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The political organization (hierarchy) of the Sumero-Akkadian pantheon mimicked the political organization of mortals. Or, more likely the case, the Sumerians believed that their political organization reflected that of the gods. It was natural to assume that at the head of the pantheon was a god recognized by all the others as king and ruler. The Sumerian pantheon was therefore conceived as functioning as an assembly with a king at its head, its most important groups consisting of seven gods who "decree the fates" and fifty known as the "great gods." (Kramer 1981) Clearly, not every god was created equally, just as Sumerians believed not every citizen was meant to be king, scribe, or priest. This is a theme apparent in Mesopotamian theology as well as in that of the Greeks, Romans, and Germans. It even persists in Christianity: a hierarchy of angels. [The Sumero-Akkadian pantheon] very soon became dominated, and in some way systematized, by the analogy with the political system of the country, and that it thus became organized on the model of a monarchy that undoubtedly existed already on a modest scale in every village, before history. (Bottéro 1992) Not only did the pantheon assume a hierarchical structure based on the political system of the country, but each city-state, even before the city-state, each village already had its own hierarchy of gods and its own divine head of state. Therefore, in the process of syncretism, these multiple hierarchies must merge together to form one hierarchy, one pantheon. But this syncretism had to have been a gradual and fluid process because new cultures were constantly coming into contact with each other, introducing their own particular hierarchies and adopting those of others. So how can we account for the change of dominance from one head of the pantheon to another? "The political evolution of the land -- certain cities became superior to others and became in turn the centers of extended kingdoms -- was translated in the reorganization of the divine personnel, who followed the careers of their cities" (Bottéro 1992). As the importance of a particular city arose in the socio-political spectrum of Sumer, so too did its favored deities within the pantheon's hierarchy. The principal god of the city became in a sense the head of the supernatural powers, and grouped around him were the deities of lesser importance, who became in this way assimilated to the high functionaries, in the image of the court and of the royal household. And the same process continued to the benefit of the capital city and its ruler when the cities were organized into kingdoms. (Bottéro 1992) There exists at least one major anomaly in the hypothesis of the Sumero-Akkadian pantheon syncretization: Nippur. Nippur's patron deity was Enlil, the head of the pantheon for the majority of time it was still recognizably Sumero-Akkadian. Nippur seemed to enjoy a special status as a sacred city -- in much the same way Jerusalem does today for Christians, Jews, and Muslims or as Delphi was to Greece. The puzzling aspect of the city's status is that, as far as archaeologists and ancient historians have been able to tell, Nippur never enjoyed political dominance over the rest of Sumer (or Mesopotamia). Perhaps the explanation which follows can alleviate modern concerns over this matter: So compelling was the monarchical principle, even among the gods, that we are presented from the beginning of the third millennium on with a phenomenon that is symptomatic and rather surprising. Doubtless because of a common understanding, and in spite of the political crumbling of the territory, the city-states seem to have formed a type of amphictyony by creating above all other cities a unified and organized supernatural power whose residence was placed in Nippur, a sacred city that, as far as we know, had never played the least political role. (Bottéro 1992) In other words, Sumer was sputtering through socio-political unrest, barbarian hordes threatened on the periphery and even, perhaps, the Akkadians to the north, who were steadily funneling into Sumer, caused great distress. During this period of political instability (Bottéro speculates early in the third millennium), the Sumerian city-states (perhaps allied with their Akkadian neighbors, perhaps in hopes of repelling them) set aside their petty differences and came to agreement on one city for which the spiritual collective of the land would reside and gel together to promote a sense of unity of culture, which was no doubt lacking between the separate kingdoms. Therefore, the supreme gods, each with a family and an entire pantheon of subordinate divinities that made up their households, were of importance to the entire country. It is as if one wanted, even before a political unification of the country into a single kingdom, to impose on it a unique and universal supernatural power in order to assert better its profound cultural solidarity. (Bottéro 1992) A clear example of this assertion of one city-state's attempt to assert supernatural power over its socio-politically subordinate neighbors is evident in 1750 BCE Babylon: [A profound political change occurred] when around the year 1750 Hammurabi made Babylon the capital of a single kingdom that remained intact from then on. Thus Babylon and its ruler took precedence and authority over the other cities. The city-god Marduk, who up to that moment had little importance [throughout Mesopotamia], had likewise to take precedence over the other cities first of all, and then over the other gods. It must have taken centuries for such a doctrine to become fully developed. Around the year 1200 at the latest, Marduk became recognized, both in popular devotion and by the theologians, as the absolute ruler of the supernatural and the earthly world, as if Enlil in his turn had given the throne to him in order to retire with Anu [An] . . . . Later on, the Assyrians of the northern kingdom did the same thing for Assur, their "national" god, simply by replacing the name of Marduk with that of Assur in the Epic. (Bottéro 1992) Nowhere is this dynamic more evident, in Sumero-Akkadian Mythology, than in "Inanna and Enki: the Transfer of the Arts of Civilization from Eridu to Erech." Erech, first of all, is an Akkadianized spelling of the Sumerian Uruk. Immediately, it can be inferred that this is not one of the earlier poems in the Sumero-Akkadian mythology. However, Sumerian poems, which were originally written in Sumerian, were later copied into Akkadian (same alphabet, vastly different spellings, pronunciations, etc.). So this inference cannot be taken as fact. On the other hand, since this myth was discovered in Sumerian cuneiform (which is not clarified in any of its translations, merely implied), and Uruk is continually written in the Akkadian Erech, then more credence is given to the inference that this was, in fact, a late Sumerian poem, inscribed at a time in which Sumer was under strong Akkadian influence (thus a truly Sumero-Akkadian poem). In the story, Inanna devises a plan to acquire the divine me from Enki's home in the Abzu below Eridu and bring them back with her to her patron city, Erech. She goes to Enki, and he welcomes her into his home. He subsequently throws a feast and the two drink together. Once Enki is duly drunk, he begins bestowing gifts upon his lovely "daughter" (she is the goddess of love, after all, and Enki was not known for suppressing his more intimate and/or carnal desires). Eventually, Enki bestows all of the divine me to Inanna, and she sets off for Erech. When Enki sobers up, he realizes what he's done and sends his vizier, Isimund, with the aide of three sets of supernatural creatures, to bring the me back to him. Isimund fails to prevent Inanna from reaching Erech safely, and thus, Erech is now honored by housing the divine me. "According to the mythological code, this would not mean that, once the theft was completed, Enki and Eridu were deprived of their me, but that henceforth Inanna and Uruk would also have the possession and the use of them" (Bottéro 1992). Enki still maintains control over them -- once you've owned them, apparently, you always have use of them, as was the case with Enlil when they were given to Enki; Enlil continued to decree fates -- but now Inanna's home city of Erech houses them, and Inanna has the power to decree fates. It would not be presumptuous to speculate that Eridu, at the time this poem was written, was in the throes of economic decline and losing its socio-political importance in Sumer. While, at the same time, Eridu was becoming the "sacred pilgrimage" destination that Kramer believed it to be after water became less important to the fabric of Sumero-Akkadian civilization (see Enki). In light of this analysis, Jean Bottéro put it best: It should become increasingly clear that the system of organization of the pantheon, vis-à-vis the world in itself, was in all aspects nothing but the magnified reflection of the political system. It tended progressively towards an increasingly centralized monarchical power, a process similar to what happened in the political sphere. (1992)
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