A Reprieve from Today's Gods, into Ur's
What an ancient moon deity can teach us about our "pantheon" today
One of the simplest ways of describing my relationship to “the religion question” is as follows: to me, there is no god, but there are around 6.5 billion god concepts, most of which are deeply and meaningfully held by my fellow human beings.
As a secular humanist, I would therefore be remiss in not meeting my fellow human beings precisely where they are—and I would be fairly anti-humanist, if I expected everyone to change their cosmology to match my own, before we could unite over the more pressing work needed to respond to global and local crises of our time.
Right now, all over the world, some people are turning their prayers to Allah, a godhead experienced in large part through the Quran, as it’s interpreted through one of a great many different local faith traditions. Elsewhere, at the same time, it is some version of the Holy Trinity, as shaped by the Christian Bible and differently applied across church practices, from which other people are drawing comfort and counsel. In others still (and, yes, I’m putting aside a lot of others for simplicity’s sake), Hashem is the way one speaks of a god whose actual names are never meant to be uttered in vain—and whether elliptical or forceful, Hashem is critical to deciding how best to live.
Historical study brings us the shared origin of these three god-concepts in particular: YHWH (usually parsed as Yahweh), a war/storm deity among early Levantine groups, who was worshipped alongside other members of the Canaanite pantheon, some of whose names are recorded in the Jewish and Christian Bibles we have now.
This was all around 3,500 years ago, but since three of today’s dominant religions—the Abrahamic faiths—all draw from this root, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that we’re still living in a kind of “late-stage Canaanitism” (I’d say “Canaanism”, but that’s taken by a very specific Jewish-nationalist movement in the 20th Century). All the other pantheon gods and goddesses from back have since been enfolded into Biblical stories of YHWH, but still, that ancient set of tribal tales has a mighty big cultural hold on us.
And sometimes, this really depresses me.
Last week, when a grave expansion of our Middle-Eastern nightmare felt near at hand, it was hard not to be frustrated that we hadn’t cast off the rest of Canaanite mythology already, and found better ways of organizing ourselves as human beings.
But that’s an easy thing to say, as an atheist.
And a lazy thing to say, as a secular humanist.
Because as frustrating as it can be to feel like one is surrounded by warmongering tribalists, that’s never the full story. Today, as in other eras, there are many people trying to use the traditions into which they were born to do the best they can as human beings. There are so many Christians, Jews, and Muslims whose lives are built around service, and dedicated to the advancement of grace, peace, and heaven here on Earth. These people lean into community uplift. They roll up their sleeves amid disaster, and advocate for political changes that prioritize the hurting and unheard.
Now, it’s common for atheists to exhale furiously and say, “Yes, sure, fine, there are good people—but they could do all that and just not be religious, couldn’t they? God! The world would be so much better if we just didn’t have religion anymore.”
But even if that were true, where is our own commitment to service, when we keep putting ego first? When a solid three-quarters of human beings have some form of faith, atheists who want to “eliminate” religion before we get on to other tasks are asking for our species to be something entirely different than it is, before they’ll roll up their sleeves and get to work as well. How does such an impossible ask translate into doing the best we can, with our brief time as witnesses to the cosmos?
Personally, when it comes to the hierarchy of “things I’d love for humanity not to be”, plenty of other items rank higher. I’d love for us not to thrill at murder, torture, rape, and other forms of abuse. I’d love for us not to care more about vague notions of our nation-states as incorporated totalities than about the human beings in them. I’d love for us not to be so wasteful with our present environment, and also our planet’s future.
And although I’m sure I could waste a lifetime quibbling with people over what their religious texts say, I can make common cause right here, right now, with people from all faith traditions around the world who want to tackle those other problems, too.
So, I do.
Besides, history reminds us that, before the “late-stage Canaanitism” we’re still clinging to with our last, ferociously divisive breaths, there were other pantheons. Other gods. Other ideas of divinity that people worshipped with just as much fervour as the gods we quarrel over, kill over, and otherwise die over today.
Today for Rewind Wednesday, then, I’d like to introduce you to one of them, because in the middle of my foul mood last week, it gave me a chuckle to think of the social-media venting I would have been doing in Mesopotamia, while listening to reports of political violence between city-states back then. (At least, if the tech had existed.)
So this little rethink is brought to you by the concept of “Ur-Book”. Ur-Book! Everyone’s favourite Fertile Crescent platform for chattering about the patron god of Ur, a moon deity tied to kingly traditions from the Late Uruk period on (34th to 32nd centuries BCE)—and also, probably a place where people posted a lot of cow memes.
Since there have been atheists in most every recorded period, I’m sure some of us grumbled at the amount of energy poured into temple-building and worship then, too.
Let’s take a look at what we would have been grumbling at, when we did.
The Mesopotamian moon god Nanna, or Su’en
Our oldest-known written language is Sumerian, a cuneiform script used around 5,000 years ago in Ancient Mesopotamia, a territory often referred to as “the cradle of civilization” and part of the Fertile Crescent. Early archaeological records suggest that the region was inhabited around 11,000 years ago, when locals began to invest more in agriculture (i.e., farming and livestock-based homesteading) than nomadic existences. Today, the region mostly maps onto Iraq, with parts in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
Mesopotamia means “land between rivers”: the Tigris and the Euphrates. In later eras, it was a land of powerful cities—Uruk, Ur, Nippur, Nineveh, and Babylon—and despite what you might have heard about Athens, some of the meetings associated with Uruk in related literature (i.e., Gilgamesh) would have taken place in assembly spaces fit-to-purpose for huge swaths of the local population. This gives Uruk the honour of possibly being the birthplace of one form of democratic decision-making.
This was also a land of relentless conquering. First, the Dynastic Sumerian city-states; then the Akkadians; then a Neo-Sumerian resurgence, including the Third Dynasty of Ur; then early Babylonia—interspersed with Assyrian rule, and a spate of Hittite and Syro-Hittite power struggles—leading up to the Babylonian Empire best known to most folks from an Abrahamic tradition, when it was raged against by Israelite tribes.
Our story takes place in Ur, a Sumerian city-state founded in 3,800 BCE (give or take a Tuesday). You might be familiar with the Ziggurat of Ur, which was its most prominent structure, 20 metres tall and built through tremendous bricklaying craft.
But what is a ziggurat? What was its function?
The Sumerian word for it, é-temen-ní-gùru, gives us a sense of its power: a “temple whose foundation creates aura”. It was a holy place, in other words.
And every city in that era had a protector-god (sometimes the same one, but often with different regional interpretations of its role in the greater pantheon) to which such holy places would be dedicated.
In the Mesopotamian pantheon, there were at least four figures of greater power than the city-god of Ur. First, there was An, the god of the heavens who eventually shared power and functions with the rest; then Enlil, god of the fates (whose Mountain House was in Nippur); Inana/Ishtar, goddess of sexuality and war (who shows up in temples all across the region); and Enki/Ea, a mischievous god of wisdom and the arts, who lived in an ocean under the earth and was strongly associated with the city of Babylon.
(I could go on about Enki for a while, since he’s the “Prometheus” of this pantheon: he created humanity, then protected it from the wrath of Enlil, who tried to kill our species with a flood. Enki instructed Atrahasis to build an ark. But—another day.)
Then there’s Nanna, or Su’en, or Sin, or Dilimbabbar: the moon god. (Hey, when you have a region with many different peoples, you tend to pick up many different names!)
Nanna was the protector-god of Ur, and much beloved in this capacity. But then again, why wouldn’t he be? He was the god who served as humanity’s intermediary with the older, more powerful pantheon gods. He brought the “first fruit offerings” to those elders; and because the moon looks like “horns” in certain phases, he was also aligned with protection of the people’s cattle, crops, and fertility in general. During Ur’s rise to a major trading capital, the worship of Nanna then spread to the region of Harran.
Here’s an example of a long prayer to Nanna, which gives a sense of how he was esteemed by people of the era:
The lord has burnished … the heavens; he has embellished [the night/the earth]. Nanna has burnished the heavens; he has embellished [the night/the earth].
When he comes forth from the turbulent mountains, he stands as Utu stands at noon. When Ašimbabbar comes forth from the turbulent mountains, he stands as Utu stands at noon.
His father, whose word is true, speaks with him day and night. Enlil, whose word is true, speaks with him day and night, and in decision determines the fates with him.
His lofty ĝipar shrines number four. There are four [platforms/cattle pens] which he has established for him. His great temple cattle pens, one eše in size, number four. They play for him [on the drumsticks/on the churn].
The cows are driven together in herds for him. His various types of cow number 39600. [His young cows and calves/His fattened cows] number 108000. His young bulls number 126000. The sparkling-eyed cows number 50400. The white cows number 126000. The cows for the evening meal … are in four groups of [five each] Such are the various types of cow of Father Nanna.
His wild cows number 180000. The …… cows are four. Their herds of cattle are seven. Their …… herdsmen are seven. There are four of those who dwell among the cows …
They give praise to the lord, singing [paeans] as they move into the ĝipar shrines. Nisaba has taken their grand total; Nisaba has taken their count, and she is writing it on clay. The holy cows of Nanna, cherished by the youth Suen, be praised!
He is ever able to increase the butter of abundance in the holy animal pens of …… and goats. He is able to provide abundantly the great liquor of the mountains, and syrup, and alcoholic drink for the king on his lofty pure platform.
Mighty one, trusted one of Enlil, youth, god of living creatures, leader of the Land, and Ningal, lady of the ĝipar shrines—O Father Nanna, be praised!
As you can see, his claim to fame comes from being a great provider to his people. In other stories of his divine family, we also learn that he has a beautiful cow, Geme-Sin, whose birth pains he eases the way locals pray that he will ease their birth pains, too. In this way, his work upon the land provides a sense of care to men and women alike; he strives to support the industry of all human beings, and to use the fruits of that industry to please the greater gods who have ultimate control over humanity’s fate.
He’s also often described as a more earthly version of those abstract gods: a being who embodies the powers of Enlil, An, and Enki. These gods can therefore be better known to humanity through worship of this more material and human-like divinity.
For the kings of Ur, Nanna was the god who granted them the power to rule, and they made their gratitude known to him for this gift through the construction and maintenance of many places of worship run by priestesses and priests.
All well and good so far, right?
But because this god was so strongly associated with the city and a certain lineage of rulers, Nanna also underwent routine transformation in keeping with different tribal preferences, and found himself joined with different regional pantheons, under very different interpretations of his role, as his influence spread. Sometimes he was an intermediary with other gods. Sometimes he was the material incarnation of their powers. Sometimes he was the chief god of a local pantheon.
In other words: Just as Abrahamic faiths today reflect different understandings of the same original god in the Canaanite tradition, so too did thousands of years of Ur-worship yield significant changes in local understandings of Nanna’s divine nature.
Moreover, just as King Josiah purged local worship of other gods in the Canaanite pantheon to establish his rule through YHWH, so too did Nanna experience periods of utter erasure under new leadership. When the third Babylonian dynasty came to Ur, these kings of Kassite origin weren’t as interested in maintaining local Mesopotamian traditions. They also didn’t bother as much with keeping records, so we see their centuries of influence in the land itself: the impact they made on the region through expansive agricultural and architectural projects, including the rebuilding of holy places and courts once dedicated to Nanna, then put to use for other gods and services.
But here’s a name you might know: Nebuchadnezzar the Great, or Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled from 605 to 562 BCE. He and his successor rebuilt lunar worship in the city: first through culture, then through massive building projects, and the reinstating of the whole priestess tradition associated with the faith. So when you hear references to ancient worship of cattle and other fertility symbols, there’s definitely a lot of the Canaanite fertility gods in that discourse—but also vestiges of these older ones, too.
A cranky atheist in any other era?
Life in any given era of religious fervour can feel very smothering—especially when so many outspoken world leaders seem dead-set on using religiosity as just cause for war.
Large swaths of the Western and Western-colonized world are shaped by Abrahamic faiths stemming from the Canaanite pantheon, for better and for worse—but even then, they don’t encompass the whole of this pale blue dot. Elsewhere, we also have the Hindu pantheon, which is undergoing its own, bitter struggle between national extremists and people who simply want to use their faith to do better by one another. And then there are Buddhist traditions, and Indigenous traditions in the Americas, and a wealth of distinct African pantheons and Asian animist beliefs, that also invite humanity to sit with a much more multifaceted approach to divinity, and purpose.
So yes, it’s frustrating when the scriptures of today’s dominant faiths are wielded like a cudgel against other human beings; when sweeping global conflicts are built on the conceit of gods that are not universally accepted—and whose aspects of divinity are interpreted differently even by members of the same local faith. What humanist wouldn’t go a bit mad, who has to walk among such nonsense and try not to scream?
Wouldn’t it be nice, we might think, if we at least had a “simpler” god like Nanna?
An everyday intermediary between humanity and greater forces of nature, whose main focus was doing right by his cattle, his merry little moo-cow, his crops, and his people?
But the very city-state industry dedicated to Nanna’s worship should give us serious pause, before we go off trying to paint other pantheons in too-rosy a cultural gloss.
“Nanna”, after all, was a story of divine influence used to uphold the rule of kings—and a story transformed as it served the rule of rival kings, too, over time.
Then, as now, the language of faith has never been more than this: a figurative vocabulary shared by (or imposed upon) humans trying to make sense of their world, and to navigate life’s strange, fickle features as best we can in community.
So while some ancient Mesopotamians surely worshipped the moon-god Nanna in a way that focused on celebrating the bounty of the land together, others drew upon that same story to maintain control over whole cities—right until someone else’s greater political/military might brought another version of worship into power instead.
It’s not the language’s fault, at the end of the day.
(After all, the language is ours.)
The fault lies with we who make terrible choices with the stories we tell.
As ever, humanity creates its gods wherever it goes; and those gods always seem to mirror whatever brutality we let triumph first in our own, fleeting hearts.
Be well, be kind, and seek justice where you can.
ML