The Babylonian Epic of Creation is a mythological poem in the Babylonian language. According to its incipit, the Epic was known as Enūma eliš, “When on high,” in antiquity. It describes how the world came into being and how Marduk, the divine patron of Babylon, became the king of the gods after defeating the primaeval goddess Tiamat, the matriarch of the first gods and embodiment of the primordial sea. A substantial part of the Epic is dedicated to presenting Marduk’s fifty names in celebration of his divine supremacy.Most likely composed at the end of the 2nd millennium bce during Babylon’s revival under Nebuchadnezzar I, king of Babylon, 1125–1104 bce, the Babylonian Epic of Creation was the most important religious text in Mesopotamia for much of the 1st millennium bce. Besides the large number of preserved cuneiform manuscripts, the popularity of the Epic is attested to by its frequent references in letters and inscriptions, the ideological appropriation and rewriting of the text in its Assyrian recension, as well as the numerous scribal exercise tablets with extracts from the poem. The Enūma eliš was recited and partly reenacted during the Babylonian New Year festival and other cultic rituals in Babylon.
The Graeco-Roman view of Egyptian religion is sharply fissured. Despite Herodotus 2. 50. 1 (comm. A. B. Lloyd, 1975–88), many writers of all periods, and probably most individuals, found in the Egyptians' worship of animals a polemical contrast to their own norms (though cf. Cic. Nat. D. 1. 29. 81 f.), just as, conversely, the Egyptians turned animal-worship into a symbol of national identity (cf. Diod. Sic. 1. 86–90). The first Egyptian divinity to be recognized by the Greek world was the oracular *Ammon of the *SiwaOasis (Hdt. 2. 54–7); but *oracles have a special status. The only form of Late-period Egyptian religion to be assimilated into the Graeco-Roman world was to a degree untypical, centred on anthropomorphic deities—*Isis, *Sarapis, and Harpocrates—and grounded in Egyptian vernacular enthusiasm quite as much as in temple ritual. The other gods which became known in the Graeco-Roman world, *Osiris, *Anubis, *Apis, *Horus, *Bubastis, Agathodaemon (see agathos daimon), Bes, etc.
In the Classical period, religious eunuchs are a feature of several Anatolian cults of female deities, extending across to Scythia (Hdt. 4. 67: not shamans) and to the southern foothills of the Taurus mountains, but independent of Babylonian and Phoenician (Euseb. Vit. Const. 3. 55. 2 f.) practices (see anatolian deities). As a whole the institution created a class of pure servants of a god (Matt. 19: 12). Its significance derives from a double contrast, with the involuntary castration of children for court use and the normal obligation to marry. The adult self-castrate expressed in his body both world-rejection and -superiority.Two forms may be distinguished. (1) A senior, or even high, priest in a temple, e.g. the eunuchs of *Hecate at Lagina in *Caria (Sokolowski, LSAM no. 69. 19, etc.); the Megabyz(x)us of *Artemis at *Ephesus (Strabo 14. 1. 23; Vett. Val., 2. 21. 47); the *Attis and Battaces, the high priests of Cybele at *Pessinus.
Ishtar/Inanna is the most important Mesopotamian goddess, attested in southern Babylonia from the late 4th millennium bce until the end of cuneiform culture, and in the wider Near East from the end of the 3rd millennium on. Depending on time, place and context she was associated with sexual love, violence, legitimate kingship, fertility, the underworld, prophecy, and medicine. The cults of Ishtar-like goddesses in the Levant influenced cults of Aphrodite.Ishtar is the Akkadian name of the most important Mesopotamian goddess, the daughter of the sky god Anu or the moon god Sîn (depending on the tradition), and sister of the sun god Šamaš and the queen of the underworld, Ereshkigal. Her cult is first attested c.3300–3000bce at the Eanna temple in the southern Babylonian city of Uruk (see Figure 1),1 where it continued to be practised until the late Achaemenid period (c.400bce.
