The Pantheon of Uruk during the Neo-Babylonian Period.

• Author: Dandamayev, M.A.
• Position: Book Review

The Pantheon of Uruk during the Neo-Babylonian Period. By PAUL-ALAIN BEAULIEU. Cuneiform Monographs, vol. 23. Leiden: BRILL-STYX, 2003. Pp. xxvi + 424. [euro]99, $118.

This admirably designed book represents an enormous step in the study of Babylonian religion and towards understanding the theological conceptions of the ancient world. The work is based on all relevant texts of the Yale Babylonian Collection and the Princeton Theological Seminary, as well as on tablets from some other cuneiform collections. Among them, nineteen texts are published here in hand-copy, transliteration, and translation. In addition, around six hundred Neo-Babylonian texts are quoted and discussed in the volume, and most of them are given in transliteration and translation or examined in extenso.

The contents of this volume are diverse and rich in detail. Treated are various aspects of cultic activities in the Eanna temple and its daily routine, the role of the goddess Istar and other deities, including minor ones, cultic paraphernalia, clothing ceremonies, jewelry of the deities, offerings, temple personnel, sacred meals, prebends and the functions of prebendaries. The philological discussions are supplemented with an extensive bibliography and indexes.

The author researches the evidence from economic and administrative documents of the Eanna temple archive in Uruk for the study of religious and cultic aspects and for the investigation of the pantheon of Uruk from the late fourth millennium B.C. to Hellenistic and Parthian times, when Nanaya, Adad, and other traditional Babylonian deities were still worshipped there. I note here some of the main conclusions of the volume.

In the Early Dynastic, Sargonic, and Ur III periods, the most important deities of Uruk were An, his daughter (according to another tradition, his granddaughter) Nanaya, and Inanna, who was thought to be a form of Nanaya. Already in archaic texts composed at the end of the fourth millennium in Uruk, she frequently appears as the manifestation of the morning and evening star, which was considered to be the astral identity of Inanna. Her name is written in texts with the sign MUS, which means Inanna.

In the first millennium B.C., from the eighth century to the beginning of the fifth, the Eanna temple was the sanctuary of the goddess Istar, patroness of Uruk, and center of its spiritual life. By this time her image had already merged with manifestations of Inanna and Nanaya. Theologically, Istar...