List of Mesopotamian deities

Samuel Noah Kramer, writing in 1963, stated that the three most important deities in the Mesopotamian pantheon during all periods were the deities An, Enlil, and Enki. However, newer research shows that the arrangement of the top of the pantheon could vary depending on time period and location. The Fara god list indicates that sometimes Enlil, Inanna and Enki were regarded as the three most significant deities. Inanna was also the most important deity in Uruk and a number of other political centers in the Uruk period. Gudea regarded Ninhursag, rather than Enki, as the third most prominent deity. An Old Babylonian source preserves a tradition in which Nanna was the king of the gods, and Anu, Enlil and Enki merely his advisers, likely a view espoused by Nanna's priests in Ur, and later on in Harran. An Old Babylonian personal name refers to Shamash as "Enlil of the gods," possibly reflecting the existence of a similar belief connected to him among his clergy too, though unlike the doctrine of supremacy of the moon god, accepted by Nabonidus, it found no royal support at any point in time. In Zabban, a city in the northeast of Babylonia, Hadad was the head of the pantheon. In the first millennium BCE Marduk became the supreme god in Babylonia, and some late sources omit Anu and Enlil altogether and state that Ea received his position from Marduk. In some neo-Babylonian inscriptions Nabu's status was equal to that of Marduk. In Assyria, Assur was regarded as the supreme god. The number seven was extremely important in ancient Mesopotamian cosmology. In Sumerian religion, the most powerful and important deities in the pantheon were sometimes called the "seven gods who decree": An, Enlil, Enki, Ninhursag, Nanna, Utu, and Inanna. Many major deities in Sumerian mythology were associated with specific celestial bodies: Inanna was believed to be the planet Venus, Utu was believed to be the Sun, and Nanna was the Moon. However, minor deities could be associated with planets too, for example Mars was sometimes called Simut, and Ninsianna was a Venus deity distinct from Inanna in at least some contexts. ==Primordial beings==

Various civilizations over the course of Mesopotamian history had many different creation stories. The earliest accounts of creation are simple narratives written in Sumerian dating to the late third millennium BC. These are mostly preserved as brief prologues to longer mythographic compositions dealing with other subjects, such as Inanna and the Huluppu Tree, The Creation of the Pickax, and Enki and Ninmah. Later accounts are far more elaborate, adding multiple generations of gods and primordial beings. The longest and most famous of these accounts is the Babylonian Enûma Eliš, or Epic of Creation, which is divided into seven tablets. The surviving version of the Enûma Eliš could not have been written any earlier than the late second millennium BC, but it draws heavily on earlier materials, including various works written during the Akkadian, Old Babylonian, and Kassite periods in the early second millennium BC. A category of primordial beings common in incantations were pairs of divine ancestors of Enlil and less commonly of Anu. In at least some cases these elaborate genealogies were assigned to major gods to avoid the implications of divine incest. Figures appearing in theogonies were generally regarded as ancient and no longer active (unlike the regular gods) by the Mesopotamians. ==Minor deities==

==Monsters and apotropaic spirits==

==Foreign deities in Mesopotamia==