How do you think the Mesopotamians would reformulate their classical polytheism into an axial age religion?
To be honest, it’s not even necessary for its survival. You only see Christianity overtaking the classic Mesopotamian polytheism when the Sassanids shut down state support for the urban temple-complexes, which had over the centuries lost their other avenues of generating income. Where the temples survived, Harran, Cutha, and Uruk, the native religion generally held on until the settlement was either abandoned entirely or the locals were forced to convert or killed.
If the succeeding Iranian dynasty to the Arsacids had maintained their focus on religious pluralism to maintain local support, or a native Mesopotamian dynasty had established a polity in that region, you likely wouldn’t see Christianity grow as it did.
That being said, it wouldn’t be hard to justify a theological shift in that general religious system, and I’d argue that Ishtar is an especially suited candidate for the deific figure for the religion to be reoriented around, for a variety of reasons.
First: Ishtar/Inanna is perhaps the most popular and most enduring of the Mesopotamian deities, with her only real rivals in later periods being her twin brother Shamash, and her husband Tammuz who were both worshiped centuries after the ‘Sabians’ of Harran were extinguished (Honorable mentions to her father Suen and uncle Nergal) in the 1000s AD. She has a strong appeal to both the state, society at large, and to individuals of both sexes* and is well know throughout the region.
Second: There is a general mythological precedent, in both the original Sumerian and the later Akkadian tales for Ishtar/Inanna to be viewed as the preeminent deity. In the Sumerian hymns we are related a narrative of Inanna overcoming her father An (In Uruk, Inanna is the daughter of An and Ki. Elsewhere she is typically the daughter of the Moon god Nanna and the goddess Ningal), seizing the Eanna (House of Heaven) from An after overcoming various trials and growing to surpass her father, who contains the world within himself (An is imagined as both an anthropomorphic patriarch dwelling in the sky, as well as the sky/firmament itself, or at least the outer layer of it). In latter Akkadian stories, we have Ishtar chase her father Suen (Sumerian Nanna) through the sky with the aid of her brother Adad (Sumerian Ishkur, cognate to West Semitic Hadad) for his attempt to undermine her scheme to marry Anu (Sumerian An). Within that narrative she does marry Anu, and who proceeds to bestow all his power and authority to her, followed by all the other gods doing the same (you’ll note that the same thing happens to Marduk in the Enuma Elish when the Divine Assembly invest him with their power to battle Tiamat).
Third: She is not critically tied to any one city or locality. While she has been heavily associated with locales such as Uruk, Nineveh, and Arbella, her worship in both temple cults and amoung the common populace was much more widespread and, especially in the absence of the political dimension that subjugation by a foreign power entailed, gives her a leg up against figures like Aššur (whose worship seems to have been generally limited to the city of the same name in the post-Imperial period) or Bel Marduk (whose influence was inextricably tied to that of the city of Babylon/Bābili itself). This means that, if a Mesopotamian polity emerged using this reframe, it would not suffer increased internal tensions by attempting to elevate their city-god over others, instead emphasizing the emphasizing their shared reverence for a shared state deity.
Fourth: The familial ties of Ishtar/Inanna to other popular Mesopotamian deities would allow the cults of those gods to maintain prominence and face even in the face of subordination. For example, in Harran the chief god is Suen (though, after the fall of the Assyrian Empire he began shifting to more of a first amoung equals status) was worshiped typically in a divine triad, arranged as either the divine father (Suen) paired with the divine mother (Ningal/Nikkal) together with the divine daughter (Inanna/Ishtar, locally referred to as Bath Nikkal, daughter of Nikkal) or alternatively as the Moon/Father (Suen) , Morning Star/Daughter (Ishtar), and Sun/Son (Shamash). The fact that they are worshiped together means that the elevation of one can be seen as elevating all, so long as the pattern of worship holds. The fact that all of the involved cults have had their political influence severely diminished during the centuries of foreign rule may also contribute to a lessening of the blow, as they have not had the opportunity to leverage their deities competitive position in the theo-political hierarchy for some time.
Fifth: As stated by Metempsychosis, the Descent of Ishtar is a myth with ample potential for a mystery-cult esque following. This also has precedent for wider use given that Ishtar is traditionally accredited with the power to bring those faithful to her back from the dead (distinct from her ability to batter down the gates to Kur and unleash the dead upon the living), and her role as a psychopomp. Additionally, given the ancestor cult elements of traditional Mesopotamian religion, it would not be difficult for the idea of a more comfortable afterlife dependent on virtue in life to catch on, when social stratification is already a presumed element of existence in Kur
I also think that you might see a reemphasis on the animistic elements of the religious system: the gods being the divine and animating forces present throughout the world of both nature and man. Idols and cult images are very important but are ultimately constructed vessels to host the deity’s spirit, to invite them into their house (the temple) so that they may oversee them in perpetuity. A re-emphasis on that current of thought could be useful in dealing with Abrahamic critiques of idolatry, and the practical issue of dealing with the sacking of temples.
*: The goddess Inanna/Ishtar’s appeal as a figure of worship is a fairly complex topic, due to her myriad collection of roles and responsibilities. To summarize, I will discuss first her role to the state, and then to her role in both society at large, to families and to individuals (both generally and by sex).
For the topic of the state, there are several crucial roles to which Ishtar is key. Ishtar is the selector and patron of Kings, she is a goddess of war and battle, a goddess of fertility, and a goddess of order and justice.
Even in the earliest period of Sumer, Inanna was viewed as the patron of kings, the goddess whose will and live destined and elevated men to Kingship, and whose displeasure cast them low. In Uruk, Isin, and Ur the king was viewed as her consort, deriving his divine mandate from his status as her subordinate lover.
This was not merely a Sumerian phenomena though. Sargon of Akkad, the great conquerer who set the standard for Mesopotamian kings all the way down to the Neo Assyrian and Babylonian Empires, derived his legitimacy in part from his claim that Ishtar/Inanna loved him, and thereby gave him mandate to rule the whole of both Sumer and Akkad. From that point she was the patron goddess of his Empire, and it’s fall is attributed to her withdrawal of support in the face of Naram-Sin’s hubris.
While the subsequent Babylonian and Assyrian polities would elevate their city gods, Marduk and Aššur to the head of the pantheon, Ishtar retained significant associations with Kingship and especially under the Neo-Assyrian monarchs Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal she was particularly praised for her role as the selector of Kings, credited with allowing kingship prior to either king’s birth.
Moving into what she was actually credited with though: Kingship was envisioned as a divine institution embodied in the crown and scepter, which descended from the seat of An(u) to Earth. Inanna/Ishtar was associated with allotting the king with his destiny of Kingship. When the King sinned though, she was perfectly within her rights thought to retract Kingship, and give it to one worthy (this being theological justification for any usurper who succeeds). As long as the King kept her favor, she was thought to preserve his life, to ensure his virility (and take away that of his enemies, which was thought to cripple their martial abilities) and the survival of his bloodline, give him victory in battle, and bring material wealth/prosperity to the land. Further a King was the instrument through which both Ishtar and her twin brother Shamash spread the Divine Justice of the gods to the earthly world, punishing the wicked and rewarding the just, providing further ideological justification for the king’s rule and any legal reforms he may wish to push through.
From a military perspective, Inanna/Ishtar represents several related concepts. As the goddess of war and Decreer of Fates it is her perogative to give victory in war. As the goddess of strength and heroes, she is that very strength which allows soldiers to fight in defense of their homes and to conquer the enemy. As the goddess of battle and slaughter, she is the one who determines the course of battle and who embodies the destructive bloodlust that leads to the slaughter of the enemy. And as the Destroyer of Foreign Lands….well, I don’t think I need to explain that?
Moving on (kinda covered more than I thought I would…), from a societal perspective Ishtar fulfills a variety of roles absent political context. For one, she is the goddess of fertility and material prosperity. It is her love for Tammuz that brings the growing of plants (originally Dumuzid was the force behind the growth of vegetation, but as he became associated with kings in Sumer he shifted from the power behind it, to being the object of Inanna’s love which causes the growth of vegetation) and thereby generates the vast majority of wealth, not getting go to how that is necessary for society to exist. This also extends to livestock, who are only driven to reproduce through her, the same for humans for that matter.
Beyond this, her role as a goddess of justice and fate of worthy of mention. As twin deities, both Shamash and Ishtar represent Justice and Order, either together as a unit (With Shamash as the witness of oaths, judge, and hearer of petitions, with Ishtar as the enforcer through which the sinful are punished and the just rewarded), or as independent fulfilled of both functions. In particular Ishtar/Inanna is imagined as the great queen of the night sky, who holds court there every night and hears the petitions of the personal gods/guardian angels of every person (she also assigns them to each person in the first place) and determines the destiny of each person in accordance with their virtue or lack thereof.
Finally, both as Inanna and Ishtar, the goddess is thought to be either a patron of or an embodiment of ‘proper’ society in an agrarian and urbanized fashion. This is epitomized in Inanna’s seizing of the Me from Enki, and Ishtar’s thematic role in the Epic of Gilgamesh (don’t get me started on that, there are a painful number of layers into how distorted an impression of Ishtar/Inanna it gives) as a metaphor for urban/agrarian society. On a more specific level, she representative of disorder/chaos within society, that which provides both vitality as well as a release valve to social stress for society, in contrast to disorder/chaos from outside society which is only a destructive threat to be subdued.
We can now move onto a more communal, familial, and individual approach. In this context, Inanna and Ishtar is the deity who watches over the transitory points in life: birth, marriage, and death. She is, along with a number of other female divinities (and Pazuzu), the goddess called upon the protect both mother and unborn child through the pains of birth. She is the divine embodiment of the beloved young woman, who in the grips of love and lust is joined to the young man, moving from one household to another and tying two families together. And when death finally takes them, it is she who searves as the vanguard, guarding the departed from demonic predation as they make their way to Kur.
Lastly, I will simply state that the Mourning of Tammuz, is both one of the oldest Mesopotamian customs, and most likely the last one to be practiced, with scattered reports going as late as the 1400-1600s. As the name suggests, the festival is held to mourn the death of Tammuz and the growing season with him. But it also both consoling and empathizing with Ishtar, who mourns his passing every year. Customarily, this would be carried out through three activities. One, the planting of a miniature garden in a ceramic container, placed outside the house in honor to the dead god and thought to go to him in death. Second, the baking of ash cakes which were an offering to Ishtar (typically either in the shape of her or her symbol, the eight pointed star) to console her, and typical public wailing and weeping for Tammuz’s death, either in the town or by the riverside.
Fire is the most sacred of the sacred elements. By using fire to make metal tools, you are (in traditionalist thought) tainting the very embodiment of purity with earthly impurities. Unless I’m misremembering. I’m not a behdīn myself, so I don’t want to misconstrue what I say here anything but an outsider absently remembering something they’ve probably read somewhere.
