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SEVEN PLANETARY DEITIES

SEVEN PLANETARY DEITIES

The number seven was extremely important in ancient Mesopotamian cosmology. In Sumerian religion, the most powerful and important deities in the pantheon were the "Seven gods who decree"; Marduk, Ninhursag, Nergal, Nabu, Nanna, Utu, and Inanna. Major deities in Sumerian mythology were associated with specific celestial bodies. Inanna was believed to be the planet Venus, Utu was the sun, and Nanna was the Moon. Later Mesopotamian people adopted these associations and also assigned their own deities to the classical planets until all seven celestial bodies visible with the naked eye had become identified with major deities. The modern seven-day week originated with the ancient Babylonians, for whom each day was associated with one of the seven planetary deities.

MARDUK; JUPITER
God of water, vegetation, judgement and magic. Called the "calf of the sun; solar calf" was a late generation god from and patron deity of the city of Babylon. When Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi (18th century BC), he slowly started to rise to the position of the head of the Babylonian pantheon, a position he fully acquired by the second half of the second millennium BC. He was worshiped in the temple Esagila.

NINURTA; SATURN
God of farming, healing, hunting, law, scribes, and war. He was first worshiped in early Sumer. He also released humans from sickness and the power of demons. As Mesopotamia grew more militarized, he became a warrior deity, though he retained many of his earlier agricultural attributes. Regarded as the son of Enlil and his main cult center in Sumer was the Eshumesha temple in Nippur. Ninurta was honored by King Gudea of Lagash (ruled 2144-2124 BC) who rebuilt the temple in Lagash.

NERGAL; MARS
Called the "King of sunset" he was developed from a war god to the god of the underworld, this occured when Enlil and Ninlil gave him the underworld. He stands at the head of the special pantheon assigned to the government of the dead. As a fiery god of destruction and war, is why he was chosen as the red planet. His temple at Cuthah bore the name Meslam. His worship was not widely spread, having only the one temple in Cuthah dedicated to him. Because he was the god of fire, the desert, and the Underworld he was linked to being a god from ancient paganism and classified to others as Satan.

INANNA; VENUS
A Sumerian goddess of love, beauty, sex, desire, fertility, war, combat, justice, and political power. Later worshiped by the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians under the name Ishtar. She is know as the "Queen of Heaven" and was the patron goddess of the Eanna temple at the city of Uruk, which was her main cult center. Worshiped in Sumer as early as the Uruk period (4000 BC-3100 BC) she had little cult prior to the conquest of Sargon of Akkad. Post-Sargonic era, she became one of the most widely venerated deities in the Sumerian pantheon, with temples across Mesopotamia. Her cult has been associated with a variety of sexual rights, including homosexual transgender priests and sacred prostitution. She was beloved by the Assyrians, who elevated her to become the highest deity in their pantheon, ranking about their own national god Ashur. She influenced the development of the Greek goddess Aphrodite. He cult continued to flourish until its gradual decline between the first and sixth centuries AD in the wake of Christianity, though it survived in parts of Upper Mesopotamia as late as the eighteenth century.

NABU; MERCURY
God of literacy, the rational arts, scribes and wisdom. Worshiped by the Babylonians and the Assyrians, Nabu was known as Nisaba in the Sumerian pantheon and gained prominence among the Babylonians in the first millennium BC when she was identified as the son of the god Marduk. Worshiped in Babylon's sister city, Borsippa, where his statue was moved to Babylon each New Year so that he could pay his respects to his father. His symbol was a stylus resting on a tablet. He was in the inventor of writing. Also his role as an oracle, Nabu was associated with the moon god Sin. He was continuously worshiped until the second century, when cuneiform became a lost art.  His cult also spread to ancient Egypt, he was one of the five non-Egyptian deities worshiped in Elephantine.

NANNA; MOON
God of the moon, also known as Sin. He was also an protector of shepherds. The two chief seats of Nanna's worship were Ur in the south of Mesopotamia and Harran in the north. During the period in which Ur exercised supremacy of the Euphrates valley (2600-2400 BC), Nanna was considered the supreme god of the pantheon. It was then he was designated as "father of gods", "head of gods" or "creator of all things" It is said that every new moon, the gods gather together from him to make predictions about the future. The "wisdom" personified by the moon-god is an expression of the science of astronomy or the practice of astrology. The cult of the moon-god spread to other centers, so that temples to him are found in all the large cities of Babylonia and Assyria. A sanctuary of Nanna with Syriac inscriptions invoking his dating to the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE was found at Sumatar Harabesi in the Tektek mountains, not far from Harran and Edessa.

UTU; SUN
God of the sun, justice, mortality, and truth. His temples were in the cities of Sippar and Larsa. Believed to ride through the heavens in his sun chariot and see all things happening in the day. He was the enforcer of divine justice and was thought to aid those in distress. Worshiped in Sumer from the very earliest times (3500 BC) Utu continued to be venerated until the end of Mesopotamian culture and was worshiped for well over three-thousand years. The twin brother of Inanna, the Queen of the Heaven. They were shown to be extremely close, in fact it often bordered incestuous.