The fluid nature of the gods

Although this highly anthropomorphic concept of the divine is particularly apparent in Mesopotamian myths, it is also quite evident in the hymns and prayers in which Mesopotamians directly addressed their gods, as I noted in the introduction. In these genres, however, the images of gods are more fluid and less consistently anthropomorphic. In hymns and prayers, gods may appear at one moment as anthropomorphic beings who control some powerful aspect of the cosmos, and at the next moment they may be described as if they were that powerful phenomenon itself. In one third millennium Sumerian hymn, for example, Inanna is addressed first in anthropomorphic form as a great divine lady who controls the storm (“O destroyer of mountains, you lent the storm wings! . . . O my lady, at your roar you made the countries bow low”). She is next represented as a wild presence in the storm, separate from it yet almost its personification: “With the charging storm, you charge, with the howling storm you howl.” And finally the hymn represents her as the storm itself, “Inanna, the great dread storm of heaven.” In another hymn, Inanna is represented as both the bright planet Venus and a queen, “The pure torch that flares in the sky, the heavenly light, shining bright like the day, the great queen of heaven, Inanna,” who is praised for “her brilliant coming forth in the evening sky.” Similar examples of gods represented as both anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic could be cited in hymns and prayers from every period and for almost every great god of Mesopotamia.—Barbara N. Porter in What Is a God?, 154