Myth / Mesopotamian Mythology

Ur-Gods

The term "Mesopotamian mythology" covers the ancient religions of Sumer, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, and Babylon.

Sumer, as you might have learned in your World History classes, is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, human civilization we know of. It flourished from the 5th to the 3rd millennia BCE. Sumer began and ended as a collection of city-states in what is now Iraq. It's usually assumed that Sumerians were the first to invent (or at least were among the earliest known adopters of) year-round agriculture, writing, the wheel, irrigation, and beer. Since the Sumerian language has no known cognates, it's anyone's guess where they came from. Some "thinkers" take this a step further and argue that the Sumerians were either assisted by aliens or were aliens themselves.

As mentioned, Sumer was largely composed of various cities and settlements typically given to fighting among themselves. Thus, rather than a unified nation, in reality, Sumer was more akin to a collection of states that spoke a common language and worshiped largely the same pantheon, akin to Ancient Greece.

Sumer began to decline in the 3rd millennium BCE. Like the collapse of any superpower, there were a lot of reasons for this, but the primary cause, it seems, was that they were displaced by Akkadians and various other Semitic peoples. After Sumer's decline, there arose the Akkadian Empire, who "borrowed" the Sumerian gods in a similar fashion to the way the Romans borrowed the Greek gods. The Akkadian Empire was not as fortunate as Sumer had been, though, and its rule collapsed after about a century. But the Akkadians proved to be a plucky lot, founding new cities of their own and retaking their old lands, only to be continually reconquered by their neighbors, restarting the whole process. They would eventually regroup into the united Babylonian civilization, establishing a stronger empire more organized and advanced than their predecessors for more than a thousand years.

Names and nation aside, the Babylonians never forgot their roots. The pantheon largely stayed the same, the method of writing from clay tablets was kept, and their mother tongue was preserved in literature among the priests and noble castes (and as a spoken language), to some degree. It's in this period that the majority of our knowledge from Sumer is derived. The Babylonians, if nothing else, were excellent record keepers, maintaining and adding to the Sumerian corpus and preserving their ancestors' more notable myths and stories... until they were all conquered in 539 BCE by the Persians, which rendered the whole thing pretty moot.

Studying Mesopotamian mythology, in general, is a little bit easier than studying most Indo-European mythologies other than Classical Mythology, because the Mesopotamians were literate. Even so, as with any mythos, there's a lot of conflicting information. The most likely reason is an evolution of their religion as the names of gods and places changed (or were rewritten) over time. As Mesopotamian mythology was largely forgotten until serious archaeology got underway in the 19th century, is very ancient, and can generate some massive Values Dissonance for modern readers, it can seem quite strange and uncanny to modern eyes; when a creature from this mythos appears in modern fiction, it thus tends to be as a Mesopotamian Monstrosity.

Major characters of Mesopotamian mythology include:

• Anu, god of heaven and the stars.
• Ashnan, grain goddess and Food God
• Enlil (Ellil) The god of the wind and the sky. Often identified with Jupiter.
• Enki (Ea) The god of water and wisdom. Enki was much more fond of humanity than most other gods and was generally a pretty groovy guy, if a bit eccentric. Often identified with Mercury.
• Ishkur (Adad), god of storms. He is either the brother of Enki or a son of Nanna and Ningal.
• Nammu, (Tiamat) goddess of the primeval waters.
• Ki, goddess of the earth.
• Lahar, cattle goddess and Food God
• Ninhursag (Ninmah, Nintu, Mamma, Aruru, Belet-Ili), goddess of nature and earth, and the wife of Enki. May or may not be the same as Ki, above.
• Ninlil (Sud, Mulittu), the wife of Enlil and usually the mother of Nanna, Nergal, Ninazu, Ninurta and Enbilulu.
• Nanna (Suen, Sin), god of the moon. His wife is Ningal, goddess of the reeds.
• Nergal, god of fire, destruction, war, plagues, and occasionally, the sun. Often identified with Mars.
• Ninurta, god of agriculture, healing, and destruction. Often identified with Saturn.
• Ereshkigal (Allatu, Irkalla), the ruler of the underworld, older sister of Inanna and wife of Nergal. They're the daughters of either Anu or Nanna. Often identified with Hecate.
• Inanna (Ishtar, Inana), goddess of warfare, love, and fertility. Often identified with Venus.
• Utu (Shamash), god of justice and the sun, son of Nanna and Ningal.
• Marduk, water, vegetation, judgment, and magic; son of Enki and Damkina. As the patron deity of Babylon who was created to justify the Babylonians' dominance, you could call him an Ur-Example of a Marty Stu.
• Pazuzu was more of a demon than a god, bringing various misfortunes, but nonetheless had to be treated with respect.

Mesopotamia also figures heavily in The Bible, and quite a few aspects of Mesopotamian mythology and religion are thought to have made their way in through cultural memory. Abraham and his kin would have, mostly likely, been natives of the Sumerian city of Ur,^note So this article may include some Ur examples Of Ur-Examples. and the Assyrian and Babylonian conquest of the Middle East (including the Babylonian captivity) were defining events for the Jews as an ethnoreligious people.^note Notably, while the beginnings of monotheism originated sometime during the First Temple period, it only became a universal defining trait of Judaism during and after the captivity. Basically, the captivity transformed the Israelites into Jews. Several passages and allusions, notably The Great Flood myths, are strikingly similar to descriptions in the Bible.

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Works on the wiki that represent Mesopotamian Mythology:

• Enûma Eliš
• The Epic of Gilgamesh
• Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld
• Nergal and Ereshkigal

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Tropes found in Mesopotamian mythology:

• The Almighty Dollar: The cattle-goddess, Lahar, and the grain goddess, Ashnan, are both examples of wealth goddesses in a culture which measured wealth in terms of fields of grain and herds of livestock. Written on clay tablets during the 3rd millennium BCE, the Sumerian creation myth is the "Myth of cattle and grain."
• Always Chaotic Evil: The Allu, Asakku, Gallu and Rabisu.
• Anti-Villain: An Ur-Example in Tiamat. She pleaded with her husband Apsu to not murder their children, and afterwards she went to war with the gods partly out of grief and partly because they flat out stated they would execute her anyway.
• Back from the Dead: Dumuzi, Inanna's husband, in a "Just So" Story about the origin of the seasons.
• Badass Boast: Several, both among gods and kings.
  • Unusually, this boast of Anzud’s is an invitation rather than a threat, but qualifies nevertheless.
    "I am the prince who decides the destiny of rolling rivers. I keep on the straight and narrow path the righteous who follow Enlil’s counsel. My father Enlil brought me here. He let me bar the entrance to the mountains as if with a great door. If I fix a fate, who shall alter it? If I but say the word, who shall change it? Whoever has done this to my nest, if you are a god, I will speak with you, indeed I will befriend you. If you are a man, I will fix your fate. I shall not let you have any opponents in the mountains. You shall be Hero-fortified-by-Anzud."
  • Inanna has a pretty badass one that she says in versions of Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld and in The Epic of Gilgamesh.
    I shall smash the door^note to the underworld and shatter the bolt,
    I shall smash the doorpost and overturn the doors,
    I shall raise up the dead and they shall eat the living:
    And the dead shall outnumber the living!
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: The courtship of Ereshkigal and Nergal. Ironically, when they finally liberate their tension, it only complicates things even more.
• Big Good: Enki is the main benevolent deity and the one who usually fixes the wrongs caused by other gods.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The line of the gods begins with three generations of incest to begin with, on top of close relatives who would've been cousins at most marrying and having children of their own.
• Bilingual Dialogue: Since a large proportion of Sumerian texts were found on tablets of scribes and apprentice scribes, much of it was translated from their native Akkadian as writing exercises. This proved invaluable to modern archeologists in deciphering the language.
• Blow You Away: Enlil, god of wind and air. Also Ishkur, god of storms.
• Book Ends: One praise poem to Inana wrote that she oversaw a warrior's life from the cries of their parents' love making up to their death screams on the battlefield.
• Boring, but Practical: Sumerians and their Akkadian descendants used clay tablets rather than expensive paper or papyrus to write as many others did. On top of being cheap and easy to make, the hardness of the inscribed clay survived to the present day in much better shape than any form of writing that came after until the invention of computers. It was also easily reusable (break, soak, make into new tablet), meaning they didn't need to bother with complex writing methods to save space like paper-using civilizations did.
• Broken Record: Sumerian poems love to repeat passages verbatim, a lot. The repetition made it easier for both storytellers and scribes to remember the contents, and also served as a chorus to the chanting that would have accompanied performances. This aspect is somewhat Lost in Translation as the rhyme and meter are left out.
• Canon Immigrant: Many religious scholars believe that Inanna, due to the difficulty in deciphering the origin of her name, her constantly changing parentage, and the fact that she explicitly had no responsibilities at first, was originally a Proto-Euphratean goddess incorporated into the Sumerian pantheon.
• Cessation of Existence: The fates of the dead varied depending on the number of children you left behind and the state in which you were killed, but those burnt to death had their souls extinguished in the smoke. This made for a particular Fate Worse than Death for the accused.
• Chickification:
  • Can be observed from looking at the oldest Sumerian myths to its later derivatives.
  • Nammu went from the sole creator goddess in Sumerian myths to her more well-known Babylonian version Tiamat, a co-creator (who after the death of her husband, though, became a tyrant that is probably the Ur-Example of God Save Us from the Queen!).
  • Sumerian Ereshkigal was the sole ruler of the underworld, but in later Assyro-Babylonian myths she was subdued by Nergal, or at least shared her power with him.
  • Her sister Inana was regularly decreed to be the wife of a king, explicitly stated to have been given their blessing through her and consummated in ritual sex by a high priestess. Gradually over time, rulers asserted their bloodlines as divine, downplaying its significance. In late Sumerian and early Babylonian coronations, the reverse was true and she was said to submit to a king's dominance.
  • Several other goddesses are known to us mainly as Shallow Love Interests that are also believed to have held more prominent roles in prehistory before being changed, as evidenced by the feminine "Nin" prefix attached to several deities.
• Child Eater: Dimme and Dimme-kur (Akhkhazu). Sometimes Lilitu as well.
• The Coup: When the younger gods (led by Marduk in the Babylonian version) overthrow Tiamat and Apsu.
• Crapsack World: Humans were created to be slaves to the gods and when they died, they all went to the same gloomy underworld. It’s no wonder that their scribes wrote stuff like this:
  "Tears, lament, anguish and depression are within me. Suffering overwhelms me. Evil fate holds me and carries off my life. Malignant sickness bathes me."
• Dark Is Not Evil: Though moody and demanding, most of the gods of the Netherworld weren't really evil per se.
• Divine Conflict: The Babylonian creation myth Enûma Eliš is likely the Ur-Example. It deals with the conflict between the primordial divine couple Apsu and Tiamat, and their descendants the Annunaki.
• Divine Incest: Enûma Eliš begins with Tiamat (salt water) and Abzu (fresh water), the the first gods at the dawn of the world who have no parentage to speak of. They get together and have Lahamu and Lahmu, sibling-consorts, who have Anshar and Kishar, another set of sibling-consorts, who have a son Anu.
• Divine Parentage: The vast majority of humans who figure at all in the myths have this. Several rulers also claimed to be sons or honorary husbands to goddesses as justification.
• Doves Mean Peace: Inverted. They are usually associated with Ishtar, the goddess of war. Though their symbolism as such had origins in their role as sacred to her.
• Dragons Are Divine: Tiamat, the primordial goddess of the ocean, is often depicted as a dragon.
• Dragons Prefer Princesses: In one myth, a dragon named Kur kidnaps the beautiful goddess Ereshkigal and takes her to the Netherworld, forcing her to become the queen of the plane for eternity. In a twist, although the dragon is defeated by Enki and she later gains some sympathetic moments in her interactions with Nergal, she is technically never rescued from her prison (though given that she has since turned it into a full fledged kingdom, it's easy to guess she doesn't want to go anymore).
• Eldritch Abomination: Though often described as dragons, Tiamat, Apsu, Kingu and Mummu fit this trope much better.
• Evil Versus Evil: The demon of sickness Pazuzu was often invoked to ward off a fellow demon Dimme to purge the afflicted.
• Expy:
  • The Greek goddess, Aphrodite, is usually assumed to be an expy of Astarte, a Canaanite version of Inanna.
  • Ereshkigal herself appears to be an underworld expy of her twin, Inanna (and some believe they may have even been the same goddess at one point!).
• Femme Fatale: Inanna, of course.
• Fertility God: Ishtar (also known as Inanna and Astarte, and also considered the antecedent to Aphrodite) is known as one of the Mesopotamian deities associated with fertility, along with war, love and sex.
• Fisher King: The prosperity of a king's land and people are often depicted as tied to his health according to the tributes made for them.
• Garden of Love: A surviving set of love lyrics celebrates the relationship between the scribe god Nabu and his divine consort Tašmetu, who playfully make love in a garden.
• Gender-Blender Name: A decent number of obviously-male gods have names that start with "Nin" (like Ninurta above)—translated as "lord" when it applies to them, this word is otherwise exclusively feminine, meaning "lady", "maiden", or "sister". Then you have the issue with the priestess Ninshubur mentioned below, and it makes you wonder...
• Giant Corpse World: Marduk slew the goddess Tiamat, and he created the world from her corpse.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Inanna and Ereshkigal had quite a massive one.
• The Great Flood: Possibly the Trope Maker. Somewhat amusing to note is that, in contrast to the stories of depravity and sin in later versions, Enlil brought down the flood because those pesky humans were crowding the Earth and making too much noise.
• Guile Hero: Enki uses his wisdom and knowledge to move things around for good.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Ninkasi, Siris, and Siduri, goddesses of beer.
• Hermaphrodite: The supreme god, Anu, was sometimes portrayed as such, Depending on the Writer.
• Healer God:
  • Eshmun was a god of healing during the Iron Age in Phoenicia. Eshmun was worshipped in Carthage, Tyre, Beirut, Cyprus, Sardinia, and Sidon.
  • Kamrusepa is a Hittite goddess of healing, medicine, and magic.
  • Nintinugga/Gula/Bau was the Babylonian goddess of healing, and consort of Ninurta.
  • Ninurta was god of the South Wind and healing.
• Heavenly Concentric Circles: The sky is made of three (occasionally seven) concentric domes made of fluid precious stones encasing Earth. The jasper (green) lowest dome contains the constellations, the saggilmut (blue) middle dome houses the Igigi (Depending on the Writer, Anunnaki deities or the precursors of humans), and the luludānītu (red) highest dome is Top God (and god of the sky) An's physical form. This view has been appropriated by the Abrahamic Religions which, in turn, dictate much of Western and Middle Eastern cosmology. Thus, making this trope Older Than Dirt.
• Hero Antagonist: The monsters slain by Ninurta in his travels receive the interesting collective name of "Slain Heroes." It's unknown why they are supposed to be heroic.
• I Have Many Names: Nearly all of the gods, which was somewhat inevitable when their worshipers spoke a variety of languages.
• I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: In his forced travel to the underworld, Nergal is warned by Enki not to eat, drink, wash or have sex with Ereshkigal there, as he would cause unspecified troubles by doing so. He resists successfully except the last, as he succumbs when he sees Ereshkigal naked while taking a bath (actually, she was a bit naughty and actually allowed him to see her knowing he would fall for it). They end up sharing a bed for six days.
• Immortality Field: Dilmun is the Ur-Example. A passage ("Its (Dilmun's) old woman says not "I am an old woman," its old man says not "I am an old man.") implies that it's a place of eternal youth. It is also described as a pure, clean, and bright "abode of the immortals" where death, disease, and sorrow are unknown and some mortals have been given "life like a god's." The Epic of Gilgamesh has Dilmun as one of the eponymous hero's destinations in his quest for immortality.
• Immortal Ruler: According to the Sumerian King List, the antediluvian god-kings supposedly reigned for tens of thousands of years each with a divine mandate, with En-men-lu-ana of Bad-tibira enjoying a 43 200-year-long tenure.
• Jerkass Gods: Very much so. That said, ancient mesopotamian records contain the first known prayers expressing love or otherwise positive psychology between humans and gods, so whatever the gods did, they did it right.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Enki created two eunuchs or sexless beings out of clay and sent them to rescue Inanna from the Underworld. As the plane is ruled by a seductive goddess and apparently you cannot have sex there without causing danger and disgraces, it's very probable that Enki made them that way in order to prevent them from screwing things further.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Enki had the rather disturbing habit of seducing his own (grand)daughters, but was usually one of the friendlier, wiser and better-natured gods. The same could be said of Inana in the sex department at least.
• Love Redeems: Ereshkigal is first portrayed as a quite callous goddess (possibly due to having been put in the Underworld against her will), but she notably warms up after meeting Nergal and falling in love with him, to the point she breaks down when he escapes from her kingdom after their six-day idyll. It goes in the other direction as well, as Nergal is at first willing to dethrone her to prevent the troubles she threatened to cause if the gods didn't send Nergal to her again, but at the end, he accepts her love and marries her.
• Making a Splash: Enki, god of rivers and lakes, uses the ability to control water more than once. See also his daughter, Nanshe.
• Magical Weapon: Ninurta had a mace named Sharur that could fly and talk.
• Mister Seahorse: In the myth of Enki and Ninhursag, Enki becomes pregnant after consuming his own semen.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Aqrabuamelu (scorpion men), Shedu (winged lions and bulls), Sirrush (dragon-like creatures with eagle talons and the forelegs of a cat), Zu (eagles with lion heads).
• No Ending: Frustratingly, most stories that survive to the modern day are incomplete, if not missing several lines of text. Sometimes, there's no beginning either, for that matter.
• Offing the Offspring: Apsu and later Tiamat attempt this in the Enûma Eliš. It doesn't work out.
• Older Than Dirt: One of the defining legendariums of this idea, and some of the oldest works of human belief and imagination that have survived into the third millenium CE. They make for a fascinating look at what ideas and tropes were in play as far back as seven thousand years ago, and also what's changed.
• Our Demons Are Different: Most Middle Eastern demons, in general, are flat-out nasty, though they can Pet the Dog now and then.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Classified as Alû, Edimmu or Gidim; they were usually not very nice.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: Humbaba, among others.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: A mermaid called Kulianna is believed to have fought and been slain by Ninurta. Given that we don't know what the ancient Sumerians exactly meant by the term that’s translated as “mermaid,” it is unknown how different she was or even if she was different at all to the classic archetype.
• Primordial Chaos: Abzu and Tiamat are the first beings in existence according to the myths, and represent fresh and saltwater.
• Satellite Love Interest: Many goddesses (Aya, Sarpanit, etc.) have little-to-no roles outside of being some god's wife.
• Scales of Justice: Shamash a god of justice was affiliated with scales.
• Scorpion People: The Ur-Example and the Trope Maker — in fact, also the earliest known example of centaur-like creature of any kind, predating Greek centaurs by a considerable stretch — in the form of the scorpion-men, called aqrabuamelu or girtablilu in the original language, who are humans from the waist up and scorpions from the waist down, with a pair of huge scorpion claws. The Enûma Eliš lists them among the monsters created by Tiamat in her war against the gods, and in The Epic of Gilgamesh a pair of gigantic scorpion-men guards the gates to the tunnel the sun passes through each night.
• Servant Race: Humanity was explicitly created to be slaves to the gods.
• Shedu and Lammasu: The lamassu originated as a Sumerian protective deity, typically identified as female and referred to as Lamma. While Lamma was depicted as a winged human in the manner of most then-current deities, in Assyrian times the myth morphed into that of the hybrid lamassu, an entity with wings, a human head, and a lion or bull body. Lamassu were typically portrayed as protective figures, originally appearing as household protectors and later often being placed as guardian statues at city gates. Lamassu statues had the peculiarity of being carved so as to seem to be standing when viewed from the front and walking when viewed from the side; this is sometimes interpreted as them having five legs, one between and behind the front pair. The shedu, a less common variant, seems to have been the lamassu's male counterpart.
• She's a Man in Japan: Inanna's second-in-command, Ninshubur, is female in the Sumerian myths but was turned into a male in the later Assyro-Babylonian versions.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi.
• To Hell and Back: Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld is an Ur-Example, if not the Trope Maker.
• Token Good Teammate: Enki, who is the only god who was against the plan to exterminate humanity, and rescued humanity multiple times. He is also said to protect anyone who seeks his help.
• Tsundere: Inanna. She also seems to cross over into Yandere territory.
• Twins Are Special: Some interpretations of Mesopotamian texts not only see Inanna and Utu as fraternal twins, but also as having a bond so close that it may or may not have been incestuous.
• Unholy Matrimony: Thematically speaking, the matrimony of Ereshkigal and Nergal united the queen of the Netherworld with the god of plagues and war. Subverted otherwise, however, because none of the two was actually evil and their union put a Happy Ending to a cosmic conflict.
• The Vamp: Lilitu, who was ordered by the gods to attempt to lead men astray. Ereshkigal as well, according to one version.

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Works that reference and/or derive from Mesopotamian mythology:

See also Mesopotamian Monstrosity.

Anime and Manga

• Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? has Ishtar appear among plenty of other mythical deities in the city of Orario, though her ethnicity and background are never revealed. However, she is hit with a huge dose of Adaptational Villainy while she and her whole familia is dressed like Arabian belly dancers.
• In Red River (1995), after demonstrating good skills at war and "mystical knowledge" (which is stuff that's basic in modern times), Yuri is believed to be either a gift from or an incarnation of Ishtar. Eventually, almost everyone takes to calling her "Yuri Ishtar" or simply "Ishtar".
• The Big Bad of the Saint Seiya Omega movie is named Apzu, which is depicted as a primordial Draconic Humanoid god of the chaotic outer space void with some water aspects that reference his original mythological counterpart.
• The Tower of Druaga which is a sequel to the video game series.

Comic Books

• A number of superhero comics have featured the Mesopotamian gods (or at least beings using their names) as gods, demons, gods degenerated into demons, or Ancient Astronauts. Their resemblance to their depictions in the original myths varies. For example:
  • Howard the Duck: Inverted; Pazuzu is the patron god of the Doucheblade. Played straight with the other Mesopotamian gods, whose followers were the enemies of the Doucheblade's original bearer.
  • In Project Superpowers, Samson's nemesis is the Mesopotamian god Dagon, here presented as a massive kaiju-like merman.
  • In a 1981 Madame Xanadu comic, the protagonist prevents the manifestation on Earth of a couple of demonic beings calling themselves “Ishtar” And “Tammuz”, implying that these were once Mesopotamian deities.
• Hellblazer:
  • The demon Nergal, a recurring antagonist, has the name of a Mesopotamian deity. It’s implied that he passed himself off as a god, back in the day.
  • The monstrous Julian, introduced in issue #251, is a Babylonian entity called an "ekkimu".
• In one story of The Sandman, Morpheus (who frequently gets to deal with deities, who after all originate in his realm of dreams) has brief dealings with the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, who has been reduced to dancing in a modern strip club. Where else could a goddess the author seems to think was patron of temple prostitution and only temple prostitution find mass worship? She doesn't appear to be a monstrosity — she appears to be an exceptionally talented exotic dancer — until she gets suicidally depressed, and chooses her own way to go.
• Storm Constantine's Grigori Trilogy.

Fan Works

• Mesopotamian Mythology is heavily featured in the Danny Phantom fanfic Mortified as part of the background lore. For example, one of the names of the Core of the Ghost Zone is Ereshkigal, several Mesopotamian deities were actually Ancients (then called Anunnaki for good measure) that once served the Core (including Nergal), and Gugalanna and Enki were both former Ghost Kings. Most pivotally, Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld is based on an In-Universe true story. Inanna was a powerful Sumerian sorceress from ancient times who invaded the Infinite Realms and tried to take the throne of the Ghost King/Queen through conquest after the previous Ghost King Gugalanna faded. She was stopped by the efforts of several ghosts, including the Ancients, and most importantly of all, a mysterious ghost named Neti, who is later revealed to have been a time-traveling Danny. Helping to defeat Inanna is one of the great deeds that led Ereshkigal to name him the next Ghost King thousands of years later.

Films

• The Exorcist: Pazuzu, the main antagonist, is a Mesopotamian demon who possesses the protagonist Regan. A statue of the demon also briefly appears.
• Ghostbusters (1984): Gozer is an interdimensional being who was worshiped by the Sumerians as a god when it and its minions first appeared on Earth. The comics also reveal that Gozer is Tiamat's sibling.
• The Scorpion King movies that serve as a prequel to The Mummy Trilogy take place during some vague ancient Mesopotamic time of myths whose main protagonist is the last member of the Akkadian people, wandering the world as a sellsword. There are many references to the myths such as the goddess Astarte in the second movie and Enkidu in the fifth one.

Literature

• The 12th Planet (along with the whole Earth Chronicles series) by Azerbaijani-American fringe author Zecharia Sitchin is effectively the Trope Maker of both the idea that the Anunnaki were ancient aliens and that they had something to do with the founding of the actual ancient Sumer. Although his claims have been very thoroughly debunked by now^note In large part because the Sumerian language is now understood far better than it was back when Sitchin wrote his books; most of his claims are based entirely upon his self-admittedly ameteur alternate translations of Sumerian mythological texts that are, at best, a gigantic stretch from their original meaning, such as the word dingir being "pure ones of the blazing rockets" rather than just "the gods" as the scholarly consensus universally agrees, his ancient-Annunaki-astronaut theories have become a mainstay of UFO conspiracy culture and pop-culture at large since.
• A supplement to The Dresden Files RPG includes a cult of Ishtar fighting human trafficking in Las Vegas.
• Snow Crash is loosely based on the Tower of Babel myth.
• In Generation P Mesopotamian deities, Ishtar in particular, are in fact supreme beings. They help The Illuminati, which were initially a Chaldean guild in Babylon, rule the world. Specifically in The '90s world they rule through television.

Multiple Media

• The Cthulhu Mythos (sort of).

Music

• Many songs by Melechesh.
• Likewise, a whole lot of Heavy Metal bands take their names from Mespotamian deities or mythological beings; Marduk, Tiamat, Gates Of Ishtar, take your pick.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: The goddess Tiamat is portrayed as a five-headed dragon and is one of the main members of the universe's pantheon of gods. Pazuzu and Dagon are also present as powerful Demon Princes who control their own layers of the Abyss.
• The Madness Dossier: The monstrous, mind-controlling "Anunnakku", the antagonists in this horror setting for GURPS, appear to be lodged in the human racial memory as the gods and monsters of Sumeria, and "monstrosity" is the word. The book draws a lot of terminology from Sumerian archaeology.
• Pathfinder:
  • In order to avoid copyright conflicts with Dungeons & Dragons's portrayal of the dragon gods, Pathfinder digs rather deeper into a Mesopotamian angle for their origins. In this setting, the draconic cosmogony follows the Babylonian one much more closely — the progenitor gods Apsu and Tiamat began as great oceans of fresh and salt water before anything else existed, begat the first gods when their waters mingled, and only took physical form much later when their creations' conflicts forced their attention to them.
  • Numerous demon lords take their names from Mesopotamian Mythology, such as Dagon, Pazuzu, Areshkagal, Lamashtu, Nergal and [[The Archmage
• Scion introduces the Anunna as a pantheon in 2E Demigod. Among the other gods, they're The Friend Nobody Likes due to their bordering-on-Narcissist egos.
• Warhammer 40,000: The Chaos god of disease, Nurgle, is implied to have been worshiped as the Mesopotamian god of plague (and war) Nergal.

Video Games

• ABZÛ, as implied by the title.
• Catherine has Ishtar, Dumuzid/Tammuz and Nergal appearing as huge spoiler characters.
• Clive Barker's Jericho, in which you battle Ninlil, Ki, Inanna, Enlil, Nanna and Utu.
• Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening has the Temen-ni-gru which is loosely based on the Tower of Babel and one of the game's bosses, Beowulf the Lightbeast is heavily inspired by Pazuzu the wind demon.
  • The fourth game has a pair of gauntlet and greaves melee weapon for Dante called Gilgamesh, which is earned after beating a boss called Echidna The She-Viper, possibly referencing the snake that Ishtar used to steal the herb of immortality from Gilgamesh as revenge for insulting her.
  • The fifth mainline series game has Gilgamesh returning as a Mythology Gag boss, who is a Humongous Mecha with a visual design apparently inspired by the Bull of Heaven from the Epic.
  • Seemingly Gilgamesh isn't the name of a singular demon or species, but rather a type of super strong magical metal that exists only in the Demon World.
• Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine has Indy traver to Babylon, where it's revealed that the god Marduk is actually a Sufficiently Advanced Alien and Ancient Astronauts.
• Sailor Moon: Another Story introduced a plot "between" seasons of the anime, and had the Opposito Senshi, evil counterparts to the Sailor Team named after Babylonian gods (which, in turn, were the names of the corresponding planets in those cultures), their leader is called Apsu, which is the name of the Primordial Chaos male water deity that fathered the pantheon alongside the female Tiamat (which doesn't appear in the game). Despite appearing almost to be twins of the Senshi, the game passes off their similar appearances and corresponding names as a coincidence.
  • Sin is Sailor Moon's counterpart (named for the Babylonian god of the moon, Sin, not the English word "sin").
  • Nabu, named for the Mesopotamian god of Wisdom, is the brainy Sailor Mercury's counterpart.
  • Nergal, named for the Mesopotamian god of war, is the counterpart of Sailor Mars.
  • Marduk, Sailor Jupiter's counterpart, is named for the leader of the Babylonian gods.
  • Ishtar, in addition to being a bad movie, was the Babylonian goddess of love, and a fitting name for Sailor Venus' counterpart.
• Downplayed in Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. While the player does get to visit and see ancient Mesopotamia, the mythology is simply used as decoration textures on the buildings like ziggurats. There is a level called "The Courtyards of Gilgamesh" and the last level in this chapter is the Tower of Babel.
• Shin Megami Tensei has characters based on various deities and other figures. That said, due to the series being a huge Crossover Cosmology it's logical that Mesopotamia would also appear.
• SMITE is a Crossover Cosmology MOBA with 14 different pantheons, with the Mesopotamian (called Babylonian ingame) being ironically the 16th pantheon and newest addition, being included in 2021. Lore-wise, after Cthulhu (the Lovecraftian gods being released as the 15th pantheon in the previous year) was accidentally released from R'lyeh then almost causing The End of the World as We Know It, Set with Loki and other morally dubious gods awakened Tiamat (who is the first Babylonian god release-wise, and story-wise is one of the oldest beings in the Universe) from her underground watery temple, she quickly beats Cthulhu and seals him back in his prison. With Gilgamesh being released shortly after Tiamat (who in the game's plot is looking for immortality after being send by the younger gods having a mission to slay her), currently the other Babylonian gods are kept vague but is implied they are just as flawed and amoral as their original versions. However, despite her sympathetic morally grey background Tiamat is prone to lashing out against others partly because of her children's betrayal and partly due to her dualistic nature with her being also a godly Draconic Abomination. Paranoia and lack of better judgement causes her to use the titan Atlas to destroy the world and then re-create it, while Merlin reasoning with her to find another way. This ultimately causes the intervention of Shiva who reboots the whole universe and finally convinces Tiamat to (albeit begrudgingly) perform a Heel–Face Turn.
• Soul Series: Zasalamel is cursed to constantly reincarnate to the point his birthplace is unknown, however it's likely he may originally be Babylonian, judging by the names of his attacks being named after figures of Babylonian legends and myths. This also fits with him originally being a member of Algol's cult, who is himself inspired by the hero king Gilgamesh and therefore likely originates from the pre-Babylonian Sumerian civilization, which occupied the same region but is considered the oldest one in human history.
• The The Tower of Druaga series and its anime adaptation are loosely based on The Epic of Gilgamesh.
• The Ys series borrows several names from Sumerian mythology for its ancient cities, ruins, and so on. Particularly Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, as is obvious with the title.

Visual Novels

• The Fate Series makes fairly heavy use of it^note "older" figures tend to be more powerful in its system for summoning heroic figures, and as folks like Gilgamesh are arguably humanity's oldest heroes, this gives them inordinate amounts of power; Fate/Grand Order's seventh chapter "Fate/Grand Order - Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia", in particular, draws heavily on all three extant major myths for story themes, plots beats, and characters, and the third Christmas event (it's a long story) is a character study for Ereshkigal and mentions a good deal of the material found in Nergal and Ereshkigal.
• Input Output has many characters take online handles from Mesopotamian mythology, usually calling it Babylonian mythology (which make sense, given that a decent lot of story is focused on an in-story MMORPG called Babylon.) There are plenty of references to the actual mythology as well.

Web Original

• Carmilla the Series- a character is revealed to come from ancient Sumer.
• In The Order of the Stick (set in a Dungeons & Dragons RPG Mechanics 'Verse) Babylonian deities are one of the three pantheons of gods who created the world, their worshippers mostly found on the Western Continent. Tiamat is a five-headed dragon and Queen of the Underworld, Nergal a lion-headed god of "death and destruction". Ereshkhigal, Ishtar and Marduk have also been mentioned in passing.

Western Animation

• The Real Ghostbusters which is a standalone continuity had one episode featuring Marduk and Tiamat.
• The Secret Saturdays borrows heavy themes such as Gilgamesh, the Greater-Scope Villain being a cryptid referred to as "Kur" (which is the name of a dragon that lived in the Underworld) and one recurring antagonist having a centaur-esque robotic lower body of a scorpion which is based on the girtablilu.
• Young Justice reveals that one of Vandal Savage's aliases in human history was Marduk, the god of Babylon. He rescued the local people from an alien weapon called Tiamat, after which he fathered the god Nabu and the goddess Ishtar, though the latter is Sadly Mythtaken due to Anu being her original father.

Real Life

• Lilith: it has been suggested that the Jewish/Christian myth of Lilith (who, it's worth noting, isn't in the Bible) originated in the demonic lilitu of Mesopotamian legend. If so (and this isn’t certain), this is an unusual medieval instance of the trope which would make it Older Than Print.
• Anything mentioning Adonis and Astarte; originally, the tale of Venus and Adonis (which English-speakers know primarily from the Narrative Poem by Shakespeare) was a Semitic tale about a young shepherd named Tammuz/Dumuzi, also called "Adon", ("Adonis" is derived from this term, meaning "Lord"; cf. "Adonai", "The LORD" in Jewish usage) and the goddess Ishtar. Astarte is a Semitic goddess derived from Ishtar/Inanna, which in turn inspired Aphrodite/Venus. That's right, the Greco-Roman goddess of love, beauty and sex is de facto based on a way older pre-existing Mesopotamian goddess.

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