Sumerian Religion: Did you mean...?

This hymn to the goddess Ishtar is written in Sumerian; after every line in Sumerian, the text is translated in Akkadian. Such translations have been invaluable to modern scholars. They reflect how the Sumerian language had become difficult...

Mesopotamian education was invented by the Sumerians following the creation of writing circa 3600/3500 BCE. The earliest schools were attached to temples, but later schools were established in separate buildings, in which the scribes of ancient...

Enheduanna (circa 2300 BCE) is the world's first author and was the daughter (either literally or figuratively) of the great empire-builder Sargon of Akkad (reign 2334-2279 BCE). Her name translates from the Akkadian as "high priestess of...

Tiamat is the Mesopotamian goddess associated with primordial chaos and the salt sea, best known from the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish. In all versions of the myth, following the original, Tiamat always symbolizes the forces of chaos, which...

Mesopotamia (from the Greek, meaning "between two rivers") was an ancient region located in the Near East (Middle East) bounded in the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and in the southeast by the Arabian Plateau, corresponding to modern-day...

Zarathustra (also given as Zoroaster, Zartosht, Zarathustra Spitama, l. c. 1500-1000 BCE) was the Persian priest-turned-prophet who founded the religion of Zoroastrianism (also given as Mazdayasna “devotion to Mazda”), the first monotheistic...

The Code of Ur-Nammu (circa 2100-2050 BCE) is the oldest extant law code in the world. It was written by the Sumerian king Ur-Nammu (reign circa 2112-2094 BCE) or his son Shulgi of Ur (reign 2094 to circa 2046 BCE), centuries before the famous...

For well over 1,000 years, sacred stories and heroic epics have made up the mythology of Hinduism. Nothing in these complex yet colourful legends is fixed and firm. Pulsing with creation, destruction, love, and war, it shifts and changes...

Ishtar (Inanna in Sumerian sources) is a primary Mesopotamian goddess closely associated with love and war. This powerful Mesopotamian goddess is the first known deity for which we have written evidence. While largely unknown in the modern...

Scribes in ancient Mesopotamia were highly educated individuals trained in writing and reading on diverse subjects. Initially, their purpose was to record financial transactions through trade, but in time, they were integral to every aspect...