Nanna, the Sumerian moon god of wisdom, was a dude. Sin, the Babylonian moon god of wisdom formerly known as Nanna, was a dude.

I had a moment of cognitive dissonance exploring Minerva, the Roman (not entirely lunar) god of wisdom, definitely not a dude. And maybe my whole “let’s give the pantheon Roman names for the barbarians of the western Empire who speak Latin as a trade tongue, yeah that fits”. was a bit misguided in any event.

But eff, man. Even setting aside my twenty first century desire for equity, if your moon god isn’t whatever the hell gender they want, I don’t much care for your moon god. So I started with five dudes and two ladies¹ in the Anunnaki, then for a hot second landed on four dudes and three ladies in the Anunnaki, before finally arriving at four dudes and two ladies and one “it’s complicated”. And maybe three dudes and three ladies would be even better, but flipping the gender of Ea, Anu, Elil, or Marduk is a bit fraught. So, that battle will wait for another day.

1.  My previous concern about there only being two goddesses in the Anunakki / “of church power” in the pantheon, both with a domain of “girl stuff” bothered the heck out of me. But has been resolved as one for “women who lead” (Ishtar\Venus) and one for “women who follow” (Ninhursag\Juno). To the degree that this can be further simplified into “good girls” and “bad girls” is a trick of our modern socio-cultural merchandising expectations. Ishtar still gets the paladins², though.

2. Another digression for another the time: The Red Paladins of Mithras, and the Blue Paladins of Venus. That “red Paladins” bit is one of two things of utility I stole from the otherwise milquetoast “Cursed” on Netflix.