Sumerian Icons

Temple of Sumer has had a lot of questions about the iconography of various ancient and modern drawings of the gods. I’ve been rather lax in getting up depictions that would help with this, and so some people have turned to my comic as an example of what the various gods should look like. I take artistic liberties with the comic in the interest of making the characters look notably different from one another.

The icons in this section will be artistically basic. I will only be putting in the minimal amount of detail in each image. You will only see the features most closely associated with the image. Along with the image I will be putting up a commentary on the details that went into the images.

I will be taking as few liberties with the images as I can, but they are inevitable. This is partly because many of the ancient images are confusable without added detail, partly because some of the ancient iconography is only described in text, and partly because I am bound to make mistakes. Because of this I will discuss the nontraditional elements separately.

There are a lot of gods, so I will be putting them up over time. I figure that one per week will keep me busy enough, but not too busy. I will start with the seven who decree fate, go to the four hero gods, jump to a selection of underworld gods, go to a selection of goddesses of note, and then go to the most notable gods. Over time I may put up alternate images of some gods to correct errors, or to depict them in a different way.

I will try to make my way to the lesser gods, but it will take me quite some time. The lesser gods have less written about them, and as such there will be more uncertainty in what they should look like.

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