| Fertile Crescent myth series |
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|---|---|
| Mesopotamian | |
| Levantine | |
| Arabian | |
| Mesopotamia | |
| Primordial beings | |
| The great gods | |
| Demigods & heroes | |
| Spirits & monsters | |
| Tales from Babylon | |
| 7 Gods who Decree | |
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4 primary: |
3 sky: |
Utu (Akkadian rendition[1][2] of Sumerian UD 𒌓 "Sun",[3] Assyro-Babylonian Shamash "Sun") is the Sun god in Sumerian mythology, the son of the moon god Nanna and the goddess Ningal. His brother and sisters are Ishkur and Inanna and Erishkigal. (Inanna and Erishkigal were twins)
Utu is the god of the sun, justice, application of law, and the dispensation of the fates of the dead. He is usually depicted as wearing a horned helmet and carrying a saw-edged weapon not unlike a pruning saw. It is thought that every day, Utu emerges from a mountain in the east, symbolizing dawn, and travels either via chariot or boat across the Earth, returning to a hole in a mountain in the west, symbolizing sunset. Every night, Utu descends into the underworld to decide the fate of the dead. He is also depicted as carrying a mace, and standing with one foot on a mountain.
The sun god is only modestly mentioned in Sumerian mythology with one of the notable exceptions being the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the myth, Gilgamesh seeks to establish his name with the assistance of Utu, because of his connection with the cedar mountain. Gilgamesh and his father, Lugalbanda were kings of the first dynasty of Uruk, a lineage that Jeffrey H. Tigay suggested could be traced back to Utu himself. He further suggested that Lugalbanda's association with the sun-god in the Old Babylonian version of the epic strengthened "the impression that at one point in the history of the tradition the sun-god was also invoked as an ancestor".[4]
Marduk is spelled AMAR.UTU in Sumerian, literally, "the calf of Utu" or "the young bull of the Sun".