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Old 09-10-2016, 12:51 PM   #28
Polydamas
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
Default Re: Moon Priests/Priestesses

No idea which gods and goddesses the people sailing to Dilmun and Meluha worshipped. We probably know for the West Semites, but they had another set of gods.

I would not do much with tides because there are not big tides anywhere that South Mesopotamians sailed (pretty sure that the Strait of Hormuz and the Chaldaean marshes have a similar effect to the Straits of Gibraltar). I seem to remember that the sea next to this country is an inland sea in the Realms?

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
On the other hand, the Vedic sun god Surya has to be one of the older actually attested forms. In those texts both gods seem to be male. Gods actually change name and gender and portfolio and relationship through time in ways that seem baffling to modern Westerners - "wait, the son of the Sun god this cult statue is of to was the sister of the Sun god in the dedication inscription of the shrine it is in?"

Incidentally one weird connection I found paging through a list of lunar and solar deities is that in addition being the Semitic moon god, the name Sin(a) is used for several Polynesian moon goddesses and spirits (possibly from a root meaning something like silver haired), see for example the Samoan myth on the origin of coconuts Sina and the Eel.
It was also common for the priests of a rising god to explain that a bunch of other falling gods were only aspect of their patron. There are some tablets laying out relationships like that.

The genders in Sumerian are personal (gods, women, ...) and impersonal (rocks, slaves, cattle, ...) and its easy to write divine names logographically as "storm god, sun god, ..." so sexing deities is not always straightforward. The logograms also encouraged equating deities in different places with each other.
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