Ancient Mesopotamian underworld

The ancient Mesopotamian underworld, most often

known in Sumerian as Kur, Irkalla, Kukku, Arali, or
Kigal and in Akkadian as Erṣetu, although it had many
names in both languages, was a dark, dreary cavern
located deep below the ground,[1][2] where inhabitants
were believed to continue "a shadowy version of life on
earth".[1] The only food or drink was dry dust, but family
members of the deceased would pour libations for them to
drink. Unlike many other afterlives of the ancient world, in Ancient Sumerian cylinder seal impression
the Sumerian underworld, there was no final judgement of showing the god Dumuzid being tortured in the
the deceased and the dead were neither punished nor underworld by galla demons
rewarded for their deeds in life. A person's quality of
existence in the underworld was determined by his or her
conditions of burial.

The ruler of the underworld was the goddess Ereshkigal, who lived in the palace Ganzir, sometimes used as a
name for the underworld itself. Her husband was either Gugalanna, the "canal-inspector of Anu", or,
especially in later stories, Nergal, the god of death. After the Akkadian Period (c. 2334–2154 BC), Nergal
sometimes took over the role as ruler of the underworld. The seven gates of the underworld are guarded by a
gatekeeper, who is named Neti in Sumerian. The god Namtar acts as Ereshkigal's sukkal, or divine attendant.
The dying god Dumuzid spends half the year in the underworld, while, during the other half, his place is taken
by his sister, the scribal goddess Geshtinanna, who records the names of the deceased. The underworld was
also the abode of various demons, including the hideous child-devourer Lamashtu, the fearsome wind demon
and protector god Pazuzu, and galla, who dragged mortals to the underworld.

Contents
Names
Conditions
Geography
Inhabitants
Ereshkigal and family
Other underworld deities
Demons
See also
Notes
References
Bibliography

Names
The Sumerians had a large number of different names which they applied to the underworld, including Arali,
Irkalla, Kukku, Ekur, Kigal, and Ganzir.[3] All of these terms were later borrowed into Akkadian.[3] The rest
of the time, the underworld was simply known by words meaning "earth" or "ground", including the terms
Kur and Ki in Sumerian and the word erṣetu in Akkadian.[3] When used in reference to the underworld, the
word Kur usually means "ground",[3][4][a] but sometimes this meaning is conflated with another possible
meaning of the word Kur as "mountain".[3] The cuneiform sign for Kur was written ideographically with the
cuneiform sign 𒆳, a pictograph of a mountain.[7] Sometimes the underworld is called the "land of no return",
the "desert", or the "lower world".[3] The most common name for the earth and the underworld in Akkadian is
erṣetu,[8] but other names for the underworld include: ammatu, arali / arallû, bīt d dumuzi ("House of
Dumuzi"), danninu, erṣetu la târi ("Earth of No Return"), ganzer / kanisurra, ḫaštu, irkalla, kiūru, kukkû
("Darkness"), kurnugû ("Earth of No Return"), lammu, mātu šaplītu, and qaqqaru.[8]

Conditions
All souls went to the same afterlife,[1][3] and a person's actions during
life had no effect on how the person would be treated in the world to
come.[1] Unlike in the ancient Egyptian afterlife, there was no process
of judgement or evaluation for the deceased;[3] they merely appeared
before Ereshkigal, who would pronounce them dead,[3] and their
names would be recorded by the scribal goddess Geshtinanna.[3] The
souls in Kur were believed to eat nothing but dry dust[10] and family
members of the deceased would ritually pour libations into the dead
person's grave through a clay pipe, thereby allowing the dead to
drink.[11] For this reason, it was considered essential to have as many
offspring as possible so that one's descendants could continue to
provide libations for the dead person to drink for many years.[12]
Those who had died without descendants would suffer the most in the
underworld, because they would have nothing to drink at all,[13] and
were believed to haunt the living.[14] Sometimes the dead are
described as naked or clothed in feathers like birds.[3] Detail of the "Peace" panel of the
Standard of Ur from the Royal
Nonetheless, there are assumptions according to which treasures in Cemetery at Ur, showing a man
wealthy graves had been intended as offerings for Utu and the playing a lyre. The Sumerians
Anunnaki, so that the deceased would receive special favors in the believed that, for the highly
underworld.[2] During the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 – c. 2004 privileged, music could alleviate the
BC), it was believed that a person's treatment in the afterlife depended bleak conditions of the underworld.[9]
on how he or she was buried;[11] those that had been given
sumptuous burials would be treated well,[11] but those who had been
given poor burials would fare poorly.[11] Those who did not receive a proper burial, such as those who had
died in fires and whose bodies had been burned or those who died alone in the desert, would have no
existence in the underworld at all, but would simply cease to exist.[13] The Sumerians believed that, for the
highly privileged, music could alleviate the bleak conditions of the underworld.[9]

Geography
The entrance to Kur was believed to be located in the Zagros mountains in the far east.[15] A staircase led
down to the gates of the underworld.[3] The underworld itself is usually located even deeper below ground
than the Abzu, the body of freshwater which the ancient Mesopotamians believed lay deep beneath the
earth.[3] In other, conflicting traditions, however, it seems to be located at a remote and inaccessible location on
earth, possibly somewhere in the far west.[3] This alternate tradition is hinted at by the fact that the underworld
is sometimes called "desert"[3] and by the fact that actual rivers located far away from Sumer are sometimes
referred to as the "river of the underworld".[3] The underworld was believed to have seven gates, through
which a soul needed to pass.[1] All seven gates were protected by bolts.[16] The god Neti was the
gatekeeper.[17][18] Ereshkigal's sukkal, or messenger, was the god Namtar.[19][17] The palace of Ereshkigal
was known as Ganzir.[16]

At night, the sun-god Utu was believed to travel through the underworld as he journeyed to the east in
preparation for the sunrise.[20] One Sumerian literary work refers to Utu illuminating the underworld and
dispensing judgement there[21] and Shamash Hymn 31 (BWL 126) states that Utu serves as a judge of the
dead in the underworld alongside the malku, kusu, and the Anunnaki.[21] On his way through the underworld,
Utu was believed to pass through the garden of the sun-god,[20] which contained trees that bore precious gems
as fruit.[20] The Sumerian hymn Inanna and Utu contains an etiological myth in which Utu's sister Inanna
begs her brother Utu to take her to Kur,[22] so that she may taste the fruit of a tree that grows there,[22] which
will reveal to her all the secrets of sex.[22] Utu complies and, in Kur, Inanna tastes the fruit and becomes
knowledgeable of sex.[22] The hymn employs the same motif found in the myth of Enki and Ninhursag and in
the later Biblical story of Adam and Eve.[22]

Inhabitants

Ereshkigal and family

A number of deities were believed by the ancient Mesopotamians to

reside in the underworld.[3] The queen of the underworld was the
goddess Ereshkigal.[16][17][1] She was believed to live in a palace
known as Ganzir.[16] In earlier stories, her husband is Gugalanna,[16]
but, in later myths, her husband is the god Nergal.[16][17] Her
gatekeeper was the god Neti[17] and her sukkal is the god Namtar.[16]
In the poem Inanna's Descent into the Underworld, Ereshkigal is
described as Inanna's "older sister".[23]

Gugalanna is the first husband of Ereshkigal, the queen of the

underworld.[16] His name probably originally meant "canal inspector
of An"[16] and he may be merely an alternative name for Ennugi.[16]
The son of Ereshkigal and Gugalanna is Ninazu.[16] In Inanna's
Descent into the Underworld, Inanna tells the gatekeeper Neti that she
is descending to the underworld to attend the funeral of "Gugalanna,
the husband of my elder sister Ereshkigal".[16][24][23] The "Queen of Night Relief" (c.
nineteenth or eighteenth century BC),
During the Akkadian Period (c. 2334 – 2154 BC), Ereshkigal's role as which is believed to represent either
the ruler of the underworld was assigned to Nergal, the god of Ereshkigal or her younger sister
death.[1][17] The Akkadians attempted to harmonize this dual Inanna
rulership of the underworld by making Nergal Ereshkigal's
husband.[1] Nergal is the deity most often identified as Ereshkigal's
husband.[25] He was also associated with forest fires (and identified with the fire-god, Gibil[26]), fevers,
plagues, and war.[25] In myths, he causes destruction and devastation.[25]

Ninazu is the son of Ereshkigal and the father of Ningishzida.[27] He is closely associated with the
underworld.[27] He was mostly worshipped in Eshnunna during the third millennium BC, but he was later
supplanted by the Hurrian storm god Tishpak.[27] A god named "Ninazu" was also worshipped at Enegi in
southern Sumer,[27] but this may be a different local god by the same name.[27] His divine beast was the
mušḫuššu, a kind of dragon, which was later given to Tishpak and then Marduk.[27]

Ningishzida is a god who normally lives in the underworld.[28] He is the son of Ninazu and his name may be
etymologically derived from a phrase meaning "Lord of the Good Tree".[28] In the Sumerian poem, The Death
of Gilgamesh, the hero Gilgamesh dies and meets Ningishzida, along with Dumuzid, in the underworld.[29]
Gudea, the Sumerian king of the city-state of Lagash, revered Ningishzida as his personal protector.[29] In the
myth of Adapa, Dumuzid and Ningishzida are described as guarding the gates of the highest Heaven.[30]
Ningishzida was associated with the constellation Hydra.[31]

Other underworld deities

Dumuzid, later known by the corrupted form Tammuz, is the ancient

Mesopotamian god of shepherds[32] and the primary consort of the
goddess Inanna.[32] His sister is the goddess Geshtinanna.[32][33] In
addition to being the god of shepherds, Dumuzid was also an
agricultural deity associated with the growth of plants.[34][35] Ancient
Near Eastern peoples associated Dumuzid with the springtime, when
the land was fertile and abundant,[34][36] but, during the summer
months, when the land was dry and barren, it was thought that
Dumuzid had "died".[34][37] During the month of Dumuzid, which
fell in the middle of summer, people all across Sumer would mourn
over his death.[38][39] An enormous number of popular stories
circulated throughout the Near East surrounding his death.[38][39]

Geshtinanna is a rural agricultural goddess sometimes associated with

dream interpretation.[40] She is the sister of Dumuzid, the god of
shepherds.[40] In one story, she protects her brother when the galla Terracotta plaque dating to the
demons come to drag him down to the underworld by hiding him Amorite Period (c. 2000–1600 BC)
successively in four different places. [40] In another version of the showing a dead god (probably
story, she refuses to tell the galla where he is hiding, even after they Dumuzid) resting in his coffin
torture her.[40] The galla eventually take Dumuzid away after he is
betrayed by an unnamed "friend",[40] but Inanna decrees that he and
Geshtinanna will alternate places every six months, each spending half the year in the underworld while the
other stays in Heaven.[40] While she is in the underworld, Geshtinanna serves as Ereshkigal's scribe.[40]

Lugal-irra and Meslamta-ea are a set of twin gods who were worshipped in the village of Kisiga, located in
northern Babylonia.[41] They were regarded as guardians of doorways[42] and they may have originally been
envisioned as a set of twins guarding the gates of the underworld, who chopped the dead into pieces as they
passed through the gates.[43] During the Neo-Assyrian Period (911 BC–609 BC), small depictions of them
would be buried at entrances,[42] with Lugal-irra always on the left and Meslamta-ea always on the right.[42]
They are identical and are shown wearing horned caps and each holding an axe and a mace.[42] They are
identified with the constellation Gemini, which is named after them.[42]

Neti is the gatekeeper of the underworld.[44] In the story of Inanna's Descent into the Underworld, he leads
Inanna through the seven gates of the underworld,[44][45] removing one of her garments at each gate so that
when she comes before Ereshkigal she is naked and symbolically powerless.[44][45] Belet-Seri is a chthonic
underworld goddess who was thought to record the names of the deceased as they entered the underworld.[46]
Enmesarra is a minor deity of the underworld.[47] Seven or eight other minor deities were said to be his
offspring.[47] His symbol was the suššuru (a kind of pigeon).[47] In one incantation, Enmesarra and
Ninmesharra, his female counterpart, are invoked as ancestors of Enki and as primeval deities.[47] Ennugi is
"the canal inspector of the gods".[16] He is the son of Enlil or Enmesarra[16] and his wife is the goddess
Nanibgal.[16] He is associated with the underworld[47] and he may be Gugalanna, the first husband of
Ereshkigal, under a different name.[16]

Demons

Bronze statuette of Close-up of Lamashtu from a lead protection plaque dating

Pazuzu (c. 800 – c. 700 to the Neo-Assyrian Period (911–609 BC)
BC)

The ancient Mesopotamians also believed that the underworld was home to many demons,[3] which are
sometimes referred to as "offspring of arali".[3] These demons could sometimes leave the underworld and
terrorize mortals on earth.[3] One class of demons that were believed to reside in the underworld were known
as galla;[48] their primary purpose appears to have been to drag unfortunate mortals back to Kur.[48] They are
frequently referenced in magical texts,[49] and some texts describe them as being seven in number.[49] Several
extant poems describe the galla dragging the god Dumuzid into the underworld.[18] Like other demons,
however, galla could also be benevolent[18] and, in a hymn from King Gudea of Lagash (c. 2144 – 2124 BC),
a minor god named Ig-alima is described as "the great galla of Girsu".[18] Demons had no cult in
Mesopotamian religious practice since demons "know no food, know no drink, eat no flour offering and drink
no libation."[50]

Lamashtu was a demonic goddess with the "head of a lion, the teeth of a donkey, naked breasts, a hairy body,
hands stained (with blood?), long fingers and fingernails, and the feet of Anzû."[51] She was believed to feed
on the blood of human infants[51] and was widely blamed as the cause of miscarriages and cot deaths.[51]
Although Lamashtu has traditionally been identified as a demoness,[52] the fact that she could cause evil on
her own without the permission of other deities strongly indicates that she was seen as a goddess in her own
right.[51] Mesopotamian peoples protected against her using amulets and talismans.[51] She was believed to
ride in her boat on the river of the underworld[51] and she was associated with donkeys.[51] She was believed
to be the daughter of An.[51]

Pazuzu is a demonic god who was well known to the Babylonians and Assyrians throughout the first
millennium BC.[53] He is shown with "a rather canine face with abnormally bulging eyes, a scaly body, a
snake-headed penis, the talons of a bird and usually wings."[53] He was believed to be the son of the god
Hanbi.[54] He was usually regarded as evil,[53] but he could also sometimes be a beneficent entity who
protected against winds bearing pestilence[53] and he was thought to be able to force Lamashtu back to the
underworld.[55] Amulets bearing his image were positioned in dwellings to protect infants from Lamashtu[54]
and pregnant women frequently wore amulets with his head on them as protection from her.[54]
Šul-pa-e's name means "youthful brilliance", but he was not envisioned as youthful god.[56] According to one
tradition, he was the consort of Ninhursag, a tradition which contradicts the usual portrayal of Enki as
Ninhursag's consort.[56][57] In one Sumerian poem, offerings are made to Šhul-pa-e in the underworld and, in
later mythology, he was one of the demons of the underworld.[56]

See also
Ancient Mesopotamian religion
Ghosts in Mesopotamian religions
Sumerian religion

Notes
a. In his book Sumerian Mythology, first published in 1944 and revised in 1961, the scholar
Samuel Noah Kramer argued that Kur could also refer to a personal entity, a monstrous dragon-
like creature analogous to the Babylonian Tiamat,[5] but this interpretation was refuted as
unsubstantiated by Thorkild Jacobsen in his essay "Sumerian Mythology: A Review Article"[6]
and is not mentioned in more recent sources.

References
1. Choksi 2014.
2. Barret 2007, pp. 7–65.
3. Black & Green 1992, p. 180.
4. Kramer 1961, p. 76.
5. Kramer 1961, pp. 76–83.
6. Jacobsen 2008a, pp. 121–126.
7. Kramer 1961, p. 110.
8. Horowitz 1998, pp. 268–269.
9. Black & Green 1992, p. 25.
10. Black & Green 1992, pp. 58, 180.
11. Black & Green 1992, p. 58.
12. Black & Green 1992, pp. 180–181.
13. Black & Green 1992, p. 181.
14. Black & Green 1992, pp. 88–89.
15. Black & Green 1992, p. 114.
16. Black & Green 1992, p. 77.
17. Nemet-Nejat 1998, p. 184.
18. Black & Green 1992, p. 86.
19. Black & Green 1992, p. 134.
20. Holland 2009, p. 115.
21. Horowitz 1998, p. 352.
22. Leick 1998, p. 91.
23. Wolkstein & Kramer 1983, p. 55.
24. Kramer 1961, p. 90.
25. Black & Green 1992, p. 136.
26. Kasak & Veede 2001, p. 28.
27. Black & Green 1992, p. 137.
28. Black & Green 1992, p. 138.
29. Black & Green 1992, p. 139.
30. Black & Green 1992, pp. 139–140.
31. Black & Green 1992, p. 140.
32. Black & Green 1992, p. 72.
33. Wolkstein & Kramer 1983, pp. 74–84.
34. Ackerman 2006, p. 116.
35. Jacobsen 2008b, pp. 87–88.
36. Jacobsen 2008b, pp. 83–84.
37. Jacobsen 2008b, pp. 83–87.
38. Black & Green 1992, p. 73.
39. Jacobsen 2008b, pp. 74–84.
40. Black & Green 1992, p. 88.
41. Black & Green 1992, p. 123.
42. Black & Green 1992, p. 124.
43. Black & Green 1992, pp. 123–124.
44. Kramer 1961, p. 87.
45. Wolkstein & Kramer 1983, pp. 157–159.
46. Jordan 2002, p. 48.
47. Black & Green 1992, p. 76.
48. Black & Green 1992, p. 85.
49. Black & Green 1992, pp. 85–86.
50. cf. line 295 in "Inanna's descent into the
nether world" (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-
bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.4.1#)
51. Black & Green 1992, p. 116.
52. Black & Green 1992, pp. 115–116.
53. Black & Green 1992, p. 147.
54. Black & Green 1992, p. 148.
55. Black & Green 1992, pp. 147–148.
56. Black & Green 1992, p. 173.
57. George 1999, p. 225.

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