Bunene
Bunene was a Mesopotamian deity, subordinate to the sun-god Šamaš. He served as Šamaš's sukkal ("vizier") or charioteer, driving him from the eastern horizon at dawn to the doorway of the interior of heaven in the west in a daily ritual. Bunene had a sanctuary, the é.kur.ra, or "House of the Mountain", at Sippar.
↻ synthesized from 3 sources
When
- First attested
- 3000 BCE
- Attested period
- -3000 – -539
- Historical notes
- Attested in Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets; venerated until the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
Relationships
- allied with
- Utu
- co occurs with
- Lipparuma, Mišaru, Aya, Enmesharra, Lugalbanda, Ḫepat, Nikkal, Ayu-Ikalti, Šauška, Ningal, Tiwaz
Mentioned by
Sources
Source passages
“Bunene seems to have originated as a minor solar deity before he was absorbed as an attendant into the Šamaš cult. He first emerges in this role during the Old Babylonian period in an Akkadian prayer of a divination priest to Šamaš and in an inscription of Yahdun-Lim of Mari.”
#16481 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001
“Another recurring image is a depiction of Utu, sometimes accompanied by another god, partaking in a battle between deities. The attendant deity is sometimes interpreted as Bunene.”
#17271 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001
“According to Piotr Taracha he was regarded as analogous to Bunene, the sukkal of Shamash. In a bilingual Sumero-Hurrian version of the Weidner god list from Emar Šimige's sukkal is instead Bunene”
#17359 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5