“Inuma ilu awilu,” When gods [were] men.

[dtango]

In the case of gods being embellished stories about men, for example, they would still be the product of imagination.

You were born and raised in an environment where the unnatural and completely ludicrous idea of the existence of a creator God is revered and part of every day life. You are, therefore, unable to imagine a human community where the idea of such a God does not exist because in such a community deification is not possible.
So, present a plausible theory on how the idea of immaterial gods came to be and then we can start a serious conversation.
I do have such a theory. You may not like it, but it is based on research and evidence

Snake gods, for example.....are difficult to paint as being based on men, aren't they?

For snake gods stories to be taken seriously you have to present similar snake gods stories from various cultures; otherwise we are dealing with local legends not worthy of investigation. The story of the gods I am referring to is an international one.

Comparative mythology; that’s the name of the game!

Why would one pay any more attention to the primitive scribblings of the Akkadians than the Aztecs, Jews, Norse, Egyptians or Hopi?

The Aztecs on seeing the Spaniards they believed they were gods because from their oral traditions they knew that the gods belonged to white race (the Sumerians believed the same because they were calling themselves –the humans- blackheads). As for the Jews, the sons of the gods/God went to human women and made love to them. What were these lovers? Spirits or flowers? The main God of the Jews, Yahweh, is only one of these sons of gods.
In the Norse mythology there are no men because the gods play the role of the men.
In the Egyptian script the word “god” is followed by the ideogram of a man. The same ideogram is used for the word “man” with the difference that the one for the god has long hair and long beard. Moreover, the Egyptians give the dates and duration of the various kingdoms with the first kings being gods.

The Hopi creation myth is dominated by the female creative principle, Hard Beings Woman, or sometimes spider Woman. The Akkadians who said that gods were men and that these gods who were men created humans, they also say that humans were created by women (impregnated by the gods, of course) not by some male god as per the theologians.