Literary texts shed light from another angle on religious personnel. One Sumerian
poem describes the fashioning of the gala(‘lamentation priest’): Enki, god of wisdom,
creates the galaand provides him with prayers, laments, and musical instruments to
soothe the raging heart of the goddess Inana that was troubling heaven and earth
(Shehata 2008 ). Another Sumerian tale, ‘Enlil and Namzitara’, recounts how the high
god Enlil, disguised as a crow, meets Namzitara, a servant of the gudu 4 - priests (‘cultic
officiants’), going home after having completed his daily work (Alster 2005 : 327 – 338 ).
Namzitara recognises and acknowledges the power of Enlil, who rewards him by giving
him a hereditary prebend (offices having the right to an income from the temple in
return for the performance of services connected with the cult, a benefice) in his
temple. This folktale provides an explanation of how Namzitara’s humble family gained
possession of a prebend, the source of the family’s wealth. Thus, literary texts provide
an ontological reason for clerical positions and conceptualise the divine origins of
earthly mediators.
The last major problem encountered in any attempt to reconstruct the ecclesiastical
hierarchy of the Sumerian temple is the possibility of Akkadian influence, especially
during the Old Akkadian period and in the Old Babylonian period. Consequently, this
study relies most heavily on the third-millennium evidence from the Old Sumerian
(ED III) and Neo-Sumerian (Ur III) periods and less on the early second millennium.
SUMERIAN ECCLESIASTIC HIERARCHY
Copious large temple institutions with sundry and numerous staff proliferated in the
cities. The clergy who served them were divided into specific groups, each associated
with a particular temple and god; these included both priestly and non-priestly offices.
The non-priestly clergy consisted of the large staff necessary for the organisation and
management of the temple, its industries and properties. The ordained priests
officiated in the rituals concerned with the direct service of the god. All those who
served in the temples, from lowly courtyard sweeper to high priest, were considered
various grades of the clergy of the temple. This broad definition of religious personnel
is given by Mesopotamian word lists, ration rolls, and lists of prebends of temple
offices. These lists record many classes of priests but there is no temple where all the
members of the various priestly classes served together.
Among the many cults that were extant in Sumer there existed differences and
similarities in the rituals performed and the participants in the rituals. Ritual specialists
were many and varied – of diverse types and with different religious functions.
Although over 400 different cultic titles existed, a system of mutual exclusiveness
among several of those priestly classes, and particular deities, limited their number
serving in any single temple. This exclusivity allows for the establishment of certain
hierarchic patterns of priests attached to specific temples in the cities of the ancient
Sumerian homeland. Table 12. 1 presents a simplistic and schematic overview of the
nature of the priesthood. Since certain cultic offices were restricted in regards to the
gender of their holders and others were not, the positions occupied solely by women
are indicated in italics, the positions occupied solely by men in bold and those positions
which can be occupied by both are unmarked.
The earliest evidence shows that each Sumerian city-state had not only distinctly
different hierarchies, but designated the ritual experts by various obscure terms. For
–– The ministering clergy ––