Sky, wind, sweet water, and clay
The four Sumerian theology usually ranks highest — An (here Anu) the sky, Enlil whose word decides, Enki the sweet water beneath the ground, Ninhursag the stony hills. In the myth Enki and Ninmah she carries another of her names, and she and Enki argue over how people are pinched from clay.
The great below and its road
Inanna’s descent survives in a Sumerian telling and a materially different Akkadian one; Nergal reaches Ereshkigal’s house by a separate tale that itself comes down in two unlike recensions. Lilith sits here only as the tablets’ lilītu — a class of night-demon feared in the house, never a queen of anywhere.
Moon, judgment, and a world re-ordered
Two strata side by side. The moon and the sun-judge are old and Sumerian, named here in two systems: Nanna is the Sumerian name (Akkadian Sîn), Shamash the Akkadian one (Sumerian Utu). Nabu’s stylus and Marduk’s splitting of Tiamat belong to Babylon’s much later claim on the cosmos — and Tiamat lives in that poem, not in any known cult.
