nature on the island of Dilmun, which includes:

The question being how many worshippers or even priests would care for such distinctions, and would simply reffer to the deities are separate, barring of course well known epithets like Nudimmud and the like. I of course preffer as many deities as possible but that's just me.

Also as I take it this may have been a somewhat muddy issue even at the time, considering the separate cults and offerings given to different manifestations or "types" of the same Deity, even within the same list. See the various Ištar's for example.

[nocodeyv]

Oh, certainly. I tried to make it clear that my approach wasn't perfect, and that counter-examples exist against it. I, too, am of the mind that the Sumerians were polytheistic, with a heavy emphasis on the prefix poly.

However, a line like this one from the Dilmun myth:

Enki cried out: "by the life's breath of heaven I adjure you. Lie down for me in the marsh, lie down for me in the marsh, that would be joyous." Enki distributed his semen destined for Damgalnuna. He poured semen into Ninḫursaŋa's womb and she conceived the semen in the womb, the semen of Enki.

Suggest to me that it was very possible that certain names, if not always epithets of another, were commonly used as such. It's clear, in the above quote, that Damgalnuna and Ninḫursaŋa were closely related, so much so that the author could freely use them without the reader becoming confused as to who was receiving the semen from Enki.

This doesn't close the door, in my mind, to Ninḫursaŋa also existing as an entity separate from Damgalnuna. And if offering lists verify this, then that's excellent. Perhaps it means that there was a separate goddess named Ninḫursaŋa who was worshiped in the area where she received offerings, and that Damgalnuna just also happened to occasionally be called Ninḫursaŋa as well.

To ignore that, in this instance and others, Ninḫursaŋa was used as a name for Ninmaḫ, though, is disingenuous.

[hukkana]

Jul 29, 2017 19:12:12 GMT -5 nocodeyv said:

Oh, certainly. I tried to make it clear that my approach wasn't perfect, and that counter-examples exist against it. I, too, am of the mind that the Sumerians were polytheistic, with a heavy emphasis on the prefix poly.

Here is an example that fits my previous description

books.google.cz/books?id=Nvgz3NOuo5EC&pg=PA365&lpg=PA365&dq=parpola+1993&source=bl&ots=Ox6YZrs9wo&sig=xyyHhke4DWvHo2xZt8ecmiG-aFM&hl=cs&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3z9yd27jVAhUCIcAKHV0fDu4Q6AEIWTAH#v=onepage&q=parpola%201993&f=false

May Nabu, Marduk, Ištar of Nineveh and Ištar of Arbela give long lasting days, everlasting years, happiness and joy to the King, my lord !

[nocodeyv]

Ishtar, and by extension Inana, is definitely one of the deities in Mesopotamia with a plethora of local variants.

If you read through the Ishtar Tablet of the AN=Anum lexical list there are (at least) two sections dedicated to naming the "Inana of (region)," the "Inana of (city)," and the "Inana of (temple)." Whether or not this means there were hundreds of different goddesses named Inana, or if they were smaller aspects of a more universal Inana that happened to be worshiped in the e₂-an-na temple, the city of Aratta, and so forth, is beyond me.

In my personal practice I view Inana as a universal figure, with smaller aspects of her "greater-being" having been invoked in cities, temples, and regions. I don't propose that my interpretation is the only, or the most scholarly, though.

[lilitudemon]

The only time I've seen anything resembling monotheism is in Babylonia when Marduk's cult almost made it into. The "One city, One State, and One God" ideal. (This ofc is NOT Sumerian and Marduk is not in Sumerian mythos.)

This is mentioned in 'An Illustrated Dictionary of Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Mesopotamia' by Black and Green. I think it's under the Marduk entry.

I don't know the details of this per modern scholarship, but it's interesting that Babylonia almost evolved into monotheism..

Everyone else covered the finer details of why Sumer wasn't monotheistic. So I won't speak of that.