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Four Gods Greet the Rising Sun God
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Featured August 10 , 2006
On a famous cylinder seal from ancient Mesopotamia, Sin Assurbanipal shows us how to identify the major gods who greet the sun god as he rises from the Underworld.
 Greeting the Sun God, A modern clay impression from a Mesopotamian cylinder seal,
The Seal of Adda. Akkadian Period, 2350 BC - 2100 BC. The British Museum Rising from the mountain in the center is the sun god Utu/Shamash, greeted by three other great gods. From left to right, they are: the storm god Ninurta; the goddess of love and war, Inanna/Ishtar; and the god of water and wisdom, Enki/Ea. To Enki's right is his vizier, the two-faced Usmu. (When the gods are given a pair of names linked with a slash, like "Utu/Shamash", the first is the Sumerian name, the second the Akkadian or Babylonian name.) As high gods, they all wear conical hats crowned with four pairs of bull's horns. But they are easily identified by the special signs and powers that spring from their shoulders. In the exact center, with his sun held overhead, and flames rising from his shoulders, is the sun god Utu/Shamash. He also holds up a saw-toothed knife, or pruning saw, which some say he uses to cut his way out of the mountain; but most say the pruning saw symbolizes his role as a judge of gods and men who "de-cides" each case by "cutting off" the bad from the good. It is dawn, and he rises from Kur, the cosmic mountain (indicated by the usual mountain pattern of overlapping scallops). Kur is also the name of the Underworld, which has two entrances: one in the west, where the sun god descends each night, and one in the east, where he rises at dawn. Directly above Utu/Shamash, and giving him a hand up by touching or tugging on his rising sun, is his sister, Inanna/Ishtar, the Queen of Heaven and Earth. From her shoulders stretch widespread wings, showing she rules the sky. From behind her shoulders bristle six weapons (spears and maces) that show she is a war goddess, a mistress of battles. She is also a goddess of love, a fertility goddess. So beside her there's a sacred tree, the Tree of Life, which sprouts from the Mountain of the Underworld. On the other side of Utu/Shamash is Enki/Ea, the god of wisdom and "sweet water" - the fresh water without which nothing can live, and which is opposed to the cosmic ocean of "bitter" salt water that surounds the earth, and even the heavens, on all sides, top and bottom. (It is probably this "sweet" water that is the Water of Life which Enki sends along with the Food of Life to revive Inanna's corpse in the Underworld.) Enki is identified by two streams of fresh water (the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) that spring from his shoulders, and which are filled with fish. (In other pictures, the two streams may flow from jars or vases that he holds.) With one hand Enki holds the thunderbird [the now-tamed Imdugud/Zu?], while at his feet kneels a horned animal, a water buffalo or a bull, a symbol of life. Behind Enki is his minister or vizier, the Janus-faced Usmu, who is himself a voice of wisdom as he faces both forwards and backwards, towards the future and the past.  The bearded storm-god Inurta on his winged and maned lion as he battles the lion-headed bird-god Imdugud/Anzu. Drawing of a cylinder-seal printout in the Pierpont Morgan Library. Above Ninurta's lion is a block of cuneiform writing with the Akkadian name "Adda," which also means "scribe." This shows the cylinder seal was custom-made for the official who owned and used it to sign and seal important documents and letters. These were clay tablets, of course, but larger than the modern strip of clay on which Adda's stone cylinder was rolled to create the image before us. Its printout was "over-rolled," which is why the lion-plus-signature image reappears on the right, just beyond two-faced Usmu, but now facing the "wrong way," off-stage to the right. |
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~ Table of Contents ~
TYCHE & OEDIPUS
Fatal Boar Hunts, Fatal Loves: Meleager & Adonis A Valentine for Camille Flammarion The Met returns its Euphronios vase! Camille Flammarion: Romantic Astronomer The Fountains of Enceladus The Eye of God Is Ganymede the Boy from Marathon Bay? THE ANCIENT OLYMPIEIA FESTIVAL AT ATHENS Which satyr would you choose... The Marathon Boy and the Satyr Contrapossto from Praxiteles to Rubens and Playboy The Afternoon of a Faun The Dancing Satyr - A Lost Bronze of Praxiteles? Hermes, The Liar Who Invented the Lyre Inanna Adored: The Uruk Vase The Moon-God Nanna-Sin Visits his Ziggurat at Ur Apollo Sauroktonos, or How the Romans Killed the Lizard-Killer Jacob's Ladder Lilith: Wild Demon of Sex and Death DUMUZI FEEDS INANNA'S SHEEP The Sun God in his Dragon Boat Lassalle's Post-Modern Male Torso Brancusi's Torsos: Pure Platonic Forms? Brancusi on Men and Women: Take the Tate Test? Culsu & Vanth Lead the Dead into Hades Aita, the Etruscan Hades Socrates' Apology: The Background THE GREEK SPHINX Hypnos & Thanatos, Sleep & Death The SPHINX and The ROBOT PYTHAGOREAN HARMONICS: FROM PYTHAGORAS TO NEWTON Orestes Pursued by Furies in The Eumenides |
