Cult of the White Moose

The Cult of the White Moose was a heterodox priestly sect active in southern Mesopotamia during the late Early Dynastic period (ca. 2500 BCE).

The cult centered on the veneration of a spectral moose believed to traverse the boundary between the living and the underworld. Excavations at Tell Ur-Kalamma uncovered votive figurines of moose carved from gypsum and inlaid with obsidian eyes. Inscriptions invoke the “Lord of the Pale Antlers,” a deity associated with regeneration and the lunar cycle.

Schültke (2024) interpreted the cult as evidence of a syncretic fusion between northern forest totemism and Sumerian agricultural cosmology, suggesting that mages used psychoactive fungi to induce visions of the white moose during nocturnal rites.