Episode 04 – The death of the ancient Sumerian gods and their revival… in Iceland? Artwork

The Cobra Effect Podcast

Well-meaning plans can easily backfire, leading to revolt, failure, and shocking events. From ancient Mesopotamia to current world events, The Cobra Effect Podcast explores the unintended consequences of government policies, including taxation, wage and price controls, foreign aid, collectivization, subsidies, environmental impacts, and more. Four millennia of history on all continents demonstrate that we repeat the mistakes of the past when judging ideas by intentions rather than results.

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Episode 04 – The death of the ancient Sumerian gods and their revival… in Iceland?

November 06, 2025 • Orestes Ponce de Leon • Season 1 • Episode 4

In this episode, we first travel more than 4,000 years to ancient Mesopotamia, mostly modern-day Iraq. I will first describe the slow death of the Sumerian gods, and in the second half of the episode, their revival as an unintended consequence of Iceland’s tax system. Yes, cold and windy Iceland.

A necessary note: this episode is not about the Anunnaki, as popular as that subject may be. Also, talking about the disappearance of the Sumerian religion is talking about thousands of years of Mesopotamian history with its peoples, cities, and rising and falling empires. I will do my best to summarize this, and if you have ever been intrigued by the evolution of this region in ancient times, you will certainly enjoy this first part of the episode.

Although two suspicious brothers are involved in the story, the unintended consequence of Iceland’s religious tax was the revival of a religion long forgotten from faraway foreign lands. Perhaps the ancient Sumerian gods Enlil and Inanna were not offered proper ritual this time, but, somehow, they came to life in the Icelandic Zuist Church. Coming from Southern Iraq, I bet they expect to reappear next time in a warmer climate.

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Episode 04 – The death of the ancient Sumerian gods and their revival… in Iceland?

A necessary note: this episode is not about the Anunnaki, as popular as that subject may be. Also, talking about the disappearance of the Sumerian religion is talking about thousands of years of Mesopotamian history with its peoples, cities, and rising and falling empires. I will do my best to summarize this and if you have ever been intrigued by the evolution of this region in ancient times, you will certainly enjoy this first part of the episode.

Enuma elish la nabu shamamu…

When on high the heaven had not been named,

Experts in ancient Mesopotamia will have to excuse my pronunciation. This is the beginning of the “Enuma Elish,” meaning “When on high.” It is a Babylonian myth of the creation of the world. It is perhaps their most famous creation story, and it is a praise to Marduk, the main god of the Babylonians. However, the “Enuma Elish” is thought to be a copy of a much older Sumerian work, and it is theorized that in the Babylonian story, the Babylonian god Marduk had replaced the Sumerian chief god Enlil.

You see, when it comes to Old, the Babylonian southern neighbors, the Sumerians, are the Founding Fathers of Old, even with the myth of creation itself. This applied to their organized religion and, unfortunately, taxes. More on taxes in the second part of this episode.

Now, all creation comes to an end, even the Sumerian gods, but they did not die overnight. It was a long and slow but unstoppable process.

The Sumerian cities, located in southern Iraq, in the southernmost part of historical Mesopotamia, stopped being an independent political entity around the year 2000 BC. After that, the Sumerian pantheon merged gradually with the gods of the Amorites, who ruled as the First Babylonian Empire over the Sumerians and all of Mesopotamia for around three hundred years, from 1900 to 1600 BC. This is the period when Hammurabi was ruler, the Hammurabi you know thanks to his code of laws.

The gods Enlil of the Sumerians and Marduk of the Amorites/Babylonians became interchangeable, and although some deities, such as Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love and war, flourished under the name Ishtar, other Sumerian gods disappeared. Time passed, and when the Neo-Assyrian Empire ruled all of Mesopotamia, roughly from 900 to 600 BC, their main god, Ashur, became the supreme deity and replaced Marduk in the epic of creation itself.

By now, the original Sumerian gods were fading and dying. Enlil had been replaced by Marduk, and Marduk had been replaced by Ashur.

In the year 612 BC, the Assyrian capital, Nineveh, was plundered and burned. In the following seven years, the former all-powerful Assyrian Empire fell into the hands of a coalition of neighboring states, mainly the Medes and Babylonians. The last remnants of the Assyrian army were defeated in the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC, and the Babylonians restored their dominion over Mesopotamia. This Neo-Babylonian Empire also restored its main deity, Marduk, to his former glory. By the way, you know this Neo-Babylonian Empire thanks to another famous ruler, Nebuchadrezzar II, who destroyed the First Temple of Jerusalem and took the Jewish elite captive to Babylon, among them the Biblical Christian prophet Daniel. However, Babylon enjoyed its independence and power for less than a century. Pretty soon, successive empires that ruled over the region brought their settlers, their culture, and, of course, the influence of their pantheon of gods.

I will summarize the following events in chronological order. Stay with me. After the fall of Babylon into the hands of the Persian Achaemenids in 539 BC, the Persians’ monotheistic religion of Zoroastrianism, with its god Ahura Mazda, was introduced to Mesopotamia. Roughly 200 years later, after the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC, Alexander the Great conquered Mesopotamia. Following his death, his successors in the Seleucid Empire extended the influence of the Hellenistic gods. Still, during this period, in southern Mesopotamia, in some, although not many, ancient Sumerian cities such as Uruk, the locals still practiced the cult to the goddess Inanna. In Babylon, although the temple of Marduk was not properly maintained and restored to its original splendor, his cult was still in place.

Around 150 BC, the Parthians, originally a nomadic tribe from the North-East, conquered Mesopotamia. They revived the religion of Zoroastrianism that the Persians had brought before. All of this while Judaism and later on Christianity began to expand in the region.

By the end of the Parthian rule, the old temples of the Sumerian gods were not maintained, and based on archaeological evidence, the existence of the priesthood of these ancient gods became increasingly scarce over time.

To give you an example, after defeating the Parthians in a quick campaign, the Roman Emperor Trajan visited Babylon in the year AD 116. Roman historian Cassius Dio recounts that Trajan “saw nothing but mounds and stones and ruins.” By then, the temples of Babylon were in ruins, and this scene was similar in the rest of the ancient Sumerian temples throughout southern Mesopotamia. The Romans did not stay in the region, and the following year, the Parthians regained control.

In the year AD 224, the Persian Sasanians, self-proclaimed heirs of the Persian Achaemenids, defeated the Parthians, and Zoroastrianism became the official state religion. The Sasanians were a dynasty of Persian rulers, just as the Achaemenids before them had been another dynasty of Persian rulers.

The death of the Sumerian pantheon of gods was a process that took over two thousand years. Starting with the religious syncretism of the Babylonians and Assyrians, that’s when they mixed Enlil with Marduk and Ashur respectively, as later on the region was conquered and ruled by the Persian Achaemenids, Alexander the Great and the Seleucids, the Parthians, and finally the Sasanians, with each successive ruling empire, the loss of importance and decline of the ancient Sumerian cities brought about the demise of the once-powerful priesthood class that served the temples of Sumerian gods like Enlil and Inanna. Furthermore, as I mentioned, successive ruling empires brought new people, along with the influence of new religions.

By the time the Arab Muslims conquered Mesopotamia from the Sasanians in the year AD 638, the Sumerian language and its people had long been forgotten. Their temples, known as ziggurats, were ruins, mounds of mud bricks that had lost all resemblance to their past glory. The ruins in the landscape of southern Mesopotamia were a living testament to the dead Sumerian gods.

As a curious footnote, before the end of the political independence and might of the Sumerian cities around the year 2000 BC, Sumerian texts list around 3,600 gods. However, it appears that one of them survived. Tammuz, also known as Dumuzi, the husband of the goddess Inanna, survived three thousand years after the end of the Sumerian civilization, which is well after Islam was firmly established in the region as the predominant religion. You see, there were some elements of paganism surviving in Mesopotamia until the 10th and/or 11th century. In the north, the Sabians of the city of Harran, and in the south, the Sabians of the Marshes were two small groups who followed a mixture of old pagan beliefs anchored in ancient Assyrian-Babylonian and Hellenistic traditions. The sources of the time mention a ritual of mourning and lamentation after the death of the god Tammuz. However, these sources indicate that even the last remnants of ancient pagan believers were unaware of the story and origin of this lamentation ritual. They continued doing so because their ancestors had done it. But this is just an interesting footnote.

The Sumerians, who gave us the first cities and were among the first to leave us organized religion and taxation, could not have suspected that 4,000 years after their disappearance and more than 3,000 miles northwest of their palaces and ziggurats, in a cold and icy land named… well, Iceland, taxes were the reason why their gods came back to life.

You see, the division between church and State in Iceland is almost nonexistent. In fact, Article 62 of their constitution establishes that the Evangelical Lutheran Church is the church under support and protection guaranteed by the State. Right until 2020, the salaries of its priests were paid directly by the government as they were, in fact, considered public servants. To give you an idea of how important the Lutheran Church is there, until 2007, the Lutheran parish church in Reykjavík, the capital, was the tallest building in the country. Today, it is the second-tallest building, but the difference with the first is only 11 feet, around 3 meters. Not that much.

Now, everybody in Iceland, whether they are members of a church or not, is subject to a religious tax on their individual income. In 2022, the State collected USD 101 from each citizen and then distributed it to registered religious organizations in proportion to each organization’s number of members. The key here is that only registered organizations receive these so-called “parish fees,” which are state-sponsored funds derived from taxation.

Becoming a registered religious group was very difficult until 2013, when the rules of the game changed, and the government eased the law to facilitate the registration of organizations. You can now see where I am going with this story!

This is when our Sumerian gods came back to life! Enlil and Inanna reappeared in Iceland under the name of a new registered religion: Zuism, which comes from the Sumerian verb zu, meaning “to know.” A possible translation would be “the way of knowledge.” In the now-defunct webpage of the Zuist church, you can read that: “The story of Zuism traces its roots back to ancient Sumer, which is the first known civilization in history. The oldest religion in history has now been reawakened.”

Although Zuism as a group was supposedly created in 2010 with only three members, it was not until 2013 that it became an officially registered religious group. The brothers Einar and Águst Arnar were among the original three members. Keep these two brothers in mind. In 2015, according to official state statistics, the group only had four members.

Then, a miracle. In November of the same year, 2015, the Zuist Church announced that its members would collect reimbursement for the parish fees the organization would receive from the State. It was a religious tax reimbursement, and Zuism immediately became a buzz in Iceland, a sort of anti-tax Beatlemania. Just a month after this reimbursement announcement, the British newspaper The Guardian reported that more than 3,100 people, almost 1% of Iceland’s population, had registered in the Zuist Church. Imagine if, in a matter of weeks, 1% of the US population, which is 34 million Americans, would rush to register in a church of ancient Sumerian gods. Crazy, uh?

The “elders,” as the senior members called themselves, stated on the Zuist Church website that their ultimate goal was for the State to eliminate the compulsory religious tax for everyone, regardless of their religious affiliation. They wanted the churches to collect the fees themselves, without the State’s compulsory taxes, giving autonomy to the Icelandic people to decide whether to give money to a particular organization or simply not. They also wanted to push for the abolition of the automatic registration of infants in the religion of their parents, and they wanted to remove the article in the constitution that makes the Lutheran church the country’s state church.

At this point, you may be wondering whether Zuism is in fact a religion or a form of anti-tax protest. In terms of practices, it seems that they conducted baptisms and weddings as per a statement on their now-defunct webpage. In another statement from 2018, they said: “One of our most popular events is Beer and Prayer. Then the Zuists meet and drink beer and sing a poem about the Beer Goddess Ninkasi.” Funerals and confirmations are also listed as part of their events. As a registered religious organization, they had legal authority to perform these activities. Although it did not happen, they even planned to build a ziggurat, a temple in honor of the chief god Enlil. Finally, unlike the ancient Sumerians did, it doesn’t seem that animal sacrifice was a ritual performed in the modern Icelandic Zuist church.

Unfortunately, the webpage of the Zuist church is no longer active, and its subsections with further information are now lost. Why? According to the local newspaper Visir, the founding brothers Einar and Ágúst Arnar were accused of having defrauded the Icelandic State of up to 85 million Icelandic Kronas, which is 615,000 US dollars. Additionally, less than 5% of the parish fees that the religious association Zuism received from the State in 2017 were reimbursed to its members as promised. The formal charges against the Arnar brothers were money laundering and defrauding the State while pretending to run a religious organization. In March 2025, the Supreme Court of Iceland found them guilty of charges. Einar received an 18-month sentence and Ágúst a two-year sentence.

Certainly, as a consequence of all this, according to the official government’s most up-to-date statistics as of the moment I record this episode in late 2025, the Zuist church had 438 registered members in 2024, far fewer than the 3,100 members it had 9 years earlier. After all, less than 5% of them had received the promised tax reimbursement.

Religious tax exemptions are a fascinating topic when it comes to unintended consequences. While researching information for this episode, I found another case that I will bring to you soon. For that, we will have to go to Southeast Asia in the 13th century to visit Bagan, the City of Temples. Stay tuned.

As we saw in this episode, although two suspicious brothers are involved in the story, the unintended consequence of Iceland’s religious tax was the revival of a religion long forgotten from faraway foreign lands. Perhaps the ancient Sumerian gods Enlil and Inanna were not offered proper ritual this time, but, somehow, they came to life in the Icelandic Zuist Church. Coming from Southern Iraq, I bet they expect to reappear next time in a warmer climate.

SOURCES

ANCIENT SUMERIAN RELIGION

https://www.usu.edu/markdamen/ane/lectures/10.1.pdf

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1058&context=studiaantiqua

https://www.britannica.com/place/Mesopotamia-historical-region-Asia/

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/deit/hd_deit.htm#:

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/cassius_dio/68*.html

https://www.britannica.com/place/Mesopotamia-historical-region-Asia/The-Parthian-period

https://academic.oup.com/book/26886/chapter-abstract/195944987?redirectedFrom=fulltext

http://islamicblessings.com/upload/The%20Last%20Pagans%20of%20Iraq.pdf

ZUISM

https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom/iceland