The Problem of Perspective

Like its counterparts in Greek and Roman mythology, the Sumerian Pantheon was organized hierarchically in what is commonly referred to as a pyramid structure. Although, contemporary pictures of the Sumerian hierarchy are much less stable -- to be diplomatic, consistent to be blunt. Whereas Zeus is regarded as the uncontested leader of the Olympians, his counterpart in Sumerian mythology, Enlil, does not enjoy such unanimous autonomy as the pantheon's divine head of state.

But this difference can be viewed as much as a result from modern perspective as from any significant perceptual difference in their respective time periods. That is to say, through the high volume and relative ease of accessibility of ancient Greek sources, in addition to a basic unity of origin -- the same few Greek city-states were responsible for a disproportionately large percentage of source material on the pantheon and history in general -- modern scholars are left with a comparatively unified conception of the Greek pantheon. In the case of Enlil, however, we have comparatively little source material from Sumer.

In addition, the time frames between ancient Greek documentation and Sumerian documentation are far from comparable. Mythological sources from ancient Greece deal with three civilizations: Minoan, Mycenaean and a Dorian-Mycenaean blend, culminating in what we know today as Ancient Greece -- the Archaic, the Classical, the Hellenistic. Minoan documents, although unearthed, cannot yet be intelligibly deciphered. Mycenaean culture, however, seems to indicate a close association with the displaced Minoans, and thanks to many Mycenaean archaeological discoveries, historians have been able to pinpoint Mycenae as the focal point for much of the mythology of a more accessible, ancient Greece -- the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic eras. {note to self: find where Middle & Dark age(s) fall in time line}

Reasonably, then, the mythology we know of as ancient Greek can be categorized as Mycenaean-Greek, with a probable, heavy Minoan influence. This places the time frame for Greek mythology somewhere between 1400 BCE to sometime in the late Roman Republic/early Empire. A conservative estimate of 1400 years. Compare that to Sumerian mythology with events speculated anywhere from 3500 BCE (first recorded) to approximately 2000 BCE -- another 1500 year span. However, the sources for this mythology generally date from 2500 BCE to 900 BCE -- an additional 1000 plus years. Sumerian culture is believed to have been in existence at least since the end of the fifth millennium, pushing the social consciousness of mythological events to a conservative 4000 BCE. All in all, what we generally refer to as Sumerian mythology encompasses the mythology of Southern and, to a lesser extent, Northern Mesopotamia from 4000 BCE to 900 BCE. Of course, the Sumerian culture, itself, died out sometime around the turn of the second century BCE. At which time significant alterations were made to an already extant Sumerian mythology.

At what point, exactly, this mythology ceases to be Sumerian and becomes that of another culture -- Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian -- is murky water in which few experts are willing to tread. Thus, the Sumerian pantheon -- and Sumerian mythology in general -- appears less consistent than its counterparts in Greece and Rome because 1) it covers a much longer time period, at least half of which was without the benefit of written documentation, 2) because the pantheon was, essentially, transposed from one culture to another to another, each changing it in its own way, and 3) because the majority of extant sources on Sumerian mythology are, in fact, from the many cultures who inherited Sumerian culture and, in doing so, transposed Sumerian mythology unto their own, with ever-so many alterations.