Mesopotamian PantheonCity
Uruk
The city of Gilgamesh and Inanna, one of the first true cities in human history. Its mighty walls, said to be built by Gilgamesh himself, enclosed the great E-anna temple complex sacred to both Anu and Inanna.
About Uruk
Gilgamesh's walls
Uruk is Inanna/Ishtar's city and Gilgamesh's. The epic opens and closes on the walls he built; Tablet I tells you to inspect the brickwork. Eanna is the temple precinct of Anu and Inanna. This is among the earliest urban names in any literature. The king is two-thirds god, restless, then grieving. Cult of Inanna at Uruk is archaeological fact; the cedar raid is story. Read the city as a measured circuit of baked brick.
On the map
Uruk among other places of the Mesopotamian Pantheon.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet I
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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