Sacrifice & Feeding the Gods
Humanity was made to feed the gods — and when the offerings stopped, even the gods went hungry.
Also: sacrifice · offering · feeding the gods · nindabu · cult image · temple offerings · the gods gathered like flies
At the heart of Mesopotamian cult lay the care and feeding of the gods. The cult-image in the temple was bathed, clothed, and presented with lavish meals twice daily; festivals brought greater offerings, processions, and music. Humanity had, after all, been created to relieve the gods of labor and to provision them — so sacrifice was not an extra but the very reason for human existence in the mythic logic. When the Flood cut off offerings, the myths say, the hungry gods 'gathered like flies' over the first sacrifice afterward. Right offering kept the gods present, fed, and favorable.
In short
The cult of offerings — food, drink, incense, and animal sacrifice — by which the gods were daily 'fed' and cared for in their temples, the central transaction of Mesopotamian religion.
Where it’s found
Atra-ḫasīs and Gilgameš XI for the rationale and the post-Flood sacrifice (akkadian-pending); offering-cult pervasive in hymns and temple texts (in corpus)
How the idea developed across Sumer, Babylon & Assyria
The daily care-and-feeding of the cult-image is attested across all periods; the mythic rationale (humans created to provision the gods) is articulated in Atra-ḫasīs, and the 'gods gathered like flies over the sacrifice' image appears at the close of the Flood in Gilgameš XI. Practice is continuous; the theology is most explicit in the Akkadian myths.