What a God Is (the Divine, the Personal God)
Every person had a god of their own — and to lose its favor was to fall sick and unlucky.
Also: ilu · deity · personal god · DINGIR · god of a man · divine classifier · what is a god
Mesopotamians distinguished several scales of the divine. There were the great cosmic gods of sky, storm, water, sun, and Venus; the patron gods who 'owned' particular cities and lived in their temples; and the 'personal god' — a kind of divine guardian attached to each individual, whose favor meant health and success and whose departure left one exposed to misfortune and demons. In cuneiform a small star-sign (the DINGIR classifier) was written before a divine name to mark it as a god. To 'have one's god' was to be protected; to lose it was to fall ill or unlucky.
In short
The Mesopotamian conception of divinity — the great cosmic gods, the city-gods, and the 'personal god' who guards an individual's fortune — marked in writing by the divine classifier (the DINGIR sign).
Where it’s found
'A man and his god' (ETCSL 5.2.4, in corpus); developed in Ludlul bēl nēmeqi (akkadian-pending; Lambert, BWL)
How the idea developed across Sumer, Babylon & Assyria
The 'personal god' concept is especially developed in Old Babylonian piety and in the righteous-sufferer texts, where the sufferer complains that his protective god and goddess have abandoned him. The great-gods/city-gods/personal-god layering is stable across Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria.