Mes-sanga-Unug (dMES.SANGA.UNUGki; also read Pisangunug) was a Mesopotamian god closely associated with the city of Uruk, and especially with one of its districts, Kullaba.
He belonged to the earliest pantheon of Uruk, though he ceased to be worshiped there in the Ur III period, and the attestations in documents from the reign of the Seleucids are assumed to be a result of a late reintroduction.
[3] Mes-sanga-Unug is the version employed by Manfred Krebernik in the corresponding entry in Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie.
[5] Interpreting it as dPisan2/xsaĝ/sanga-Unugki has been suggested by Wilfred G. Lambert, but according to Jeremiah Peterson it is not plausible, and the alternative is supported by a gloss in an Assyrian copy of the god list An = Anum (YBC 2401, tablet 5, line 20).
[13] This epithet is also attested in the incantation series Udug Hul[1] and in a liturgic text which also provides the Akkadian explanation na-gi-ri kul-la-bi.
[17] Paul-Alain Beaulieu proposed in 1993 that he is listed among Ninurta's alternate names in a syncretistic section in the Standard Babylonian edition of the Anzû myth, though at the time most translators, for example Stephanie Dalley and Benjamin R. Foster, favored restoring the damaged passage as an epithet, "warrior of Uruk" (UR.SAG UNUGki), rather than a theonym.
[3] In a more recent publication Julia Krul notes that this proposal subsequently found a degree of support, and Foster in 2005 retranslated the Anzû passage in accordance with it.
[5] Mes-sanga-Unug was one of the members of the earliest form of the pantheon of Uruk, which also included Inanna (in various manifestations), her attendant Ninshubur, the deified hero Gilgamesh and his parents Ninsun and Lugalbanda, the goddesses Ninirigal and Ningirima, as well as Anu, at the time a deity of limited importance.
[10] However, Paul-Alain Beaulieu tentatively suggests that his absence from the Neo-Babylonian corpus of texts from this city might simply indicate that he was venerated in a temple unrelated to the Eanna complex.
[20] Mes-sanga-Unug was reintroduced to the pantheon of Uruk in the Seleucid period alongside Ninirigal, according to Julia Krul presumably due to the antiquity of the local tradition pertaining to them.
[23] In ritual texts he commonly appears among deities worshiped inside the complex as Anu's servants, such as Papsukkal, Isimud, Nuska and Kusu.
[33] On an exercise tablet from Babylon he appears alongside Nanaya, Gazbaba, Kanisurra and other deities associated with the city of Uruk to varying degrees.