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Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg)  · CC BY-SA 4.0  · a work of art, not a likeness

Tradition collection 247 records

Mesopotamia and the Levant

Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Hittite-adjacent and Canaanite gods, and the texts that carry them.

  • Extent Tigris–Euphrates, Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean coast, roughly 3500 BCE to 200 CE.
  • Holds 165 gods · 44 places · 18 figures · 8 traditions

Before you count

Sumerian and Akkadian names for one god are often two records upstream, and merging them would be an editorial claim this collection has not made.

Gods · 165

The gods, and the company they keep

The most widely linked across Wikipedia, this collection’s own first. A picture of a god is a work of art, never a likeness.

Places · 44

Archaeological sites and places

37 of the 44 are recorded as archaeological sites — a culture’s cities and monuments, not evidence of worship there. The most widely linked first.

44 places 44 with a point on the map 22 with a date 37 archaeological sites

See them on the atlas

The oldest on record

The earliest recorded starts among its best-known places, by 1000 CE, in date order. Each date is the place’s own — a city’s founding, a building’s — not the start of this tradition there.

  1. 6th millennium BCE Ugarit Archaeological site
  2. 3800 BCE Ur Archaeological site
  3. 3300 BCE Qatna Archaeological site
  4. 3200 BCE Uruk Archaeological site
  5. 3100 BCE Kish Archaeological site
  6. 21st century BCE Ziggurat of Ur
  7. 13th century BCE Nimrud Archaeological site
  8. 12th century BCE Idalion Archaeological site

Where they gather

Cities and sites with two or more of its places recorded in them — counted from each place’s own location.

Figures · 18

Who to meet first

The figures its own texts, stories and traditions name — the most widely linked first, this collection’s own before those it shares.

Traditions · 8

Many paths, shared histories

The traditions, schools and movements this collection holds — each with its own page.

Texts and stories · 4

Stories and texts

What was told, and what was written — dated when it was written.

Also here · 1

Also in this collection

Kinds it holds only one or two of, each with its own page.

Argued, cited and signed

Explained connections that reach into it: a claim, its evidence, its limits.

What this collection holds

Counted, not scored. Each count opens its list.

A record can be more than one kind — a monastery is a place and an institution — so these counts add up to more than its 247 records. The sections above count the same way, and draw each record once, under the kind its own page is filed under.

Statements
910
With references
108
Undated
203
Accounts
0
Reviewed here
0
What it is missing, and how it was assembled

What this collection is missing

Written by an editor, not computed. A count of records cannot say any of this, and a collection read without it is a collection read wrongly.

  • Sumerian and Akkadian names for one god are often two records upstream, and merging them would be an editorial claim this collection has not made.
  • Coverage follows excavation and publication, not antiquity: Ugarit is well recorded and its neighbours are not.
  • Dates are composition dates of tablets far more often than dates of practice.

Counted across the collections

Festivals, practices and events follow how densely Wikidata records them, not how much a tradition keeps: 77% of the 845 held across the collections are Christian, and this collection holds none.

What the counts mean

Statements
Relationships and facts recorded on these records.
With references
Statements that cite a source outside Wikimedia.
Undated
Records with no date on any of the three clocks.
Accounts
Named versions of a story, kept apart.
Reviewed here
Read by a person and signed with a date.

How it was assembled

Discovered from Wikidata by class and by religion, ranked by incoming links, then filtered against each item’s own claims. Relationships are imported statements unless a row says otherwise; none of them has been read here.

“Reviewed” means a person read it and signed it with a date — which is why it is zero. Nothing here measures how good the material is.

Records here have an article in 16 languages between them. The interface is English only for now. Published 2026-09-25.

How 13 of these records were placed here through another record

Most records are in Mesopotamia and the Levant by their own statements. These are here because of another record they are linked to — worked out when the data was built, not stated on the record itself. Each one’s own page says the same.

Cities and sites, through the places recorded in them · 1

  • Babylon — 2 of the 4 places recorded in it here are in this collection

Parts, through the whole they belong to · 2

Gods, through a parent or a consort · 6

Pantheons, through their own published gods · 4

  • Akkad — 4 of its 4 published gods are in this collection
  • Babylonians — 7 of its 7 published gods are in this collection
  • Assyrians — 3 of its 3 published gods are in this collection
  • Babylonia — 11 of its 12 published gods are in this collection
David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada · CC BY 2.0 lead image of the English Wikipedia article

Keep going

Walk Mesopotamia and the Levant another way.

A family tree as the accounts give it, every mapped place on the atlas, and the dates on the timeline — each on its own clock.