This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Mesopotamian Religion Hymns gathers three of the atlas's hymns from ancient Mesopotamia, addressed to three different deities and illustrating three different things a hymn could do.
The Exaltation of Inanna, one hundred fifty three lines to Inanna, is the earliest substantial poem in world literature whose author is named, Enheduanna, who speaks in the first person describing her expulsion from office at Ur and asking the goddess to restore her; whether she composed it or the attribution is a later Old Babylonian construction is genuinely contested, since all surviving copies are school texts some five centuries after her lifetime. The Great Hymn to Shamash, some two hundred lines to the sun god as the one who sees everything and is therefore god of justice, praises the honest merchant who uses a true measure and extends divine concern to travellers, the poor and animals. The Hymn to Ninkasi, addressed to the goddess of beer, is also a brewing recipe line by line, the soaking of the bappir bread, the mash on the fire, the filtering vat, the collecting vessel, a hymn functioning as a mnemonic for a craft in a society where technique was learned by heart and the goddess and the process were not separable.
Modern brewers have attempted reconstructions from the Ninkasi hymn, with results depending heavily on how the ingredient terms are translated.