Sources & method
An atlas of local divine traditions, with the differences between origin, residence and cult kept visible.
The records
The catalogue contains 90 deity identity records and 70 separately recorded origin claims. It is a substantial selection, not an exhaustive list of every Mesopotamian divine name. Each entry links to its ancient work or scholarly source, cites the relevant passage where available, and identifies its period or manuscript tradition.
Sumerian texts often survive in Old Babylonian school manuscripts. A manuscript date is not necessarily a composition date. Later identifications do not automatically make associated deities identical. Competing accounts remain separate.
The principal text resources include the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, ORACC’s Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, royal inscriptions, and the scholarship cited in individual records.
What the pins mean
Most are cult seats or patronage associations. Explicit city birth, conception and inferred shrine birth have distinct symbols. A pin anchors a city; it does not identify the exact place of a divine event.
54 records have at least one located city association. The remaining 36 are browsable in the same interface without invented coordinates. “Unlocated” here means no reliable position was assigned from the cited evidence; it does not imply that the deity lacked worship or that no origin tradition ever existed.
The live map draws its labels from the catalogue. The printable poster is a more compact selection of 41 identities. Search and the city popups expose the wider live roster.
Geography through time
The modern-reference basemap retains original full-resolution GSHHG coastline geometry, HydroRIVERS centrelines and Pleiades representative site points. Modern reservoir outlines are omitted. Muted relief and ecological colour are contextual, not dated ancient land cover.
The dashed historical Gulf follows Forti et al. (2022), Figure 14, a suggested configuration 5000–4000 years ago. It is approximate and is not a coastline for every period represented in the catalogue. Ancient marshes and river channels changed.
The separate terrain and flood study retains the +4 m EGM2008 calculation on modern terrain. A modern height threshold does not reconstruct the ancient coast.