Nanna, A Compendium of the Ancient Gods

Nanna was the moon, the bright bull of heaven that wandered the night sky; and his city was Ur of the Chaldees, where his temple-tower the Ekishnugal stood, and where the kings of the great Third Dynasty made him patron of their state. He was the son of Enlil and Ninlil, begotten in the dark of the underworld and brought up into the light. His consort was Ningal, the great lady; and his children were Utu the sun, and Inanna the morning and evening star. Of his sons and daughters, then, came light and the planet Venus.

There is little narrative of Nanna himself; his role is rather to be present, brilliant, regular, and to be invoked. The hymns to him are many, the stories few. He sailed each night across the sky in his barque of silver; he gave light to the wakers and dreams to the sleepers; the cattle and the flocks were under his protection. To swear by Nanna was to swear by all that is steady in heaven.

Curator’s note

What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay

Nanna (Akkadian Sin, Suen) was the principal god of the city of Ur, whose ziggurat — the great temple-tower built by Ur-Nammu c. 2100 BCE — was dedicated to him and Ningal. Sin's cult had a remarkable later flowering at Harran (in modern southeastern Turkey), where it survived as the great religion of the Sabians of Harran into the Islamic period; the city was a center of Mesopotamian moon-worship long after Mesopotamia itself had become Christian and Muslim. Sin's symbol is the crescent. His daughter Inanna's relationship to him is one of the constants of the Sumerian pantheon: she is invariably called "daughter of Sin" in her hymns. There is little plot-myth attached to him; the Sumerians and Akkadians seem to have felt that the moon's dignity required hymns, not adventures.

Kin in the sources

Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.

Child ofEnlilHe was the son of Enlil and Ninlil, begotten in the dark of the underworld
Child ofNinlilHe was the son of Enlil and Ninlil, begotten in the dark of the underworld
Consort ofNingalHis consort was Ningal, the great lady
Parent ofUtuhis children were Utu the sun, and Inanna the morning and evening star
Parent ofInannahis children were Utu the sun, and Inanna the morning and evening star
Named as the same god asSin of HarranNanna (Akkadian Sin, Suen) was the principal god of the city of Ur
Sibling ofNergalHe was a son of Enlil, brother to Nanna and Ninurta
Consort ofBaldrBaldr was the most beloved of the Aesir, son of Odin and Frigg, husband of Nanna, father of Forseti.
Parent ofForsetiForseti was the son of Baldr and Nanna, the god of justice

The same god in other rooms

The ancient sources themselves name these as one god under different names. See Nanna and Sin of Harran hung together

The Levantine BorderlandsSin of Harran

When the sources speak

Dated witnesses for Sumer. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline

c. 3400–3000 BCE: Uruk-period writing and monumental temple economies create the earliest recoverable administrative setting for named divine institutions.
c. 2900–2350 BCE: Early Dynastic city-states preserve local cults, hymns, royal inscriptions, and god lists; later copies often transmit older compositions.
c. 2334–2154 BCE: The Akkadian Empire expands bilingual and imperial patterns of divine identification without erasing local cult titles.
c. 2112–2004 BCE: Ur III administration and scribal schooling standardize many Sumerian literary and liturgical forms.
c. 2000–1600 BCE: Old Babylonian schools copy major myths, laments, hymns, debates, and heroic narratives in the form most often used by modern editors.
c. 1650–1200 BCE: Hittite and Hurrian archives at Hattusa transmit Anatolian myths, imported Syrian materials, and ritual compositions.
c. 1400–1190 BCE: The tablets of Ugarit preserve the Baal Cycle, Kirta, Aqhat, ritual lists, and a dense Late Bronze Age West Semitic pantheon.
c. 1000–612 BCE: Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires collect, revise, and politically reinterpret older learned traditions.