enmesarra-love

[enmesarra-love]

My quick sketch of Kingaludda , the "evil god" (ilu lemnu) “, “ "presiding over the storm" (ud.da gub.ba). His name literally means “Director of the Storm.

[enmesarra-love]

The Hittite Text CTH 323.1 mentions the god Hahhima (Frost), who not only freezes the whole land, including in the riverbanks, but the hands and feet of the Supreme God, the Storm God Teššub.

[enmesarra-love]

Ninga is identified in the Hittite God Lists as the Deified Earthquake.

Hence the big arms and thin hands, to give as much pressure to a single point as possible and thus cause an Earthquake.

[enmesarra-love]

Daganzipa is a Hittite deity who is the “Spirit of the Eath”. Not much more to say here, but I decided to make her female because why not, as there is nothing gender specific about any one of the -zipa Spirit deities as far as I know.

[enmesarra-love]

Trying to depict Ubelluri, a Hittie god who is known as the God upon whm the Earth was made and is known as a “dreaming god”. To explain his extremely minor role In the Song of Ullikummi, one must first explain the origin of the Song of Kingship in Heaven. To give a very brief summary, the full being reserved for the image of Kumarbi himself, the monster deity Ullikummi is left to grow up to monstrous size after being put on Ubelluri’s shoulder, until he is cut away by Ea using the Great Copper Saw with which Heaven and Earth were divided.

Tried my best to draw him in a way that would represent him standing on the ground while having his head above the atmosphere but I don’t know how I’d propperly draw that in scale.

[enmesarra-love]

Nothing much to add for Uqur, except that he is the Vizier of Šubula and his name literally means daggers so I tried to make his beard look like one.

[enmesarra-love]

There isn’t much to add here except that Šubula is noted in the An Anum to be a son of Nergal.

[enmesarra-love]

Enmešarra the Splendour

I’m a humble amateur student of ancient middle eastern (Sumerian, Hittie, Ugaritic, Syrian etc.) mythology and history. I like to draw my impressions of deities based upon the texts I read, especially those that do not have any surviving depictions and mostly those who are very obscure.

As such I have been loving to death the An Anum God list  (and you may look through it yourself though you might want to consult an online source for it such as the one found at http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu. Sadly there is no completely easily available online treatment of the An Anum and thus it may be a bit hard to get into. In essence it is a God list cataloguing many of the thousands of deities on record in ancient Assyria and Mesopotamia as a whole, consisting of a total of 7 tablets.

Another great source for obscurity is the text K252, which I have been going over for some time, which is an Assyrian Temple and Altar list, showcasing many obscure deities, or even foreign deities granted an altar in Assyria, one of the most surprising appearance among them being the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda, listed in Col. IX of K252 “As-sa-ra-Ma-za-áš“

As for my name, it is derived from Enmešarra “The Splendour”, Uncle or Ancestor of Enlil who attempted to acquire kingship and who was the father of seven sons who, from my lay perspective, may be identical with the Sebitti, or Seven, that are known to ravage the land alongside Nergal in the Myth of Erra and Ishum.

In the appropriate text called “Enmešarra’s Defeat”, there is the following evocative passage where Enmešarra is told of the doom that is to befall him for rebellion at the hands of Marduk, that made me adopt the name:

"When Enmešarra heard this "He cried "Alas" and his heart burnt. "He opened his mouth and spoke a word, " "Bēl is terrible that I, a god, should not live; "His judgements are terrible that my fledglings should not live."

"Nergal opened his mouth "Addressing a word to Enmešarra, the Splendour, "From the beginning, "From the very beginning, "This has been your answer, Enmešarra."

[enmesarra-love]

Ḫušbisag, the wife of Namtar, mentioned likewise in “The Death of Ur-Namma”. Sometimes called only Namtartu (She-Fate), her older name according to Frans Wiggerman translates to “It’s Horror is Good”. Her description from “The Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince” is translated by Wiggerman in his “The Mesopotamian Pandemonium” as

“Namtartu, his wife has the head of a griffin, human hands and feet.”

Which is what I based her description on. It wasn’t easy getting to draw a beak that at least resembles something menacing and not just goofy.

[enmesarra-love]

My completely loose interpretation of the God Namtar, the son and Vizier of Ereškigal, Namtar also reffering to the evil fate which not even the Gods and their chosen cities can avoid. Called “Namtar, who decrees all (?) the fates, in his palace” in “The Death of Ur-Namma”. There is also, according to Samuel Noah Kramer in his “The Weeping Goddess: Sumerian Prototypes of the Mater Dolorosa“, a lamentation which describes Namtar’s activity as follows

“ The goddess complains that Namtar is standing at her side day and night; she married a spouse but now has no spouse; she gave birth to a son but now has no son; like a ewe she cherished a strange lamb; like a mother-goat she cherished a strange kid; she has been devastated in her own city; her friends, male and female, are distraught because of her.”

When the Goddess goes to Enlil’s House of Fate to complain of her destiny

“Namtar, she continues, looked at her angrily, screamed at her, and clung tenaciously to her lap and side, so that she became even more despondent, because of her desolation.“

“Namtar, she weeps, brought her misery as if it were a silver ornament for her hand and a precious stone for her neck; then he added insult to injury by pressing her to meet fate with a cheerful face, to rejoice in the death of her husband and son.“

The Goddess goes to the steppe but even there Namtar is hunting her like birds are hunted in canebrake. She is then afflicted with the Asag demon of disease and though her mother tries to console her to say she is beautiful, she says she has no chant in her heart, and the composition ends with an enigmatic refference to the death of Gilgamesh.

Another semi obscure text, the Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince (using Frans Wiggerman’s translation from this “The Mesopotamian Pandemonium”)  describes his thusly

“Namtar does the honours, with a dagger in his right hand, and the hair of the man to be killed in his left”