Religion and Humanity in Mesopotamian Myth and Epic

Religion and Humanity in Mesopotamian Myth and Epic
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date: 22 December 2022
animals, contrasted with the nursing habits of mammals, including humans. With the use of the 
fish and reptile imagery, Humbaba is making a contrast of Enkidu with Gilgamesh—who, it is 
frequently noted, was suckled by his divine mother, Ninsun—while undermining Enkidu’s 
humanity.
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The contrast between the “monster” Humbaba and the two heroes foregrounds 
concerns of family, humanity, and social connectedness in the narrative.
Myth
Mesopotamian myths form a particularly nebulous category of literature. “Myth” is used here to 
describe a literary composition in the form of a story,
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with divine protagonists. Mythic themes 
and narratives are referenced in hymns, royal praise poetry, lamentations, ritual and magical 
texts, incantations, wisdom literature, and psalms. Drawing these diverse sources together is the 
focus on divine protagonists in myth. Indeed, humans occur infrequently in mythical narratives, 
and the divinities also interact with one another, various supernatural beings, animals, and the 
natural world. While humans are not often protagonists in myth, humanity and the human 
condition are reflected in these texts through the anthropomorphic qualities of the deities and the 
microcosm of their social world, as well as through explicit reflections on the nature of humanity 
and human life. Although mythic themes or terms occur in other forms of literature, the focus 
here on myth and epic is due to the presentation of themes involving religion and humanity in a 
coherent narrative in these “genres.”
In myth, Mesopotamian deities are presented as inhabiting human-like bodies and conducting 
human-like activities. They experience common human emotions such as anger, lust, sadness, 
envy, and joy. At the same time, deities often use their anthropomorphic bodies in ways that are 
beyond the scope of humanity (for example, the goddess’s ability to stretch across the sky like a 
rainbow in the Sumerian myth of Inanna and Shukaletuda, considered further below, and Enki’s 
ability to create beings from the dirt under the tips of his fingernails in Inanna’s Descent to the 
Netherworld). As well as having anthropomorphic forms, deities were also associated with 
elements of the natural world, and conceived as incorporated in some sense in astral bodies.
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The 
physiomorphic forms of deities (and other divine beings) contribute to their characterization in 
myth, where, for example, the Sumerian sun deity, Utu, is seen traveling through the heavens like 
the astral body he represents. Although Mesopotamian deities at times experience elements of 
life that would seem to define the human condition, such as birth, death, and illness, they 
experience these events in uniquely supernatural ways.
The mixture of humanity and divinity in myth provides the focus here, although it must be noted 
that the large number of literary texts that could be defined as “myth” precludes the individual 
discussion of each myth. We will consider how humanity and divinity combine in myth to 
illuminate the religious aspects of Mesopotamian life and death.
The most relevant themes of Mesopotamian myth for considering the gods’ ability to illuminate 
concepts of humanity and religion are creation, birth, sexuality, and death.
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