MESOPOTAMIAN RELIGIONS: HISTORY OF STUDY
The study of ancient Mesopotamian religions, like the study of ancient Mesopotamia in general, was severely hampered in its early phases by an imperfect understanding of Sumerian and Akkadian, the languages of its source materials, and by the relatively limited and fragmentary nature of the materials then available. To some extent, similar difficulties still exist, and new finds as well as new insights may challenge even seemingly assured results.

GENERAL PRESENTATIONS
The earliest attempt at a comprehensive presentation of ancient Mesopotamian religions is François Lenormant’s La magie chez les Chaldéens et les origines accadiennes (1874). Lenormant posited an early Sumerian (then called Akkadian) animistic stage of belief in spirits that were controlled by magicians. Contrasting with this was the religion of the Semitic inhabitants (now called Akkadians), a debased form of monotheism in which hypostases of the supreme god, called Ilu, had become separate powers in natural phenomena, especially astral phenomena. These two competing kinds of beliefs were eventually unified into a single system under Sargon of Akkad, whom Lenormant dated at about 2000 BCE . Part of this systematization included the ordering of local deities into the later pantheon.
The next major contribution to the study of Mesopotamian religions, and one of a wider scope, was A. H. Sayce’s Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religions as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians (1887). Sayce’s book deals with various Babylonian deities, such as BelMerodakh (Marduk), Tammuz, and Istar (Ishtar), among others. He also discusses what he called “the sacred books of
Chaldea,” as well as cosmogonies and astro-theology. Sayce saw evidence of totemism in the animal forms that many of the gods could assume. Because Prometheus brought fire to man, Sayce saw him as a parallel to the deity Lugalbanda (“fierce king”). In his overall view of religious development, Sayce essentially followed Lenormant.
The Sumerian beliefs in spirits that were controlled by a body of medicine men was termed by Sayce “organized animism.” The Sumerian word for spirit was thought to be zi, and “the zi was simply that which manifested life, and the test of the manifestation of life was movement” (p. 327). The spirits in those major cosmic elements that were considered good gradually developed into gods. The level of power of motion possessed by an object, or in a force of nature, was the test of its supernaturalism (that is, of the existence of a spirit within it). Sayce writes:
The spirit of the moon, for example, developed into a god, but the god was abstracted from the visible moon itself, and identified with the creative force of the lunar orb which manifested itself in motion. The new god might in turn be abstracted from the creative force, more especially if he was assimilated to the sacred steer; in this case the creative force would become his spirit, in no way differing, it will be seen, from the spirit that was believed to reside in man. (p. 334) Sayce attributed to the Semitic-speaking Akkadians a change from the gods as creators to the gods as fathers, a change encouraged by anthropomorphism and the creation of a familybased pantheon.
In his later Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia (1902), Sayce modified his position and rejected the idea that the gods might have developed out of older spirits. He assumed instead that the idea was brought in by immigrants from the south, who founded a tradition centered on the god Ea of the ancient city of Eridu. Much more comprehensive than any previous treatment was Morris Jastrow’s The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (1898). Jastrow discusses the land and peoples of Babylon and Syria, the general traits of the Old Babylonian pantheon, the gods and their consorts prior to the days of Hammurabi, the pantheon of Hammurabi, Gudea’s pantheon, and the minor gods in the period of Hammurabi. The book also deals with the gods appearing in temple lists and in legal and commercial documents of the area. Other topics that Jastrow investigates rather extensively are the animism that survived in Babylonian religions, the Assyrian pantheon, the triad and the combined invocation of the deities, the Neo-Babylonian period, and the Babylonian cosmology. Jastrow’s work also examines the religious literature—magical texts, prayers and hymns, penitential psalms, oracles, omens, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and other myths and legends. There is also a discussion of the Babylonian view of life after death, and of the temple and cult in Babylonia and Syria.
Because Jastrow avoided theorizing as much as possible, his treatment is sober and descriptive. He also deliberately avoided distinguishing Sumerian from Akkadian contributions. Jastrow argued that animism was still basic to the religion of Babylonia and Assyria, and he observed that the gods had evolved from their role as spirits of the settlement plots.
As these settlements grew into cities, the spirits grew correspondingly in stature and importance. The detailed bibliography of the field up to 1898 that Jastrow included in his book is particularly valuable. A later work by Jastrow, Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens (1905–1912), although never completed, is essentially a lengthy study of divination texts.
To the third edition of Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament (1903), which was edited by Eberhard Schrader, the German Assyriologist Heinrich Zimmern contributed his study Religion und Sprache, discussing the religious system of the Babylonians; the formation of the pantheon; local cults; the Semitic and Sumerian elements still evident in Babylonian religion; the Babylonians’ reliance on the heavens in the formation of beliefs, practices, and myths; and the Babylonian view of life. Zimmern’s presentation was strongly influenced by the school of Astralmythologie that flourished in Germany at the time, so an overabundance of gods were seen as solar in character. For example, Marduk was said to represent the sun of morning and spring; Ninurta (whose name was then read as Ninib) represented the eastern or western sun; the destructive glowing south, noon, and summer sun were represented by Nergal; and so on. The purview of the book called for comparisons with biblical materials (twenty-one pages were devoted to a comparison of Marduk and Christ), but the methods used have since been discounted