Gilgamesh
The demigod/hero Gilgamesh is depicted as wrestling the “celestial bull,” said to represent the sign of the age of Taurus and is similar to the motif of the Perso-Roman sun god Mithra slaying the bull. In mourning the death of Enki, Gilgamesh “goes to the mountains of Mashu and passes by the guardian scorpion-demons into the darkness.” Mt. Mashu was where “every evening the sun sought repose.” Per Robert Temple, “Mashu” may be derived from an Egyptian term meaning, “Behold, the sun.” Like “Moses,” derived from mashah in Hebrew (Strong’s h3871), “Mashu” is apparently related to “Shamash” and represents the sun. The “scorpion-demons” or scorpion-men are evidently the stars in the constellation of Scorpio, in the darkness of the night sky. Gilgamesh has also been associated with the Egyptian sun god Osiris, as has the biblical “Nimrod” or “Nemrod.” The Catholic Encyclopedia (CE) states:

“Gilgamesh, whom mythology transformed into a Babylonian Hercules [the Greek solar hero], whose fortunes are described in the Gilgamesh-epos, would then be the person designated by the Biblical Nemrod. Others again see in Nemrod an intentional corruption of Amarudu, the Akkadian for Marduk, whom the Babylonians worshiped as the great God…” (“Babylonia”)


One of the “seven who decreed the fates,” Inanna/Ishtar was the Goddess, alternately Venus, the moon, the constellation of Virgo, the earth, etc. Ishtar was “Astarte” in Phoenicia, and, as Frazer says in The Worship of Nature, “Her Phoenician worshippers identified her with the Moon…” Like the Greek god of the underworld, Hades, who allowed his beloved Persephone to return to the surface in order to create spring, Inanna was the creator of seasons, as she is depicted permitting the solar-fertility god Dumuzi/Tammuz to remain in the underworld for only six months out of the year.

One of the lesser Anunnaki, the “shepherd god” Tammuz was worshipped also in Jerusalem, per the book of Ezekiel (8:14). As the Babylonian records state concerning their “garden of Eden” or “Edina,” of Eridu: “a dark vine grew; it was made a glorious place, planted beside the abyss. In the glorious house, which is like a forest, its shadow extends; no man enters its midst. In its interior is the Sun-god Tammuz. Between the mouths of the rivers, which are on both sides.” (CE “Babylonia”)